Material related to Roy Ito's Second World War experience

From this series, LOI has digitized 4 textual records and other records.

Series consists of material related to Roy Ito's Second World War experience, including a personal diary recounting his time as a sergeant with the Canadian army in Asia in the Canadian Intelligence Corps, together with handwritten excerpts copied from the diary, a 1941 pamphlet report on "Orientals in British Columbia," and a flag received by Ito in 1984 inscribed by a Japanese Navy acquaintance of Ito's. Series also includes books and pamphlets used by Ito in the Canadian Intelligence Corps, copies of military maps, correspondence, samples of currency from Japanese occupied territories, student publications and reunion photographs from S-20 Japanese language school, and an issue of the POW Journal.

Roy Ryoichi Ito was born in British Columbia. During the internment period he was relocated with his family initially to work on a sugar beet farm in Alberta, then to Kaslo, BC, where he worked on The New Canadian newspaper, then to Hamilton, Ontario, where he began studies at McMaster University in 1943. He was recruited to join the army, and served as a sergeant with the Canadian Intelligence Corps in India and South-East Asia. After the Second World War, Ito completed his university degree and became a teacher, and later was employed for twenty-five years as a school principal. He retired in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1984. Ito was married and had four children. He wrote several social science books for use in schools and two histories of Japanese Canadians entitled Stories of My People and We Went to War.

The digital copies of the records were acquired by the Landscapes of Injustice Research Collective between 2014 and 2018.