Winifred Awmack, interviewed by Ruth M. Chambers, 21 February 1985 (3 of 3)

Ruth counts down. This is February 21, 1985. And Win Awmack is talking to Ruth Chambers about the final months at Tashme. The big concentration Pause. big relocation center to which about 2000 Japanese were sent. After Pearl Harbour in 1942.

Yes, I would—

Is that right or should we go back again? Tell me about the final months at Tashme, the relocation center to which about 2,600 Japanese Canadians were sent after Pearl Harbour . Most of them arriving at the camp in 1942.

Yes.

Alright we'll start once more. I'm awfully sorry to be stupid about this. It is 1985 and Win Almack is talking to Ruth Chambers about the final months at Tashme. The relocation camp on the Trite's Ranch. Which was just east of where later the Hope Slide occurred. Win, I think you've said Tape cuts out slightly. that there's still quite a bit to say about the order Pause. for the Japanese to re—either be sent to Japan, to sign up whether they wanted to go to Japan, or whether they wanted to go east of the Rockies.

Yes, I feel there is—to most in the camp, the time at what we call the signing, was probably the most important and the hardest thing that happened in the two years I was there. The letter of the signing required that you go east, it didn't say immediately but verbally it was immediately. And everything, all conditions were better if you signed to go toJapanthan if you stayed in Canada. One of the problems youngsters and parents had, was that if some of their youngsters were in east, or friends, and they wrote to them about this issue, anything dealing with the repatriation was blocked out by the censor or cut out of their letters. So sometimes they said their letters were unreadable for what was left. Any advice to not sign the papers was cut out of the letters, so they got very much cut off form their youngsters in the east and any advice they could get. The minster, certainly in the United Church and I think in the Anglican Church, very strongly suggested to people they would be better to remain in Canada and not to sign for repatriation. We found it amusing that they sent an RCMP man to sit in the back of the Japanese language church services, certainly at the United Church, to see what Mr. Mac said to the people. And perhaps to almost intimidate them, I don't know. But when the signing was over and the move had been made, those who would not sign to go to Japanwere all moved out of the camp to other camps. And the United Church was left with three people in the young people services and six in the Japanese service, all the rest had refused to sign and had left the community.

And these had congregations of about 30 people each. In—I think it’s September but I'm not sure. Jesse Arnott, who was the moderator of the United Church, came into the camp on a visit. And he came just for one night, and spoke with the Japanese people in the hall. It was a very informal meeting. And he asked them why they had signed. And they told him. And it was for many reasons. Some logical, perhaps some not. Some were in hospital and couldn't get out. Some had a family to support and they couldn't get work unless they signed. There were all sorts of reasons. But when Dr. Arnott went out and one of his next stops was Calgary and he spoke to a large group in Calgary and told them what the people had said. And that caused the biggest furor you can imagine for us. Because the Commission almost put martial law into the camp. We were forbidden. They were so angry with Dr. Arnott, they said, “Why didn't he ask us? We could have told him why they signed.” And the result was that any visitor that we had, had to have written permission from the Commission in Vancouver before they could come into the camp. And we were not supposed to have any meetings with more than three people, in the camp. The repercussions of that was that when we had a speaker for our graduation the following May or June, we had to get written permission for the man to come in. And written across his position was that he must not speak about the atomic bomb. Whether this was their paranoia about what would be said, I don't know. But we thought it was rather amusing. The letters of cancellation, as I think I said before, I think I must have typed 200 letters of cancellation. Asking to have their request for repatriation canceled. And nobody got answers, even if they wrote 2 or 3 times. There were no replies.

Where did these letters of cancellation go to? Who were you writing to?

There had to be five copies. I think there was the Prime Minister, the Attorney General, the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Immigration—I'm not sure who the other was. I know there were no replies.

In any case, they were five federal people. Not provincial, it was federal.

Everything was federal.

Yes.

The Japanese were no longer a provincial thing at all. They were all—everything was done by the federal government. Schooling, everything. Yeah.

And you never got any answers to these?

Nobody did, as far as I know. And I've seen some that said, “I wrote before in July and I'm requesting again that you consider my application for cancellation.” The first thing that we knew that they were not considering it in a way was when we saw a small item in the paper that said the camps would be closed by the end of February, I think it was. This was in January of '46. And that everybody would be deported to Japan.

Was that one of the Vancouver papers?

Yes. It probably was the Sun but I'm not sure.

Yes.

It was a very small item. Because in this time very, very little ever appeared in the papers about the situation. So that local people weren't very well aware. But when we saw this, our minister whose home was in Vancouver and who went out every weekend, every week, to Vancouver, when he came back the following week he brought with him ten thousand envelopes and letters to go in them. And it had in it a statement by the consultative council for the Japanese in Vancouver—I'm not sure, I may have to check on the actual name of that—and an open letter saying that not everybody in this country approved of the way they had been treated. And I think there must have been a letter from Mr. Mac saying something to the effect that if we do not want this deportation to happen, we must write to the federal government at once.

And the letter from Mr. Mac, Mr. Mac being your husband?

No, Mr. Mac was the minister. The Reverend W. R. McWilliams.

Oh yes, of course. I'm sorry.

Who worked in the camp.

Yes.

And he brought these in and the kids sat down and sent one to every United Church minister, and every Anglican minister, and the head to every Women's Organization in both churches. And they all went out, he took them back on Monday morning, all addressed. And mailed them. And the federal government got so much, so many answers and letters from people all over the country, that they had to rescind the order-in-council. It was very quietly dropped.

Well that many letters would obviously make the politicians think about the number of votes involved.

That could be.

And there are few politicians, who don't count votes.

They said they had more letters than they had ever had before, on that one issue. There were a great deal of—it was a public outcry against it. The actual repatriation, when it came, was not until June of that year. The first boats that left. I think people had a choice by that time. they either would be going east, they would still be going east of the Rockies pretty well, or to Japan. And the total number of people I thought that went was about 1,000. Now since that time, I've seen figures that are higher, that are near 4,000. But I thought it was only 1,000 that went from Canada, of the people that went back. Of that, about 25 of them were students of ours. And none of them wanted to go. But some were under 16, some were older and felt—either their parents felt they had to come or they felt they couldn't break the family up. We had had a large number of students who had gone east the year before, at the time of the signing, who had refused to sign and they had to go east. And they did.

Yes.

Their families found jobs for them and they went. But I think it'd be close to 1,000 that finally left. I always remember we had one boy and he went on the—one boat, oh where is it, Marine Angel left on the 2nd of June from Vancouver. And one of our boys was on it and he said, “It'll just get out of the harbour. By the night of the 1st of June, I'm alright.” Or the 2nd or whatever it was. “Because I will be 16 the following day.” And included in the signing was a statement that you voluntarily gave up your British citizenship. And he said, “If I can just get out of the harbour before I'm 16, I don't lose my citizenship.” I'm not sure whether that boy did get back to this country or not. The other boat left on the 1st of August. It was the General Meigs or Meigs. And it took them about 13 days to get to Japan. I was a little surprised that it took that long, but I had several letters saying that when they had arrived in Japan.

What was the spelling of that second name? The General?

It looks like M-E-I-G-S. But that may not be correct.

You got that from a letter, or?

Yes.

Yes.

That was in one of the letters. But their spelling was poor. I mean there was no doubt about it, a great many of them, their spelling was poor. Their English was not up to the standard of a lot of our English you'd expect of high school students English. Partly because, especially those going back to Japan, Japanese was likely spoken in the home and English outside. And they hadn't had as good English teaching in their public school as they would normally get.

No, and there's a tendency anyway if it's a family that talks the language of the parents in the hope, that the idioms and the expressions and the small things that still persist in the way of the old people.

Yes. I'm not sure whether they actually took the citizenship away, because I think about two years after I got a letter from one of the boys that said his ID had been stolen, and would I please get a copy of his birth certificate. And he gave me the name of the doctor and he was born in a Vancouver hospital, and all about it, the date. Because he needed this. But I had originally put down that he wanted both his birth certificate and his citizenship certificate, but I couldn't locate the letter this morning to make sure that was the case. But I know I sent his birth certificate to him, so that he would have it for—

Yes.

—what he had needed. And he later went into the Korean Army. The Canadian Army fighting in Korea.

Yes.

And then got demobbed back in Canada. So that's how he got back to Canada.

Yes well Laughs. I suppose if you were good enough, if you were Canadian enough to fight for the army, they could hardly say well we can't let you back.

Yes. The youngsters who went, as I said, they didn't want to go. And when they got there, they were even more distressed, I think. They hadn't, perhaps they hadn't realized they were not accepted as Japanese. As someone had said, “It would have been better if they had been Caucasians.” They'd be accepted better if they had been white people. But they were Japanese but they didn't—to the Japanese they were rude. They didn't have the right terms. You know you speak with—to an older relative you use different terms than you do to one of your age, and there are different words according to the status of the person. And they didn't have these words.

You mean special sort of terms of respect that you would use to an elder?

I think so.

Yes.

It's something that we have a little bit, but not as much as they have in either Chinese or Japanese.

No.

And I knew that the missionaries were worried about the youngsters going back. Because they said, “Some of them don't have enough Japanese to read the newspapers. They don't.” And when you just add 'koh“ on the end of an English word to make a Japanese word, it may work here but it won't work there. ”

No.

They were thinking in English, and their command of language, of Japanese language, for a lot of them wasn't as good as it should be. Also, they went back to a country that was starving. That was extremely short on clothing, on fuel, everything. And people just said, “Why did you come back here and add one more? Why are you coming to this country from a land of plenty?” so they were not welcome. And those who lived out in the country, and many of them, they went back to their parents went back to the farms. They had come from farms—they went back to the rural areas. Where, in some cases there was more food, but where things were very tight, they had to work, they worked hard. One of the boys said they wouldn't allow him to work for the army so he worked getting wood. And he said it was a strenuous, hard job. But the kids all wanted to come back to Canada. Of the letters that I had, there was only one who said in a way she was glad that she was there, though she had hated coming. Because her father was acting better and at least he was home and she was glad to be a part of a family and to help keep it together. Her mother had died either in Tashme or before she went over anyway. So that it was just a father with two or three girls, as far as I know. And she was glad to be able to keep them together.

Yes.

But most of them, they were just waiting to come back. By April of '48, they could send applications to return. And there were certain addresses to send them to. But the government was not acting on any applications. Now later, they came back. A lot of them. Some of them—a great many of them worked for the Occupation Army. And the Occupation Army was of course mostly Americans, but it also had some Australians. Because one of the boys worked for an Australian called the Commonwealth Occupational Army.

Well what happened to him? Did he go to Australia?

No.

Those Australian friends or?

No, he came back to Canada. But he said it wasn't too bad working for him. But he had to learn new English terms.

Yes.

Because they had a lot of different slang terms –

Yes.

– than we do. And he had to learn those. They were building almost communities for repatriates. Some place where all these people had landed on the shore to live. And the Australian group was building these houses for that. So one of the boys’ fathers was working in that. The ones that worked for the Occupation had it much easier than those who were out in the rural areas. Because the Occupation was an American—largely American. They had plenty of food. They built, had, used hotels and dormitories for the students, for the people who were working for them. They could get a lot more things than people who were not working for the Occupation. Also they could get paid in American Dollars. And your only passageway back had to be in American Dollars. It was very difficult to convert Yen to American Dollars.

Yes.

So, I do not know—most of the youngsters came back. Not all of them, but most of them did. There was—now those who didn't go to Japan, by the time the second boat went, everybody was out of the camp. At the time of the first boat, in June, we had one family who had a sixteen year old boy who was the oldest boy in the family, and he couldn't sign. And his family all went and he stayed on in the empty house, by himself. And he usually'd get one of the boys to come and sleep with him at night. And he said he had padlocks on both doors because it had been a fairly large family of about ten or twelve youngsters. And he was the only one who didn't go. And when he did finally leave to go to Winnipeg, the Commission would not allow him to go up to see his uncle who was in Vernon. Was the only relative he had in this country. But they wouldn't give him a permit to travel to Vernon on his way of going to Winnipeg. And it just seemed like cruelty that was completely unnecessary. That had no purpose. The young people who went east, a lot of them went to sugar beets in Alberta.

Yes.

Taber. Lethbridge. Raymond. Picture Butte. Diamond City. Probably more. The story that's told in Obasan I heard a number of times. The same—you know the details would be different, but very much the same story. We would get people who said, “Yes we'll take a family of so many and we have a house for them,” etcetera. And when they'd get there, they'd find the house was an unlined summer cottage, or almost a shed. It wasn't a house as we think of a house. And everybody had to work, all of the children, everybody had to work out on the beets. It was an extremely difficult position. And often the accommodation wasn't what was said when the farm applying for the family put out what it was providing. The accommodation wasn't what was said when it came to it.

And yet now when you think of the position of the Japanese in Lethbridge, you know those Japanese tea gardens that are so beautiful, and on the council in Lethbridge I think there were a number of Japanese and I believe a mayor who was a Japanese mayor of Lethbridge at one time.

That's quite possible. I think that people felt that they just had to make the best of it, and they did.

And they progressed from the stoup labour in the beet fields to superior positions, still connected with the agriculture of the area. And probably got into the different processings of the beets after they were picked.

I think so.

Because there's fertilizer, there's feed, there's pellets, there's all sorts of stuff made from sugar beets.

Yeah. Youngsters still got to school when they could and in that case most of them got to school most of the time.

Yes.

In some cases, youngsters didn't get to school. Or found it very difficult. But I think on the sugar beets, except during certain times of the year, the youngsters got school. And that's part of the base of it, you got an education and you go on from there.

Yes.

A lot of them—we were able to get, no. Single people could go east. They gave single people a permit to go east for work.

Yes.

They wouldn't give a permit to a head of a household to go and look for work for his family. The whole family had to go at once. So that it was more the single people and the young people got out and got east at the beginning. There were some families that were able to get places for families, in Ontario largely. And for some of them it was in Hamilton. There was one man in particular and I can't remember his name now, who did a lot of placing of men in the steel mills. I think it was the steel mills. And families got down on that. And he found them places to live and jobs. And that helped a lot of families out, to get out of Tashme. Others, as long as you had a sponsor—so girls said you had to have someone who sponsored you to get down, you went down to Ontario. And they took all sorts of jobs.

And the United Church and other churches would find people among their congregations who would sponsor a Japanese, was it done that way?

They would get people who would find a place for them to work. I suppose it is, in a way. They would—we phoned or sent telegrams to groups, churches, and people we knew. Who would find a job and a house. Or some living accommodation for a family or single person, and then that person could go.

Yes.

But we had to have the addresses before they left. Of where they were going. And a great deal of it was done through churches. The churches were a great help—church people—in getting places for families and youngsters.

Yes. And these students from Tashme, once they'd gone to the east, you kept up with them?

Oh yes. With quite a number of them. A lot of them went – to start with, as houseboy and house girl jobs, you know, where they looked after, worked in a house. And some of them went to school at night. Sometimes they were able to go to school in the daytime and did work before and after school, this sort of thing.

Yes. But you corresponded with them and you heard from them and?

Oh yes. And I was down in Toronto a year after the camp was closed. Because I was down at the United Church training school. And so I kept in touch with most of them at that time. I kept in touch with most of the students for the first few years via a sort of mimeograph letter. Which—

Yes.

—basically also had all the addresses of people. Because one of the things was to get “Where is so and so, and what is he doing?” And so on the back of my own letter, I would put all the news of everybody and all the addresses, changes, that I had.

Yes

So that it in a sense was a round-Robin letter to the youngsters.

Well have you got copies of those letters still?

Yes. Some of them.

Because that is part of Canadian history, actually. Isn't it?

I suppose.

That is archival stuff.

Yes I found two or three copies, last night, when I was looking through my things. And I had had a whole envelope of addresses, and changes of addresses. That I had—

Well there were still people in the camp at Tashme 'til what date? Was there a definite date in which—

As far as I know—

—Tashme was closed down?

Yes, I would say when the second boat went on the first of August, there was nobody left in the camp. That the people who went on the last boat to Japan were the last people in the camp. In between time, all those who hadn't gone on the first boat or hadn't got east on their own, were sent across country to different camps. There was one in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, where families went. Transcona, near Winnipeg, was an old air force base and people were put up in the old air force barracks there. There still were air force men on the base, but they were housed there. And Neys, Ontario, in Neys it was a World War One prisoner-of-war camp, up near Schreiber.

And yet this is long after the war is over.

Yes. But that's where they sent them. A place of sand and the coldest spot in Ontario, just about. And the other one was in Farnham, outside of Montreal. And they sent—one of these would be families where they hadn't yet been able to place them. And then they were placed from there into somewhere in the area around there, around the camp they were in. I would think, I was trying to think when the letter was written, I would think by the following year people were pretty well out of those camps and settled somewhere in Canada. But the people in Moose Jaw would settle somewhere in the Moose Jaw area, and the same with the others, they would be in the province they were in the camp.

Yes.

Pretty well.

And you kept up with the students who went to Japan and those who went east of the Rockies? Did you correspond with them?

I correspond with a great many of them. I couldn't do it—I did it by carbon copy letters. And sometimes my a mimeograph letter. That would have all the addresses on the back of it and all the news I could find of the youngsters. I would put it all on one sheet because somebody would tell me about one person, what they were doing, and somebody else would tell me about someone else. And in this way, they learned what the other students were doing. Because they very much felt lost that they didn't have their friends near them, and at least this gave them news of each other and where they were. Their addresses.

Yes.

So they could keep in touch.

Yes.

I kept in touch with most of the students who went to Japan. Actually many of them until they came back to this country. And after they were in this country for a while, they didn't need that as much. I've still kept in touch with some, I write to three of them who've been in Japan. I still do write to them, every year. And I've written to a number who are back east, in Canada.

Some of them went to farms in Ontario—families went to farms. Some of them they found it very difficult because the work was very heavy and long. And one boy who said that he was working on a dairy farm with 73 cows, which he was responsible for the feeding and the cleaning. He was working a twelve hour day, seven days a week. On the Sunday he had all the milking to do and all the cleaning and feeding for the 73 milk cows, to do. And his family was isolated in that there was no other Japanese family anywhere near. They were six miles to the nearest town. And the family got very discouraged by the, just the loneliness and the fact that he was working from 6:30 in the morning until 7:30 at night every day. And it was a mile to walk to the barn. And he had to come back home for his meals. They later were—you had to get a permit to leave a position, too. You couldn't just decide that you were going to leave, and go somewhere else. You had to get the permission of the government before you could move to another place. But I think they got a permit and moved. One was in Greenhouses and he was near a town, and the boy could go back to school, because he was a good student but he just simply couldn't. He tried to do his work by correspondence, from Victoria, because he was in an area of Ontario that they don't provide correspondence courses to. Ontario. So he did them from Victoria. But he found he just was so tired at night that he couldn't get the studying done. So when he moved to St. Catharine's, and I would think it was close to a year later, he got his schooling, his high school, as well as the work. But kids were treated, in some places they were treated extremely well, and people were very helpful, and I think this was probably the majority of cases. But in some cases they were labour, cheap labour, and were exploited in that sense.

Yes.

But on the whole, I think they were well treated before caring about them.

Well, are there many of the teachers from Tashme who are still alive?

Well.

You were in your twenties—

There are only three of us.

—when you went?

Yes. There were, in the school, the first teacher came in was May MacLachlan. And as she told me, when I saw her recently, they wouldn't have been able to start the school had it not been for Jack Saunders, who worked for the Commission as their social worker. And Jack Saunders was a man who made it possible, he persuaded the Commission that they had to listen, they had to consider their requests by Reverend McWilliams. That the church put in a high school. She said, “I don't think we'd have had the school had it not been for Jack.” So May MacLachlan was born in Manitoba in Pipestone. Got her teaching certificate and taught school in Manitoba for a few years, then went to train to work for the church and went to Japan. And she was in Japan, I think eighteen years, before she came to Tashme. She was one of the few missionaries who stayed after Pearl Harbour in Japan because she felt that she should.

And she said she loved the Japanese people and she felt that this was where she should be. So she came back on the first Gripsholm. Now the Gripsholm was, I think a Swedish boat. It was a boat that took the people who had been caught in Japan by the war, the nationals of Canada and the United States, who'd been caught in the war in Japan. It took them across, out of Japan, and it brought people—Japanese nationals— who’d then been caught in Canada and the States by the war, and brought them back to Japan. Now it wasn't a straight going from one shore to another. May was put onto a Japanese boat and it went all down the coast of Asia, round to Africa, and they changed ships in, oh that island off, I was going to say Madagascar. Somewhere way down there. And they changed from a Japanese ship to a Swedish ship. And she said they changed—they were just taken by boat from one ship to the other. And they were taken from the Japanese boat onto the Gripsholm, and the people going back to Japan were taken off the, she went on to the Gripsholm and the people from the States were going back on to the Japanese boat to be taken up to Japan. And this boat went several times. She was on the first Gripsholm, and she got back to Canada about September of '42. She was going to go to, decided that she would go down to New York for studying. Or somewhere on the eastern states to university and take a years course. And she got down to Toronto and Mr. McWilliams had got permission to have a school at Tashme, or a high school, because the government wasn't providing high school. And asked May to come. And she was delighted to come and do it. So she was the first teacher at the school. She and Jack Saunders worked from February until June with the grade 10s and 11s—10, 11, and 12s. And somewhere I saw—

Of 1942?

'42, yes. '43.

'43?

There was no school of any description.

For the first year—

For the first, yes.

Because the evacuation, they were told to evacuate in February '42.

Yes.

Weren't they? Pearl Harbour was December 7th, 1941. The evacuation order was for February '42.

'42.

And then no school—

No school—

—until February—

Until—there was no public school, no public school even until February or April of '43.

Yes.

The high school started almost before the public school. And they started in February of '43. And I gather that the three grades, the three grades, they—when Miss Mac went in and spoke to the youngsters, then Jack Saunders had got a few of the older youngsters that he knew would be interested in school. And she said they were very distrusting of her. They just didn't feel that—they were afraid to trust her I presume—but they didn't feel it, didn't know just what to make of it. She having been interned herself, in Japan, was able to meet their feeling and tell them, let them know that she knew why they felt that way and how they felt. So they did—the school had about seven—

It was a very good human situation, wasn't it? To have a teacher who had been interned?

Yes.

Now teaching interned in another country.

I think it made a lot of difference. It made a—

It was a wonderful human bridge.

Yes. It meant that the trust was built. And I gather that—

That is a little bit of the story that really should be kept.

Yes. Only it should be in May's words.

Yes.

She told it extremely well. They had, they said about 79 I think in that first term. The grade 11s and 12s went to school all through the summer. And they wrote exams. They wrote the exams for the correspondence courses in August of '43. And she, in the school annual, it said that 75 out of the 79 that wrote them got through.

That's a good record, isn't it. My goodness.

Yes. Pauses.

And you had some Japanese teachers at Tashme at some time?

Yes, and I have their names; I can find them.

Nine—

I can give you the names, too. I have them here. Because I found—I knew there would be something in here on that. And so I have their names and what they did.

Well give me the names, only would you mind spelling the surname?

Alright.

I think that would be—

That's of the Japanese ones.

Of the Japanese teachers who were at Tashme.

Now, is it?

Yes it's going.

Oh.

And—

Well, Ernie Best, I think has been mentioned earlier, he came from Ontario and he taught with May second year.

Yes.

But the following year, Katherine Greenbank, who was also a missionary in Japan and had taught a girls school and been principal of a girls school, for about twenty years in Japan. She came and became principal of the school. And she spoke Japanese as the Japanese did. When she spoke, I remember hearing almost a whisper go through a group of parents and children, “She speaks like Japaneses.” Because she had her accent exactly—

Yes.

She was very confident in Japanese. She did the—she came on the second Gripsholm, or the last Gripsholm, that came over. Which returned people in '43. That year I went up and taught with her, and that made four of us teaching because Ernie was still there. I had a background, degree in agriculture, but no teaching experience. And that year, Ernie decided to go back to school and finish his schooling, he could now get into college again. Which he did. In September the 1st of '45, he was married to the daughter of the minister in the A building, which served as a church. Which was a sheep barn. Ruth laughs. So his wedding took place in Tashme.

Yes.

Before school started that year. We had a young man called Jim Williams who came up and took Ernie's place. And he taught the french and some of the math. He didn't teach the science because I taught the science. I spoke to him this morning and I said, “Did you have french in university?” He said no he had majored in chemistry and physics, and had taken some philosophy and psychology as other courses, but he only had his high school french. So he had spent most of the summer getting up his french.

You spoke to him this morning in February 1985?

Yes. He's in Victoria.

He is still alive? Yeah, in Victoria?

Yes, he's in Victoria. So, because I wanted to know if he was there the day the letters were signed, because the letters were sent out of Mac's letters. But he couldn't remember it as well as I did. I wasn't—I knew I wasn't there. So those are the teachers who taught in the school. Mr. McWilliams also taught Latin, whilst being the minister. He taught some of the Latin to the few students who wanted Latin.

Yes.

May and he taught the Latin. But we had home-economics provided by three people in three Japanese women.

Now it's their surnames if you would spell them.

Well, we have—

Marie Kowa—

No, Marie Kawamoto is in the commercial. In the home-economics you have Yuki Arai, A-R-A-I.

Yes.

And she worked with Mrs. Sakamoto. S-A-K-A-M-O-T-O. They taught the cooking. Miss Kojima, K-O-J-I-M-A, taught the sewing. And together, they did the home-economics. Now Yuki Arai was already teaching in the public school, and so was Mrs. Sakamoto. They were teachers in there, so that I think the home-ec was held on Fridays, on our day off. Because they were teaching in the regular school. Now we had a fair number of youngsters taking commercial—shorthand and typing. And in that case, I don't know who headed it up, but Marie Kawamoto, K-A-W-A-M-O-T-O, she taught in the elementary school but she taught the shorthand and typing, was in the commercial. Kei Machida, M-A-C-H-I-D-A, was another one. Chisa Oye, last name is O-Y-E, she worked in the post office. But she taught commercial. And Omi Yano, Y-A-N-O, taught the bookkeeping. She worked in the Commission office, in the daytime. And Mrs. Inouye, I-N-O-U-Y-E, she was the, had been the principal of the elementary school, and she taught the shorthand. Mrs. Uyeda, who had been, became principal after Mrs. Inouye, her name's U-Y-E-D-A, she taught art. She was also a grade six teacher in elementary school but she also taught art to the high school, grade 9s. And they were all volunteer teachers. And a very real help, as the youngsters who went back to Japan found that their commercial was a real asset to them, to be able to type and take shorthand.

Yes, I expect it would be.

They went in as typists and clerks and interpreters. Because they had both English and Japanese, some Japanese. But most of them worked for the occupation, and their typing was of great help. Those who didn't have it soon went to school in Japan and got it. Because they needed it.

Well I think that what you have given me today added to the two tapes done early in 1984, have really given a very good firsthand account of an important piece, though rather an unhappy piece, of Canadian history.

It's true, yes, it is. I'll tell you one thing, it also brought up to us—I'd always known that education was provincial, and I always felt it should be federal. But what very much brought this to our attention was when the youngsters scattered across Canada. Because if you went to Alberta, you found you had already done the chemistry but you hadn't done the physics, or something like that. Every province was different. And the letters would say, “We're ahead in science, I'm about the same in math, the history is entirely different, and the grade 10 literature in Ontario was the same as what the grade 9 literature was in in BC.” But every youngster, it was different, some courses fitted some courses didn't, when they moved schools. And Ontario required two languages, for high school. Whereas BC has never required two foreign languages. So those who wanted their high school matriculation had to get another language up. Yep, perhaps three or four years of a language, in order to graduate when they got to Ontario. So to me it was, it still is that I feel it should be some basic similarity in courses across country so that people can change.

Well in a country where there's such a mobile population, and the big organizations transfer their personnel so often, it must make a difference to the children.

I'm sure it's affected a lot of people in different occupations, and people in the armed services undoubtedly found it when they moved families.

Well RCMP, the different banks.

Yes.

The bigger department stores.

Yes. But it was brought up to me when we got letters back saying where they were in the courses, you know, and how it went.

Well, I think we're coming to the end of our tape, and it just remains for me to say thank you very much for having given so much of your time, and thought, to getting this done in a permanent form.

Would you like to have, for the end of it, it's a hymn actually to the tune of Finlandia, that probably is—although it's not the school song—it's probably the, one of the things that kept the kids together. I don't know—it's called,

We will be building

temple still undone

O'er crumbling walls their crosses scarcely lift,

Waiting till love can raise the broken stone,

And hearts created bridge the human rift.

We would be building; Master, let thy plan

Reveal the life that God would give to man

Teach us to build; upon the solid rock

We set the dream that hardens into deed,

Ribbed with the steel that time and change doth mock,

The unfailing purpose of our noblest creed.

Teach us to build; O Master, lend us sight

To see the towers gleaming in the light.

O keep us building, Master; may our hands

Ne'er falter when the dream is in our hearts,

When to our ears there come divine commands/ And all the pride of sinful will departs,

We build with thee, O grant enduring worth

Until the heavenly kingdom comes on earth.

Thank you very much indeed, that makes a very nice ending.

The words are by Purd E. Deitz.

Deets?

D-E-I-T-Z.

D-E-I-T-Z. Yes.

Thank you.

Well thank you very much.

It is a privilege to me.