Florence Bell, interviewed by Carolyn Nakagawa, 10 April 2018

This is Carolyn Nakagawa. I'm sitting here with Florence Bell. We're in Cumberland, B.C., and we're here to record Florence's oral history for the Landscapes of Injustice project. It's April, 10, 2018 today. So, Florence, can I start off just by asking you to share some of your memories growing up in Minto, near here and Cumberland?

Well, we moved—I was born in the middle of the country, in Manitoba. We moved here to the coast, and we moved right to this area—to the Minto area. I was four years old. And we came in October, and that was in 1934. And since I've grown up and been reading books and whatever, I found out that the 1934-35 winter was one of the worst they'd had here on the coast. And I can remember seeing the deep, deep snow, for one thing, and all the problems that caused. I've read about it and heard about it since. But it was a really bad winter. But we were nice and warm, because we stayed in—we had to stay in. I have a brother and sister, and we all got measles. Laughs. So we were housebound. We didn't get to go out and play in the snow. Laughs.

And can you tell me about the school you went to?

Well, when I was six—my birthday's in August—so in September, when I was six in 1936, I started at Minto school. And by that time we had moved to a house right beside the school, so that was easy. We went home for lunch each day because we were beside the school. We were kind of peeved at times about that because all the other kids took their lunch, and it was a time we could have played with them and talked with them and that, but we had to go home and eat. Laughs. But sometimes we asked mother if we could take our lunch to school just so we could spend more time with the kids at playtime. Laughs. But other than that . . . It was a brand new room they had built onto the school. So I started in that brand new room, and was in Minto school for the eight years: from grade one to eight. And when I finished grade eight, it was war time. Even the teachers had joined up. And they closed the school. So, not that my children believed it when I was married and had children, but I told them they built the new room for me, and they closed it when I left.

Laughs. That's pretty special.

Laughs. Yes, but they didn't believe me.

Laughs. Who were your classmates at the school?

Well, over half the class, about two-thirds of the whole school, from that time, was Japanese children. Simply because they had a mill about a mile from the school, that was where the mill was, and all those children came to the school.

And did you play with the Japanese children as well as the non-Japanese children?

Oh, certainly. Yes. Well, they were part of the class, they were part of our friends.

Was there any distinction between the two groups, or?

Well, sometimes they'd get teased by some of the kids and that. But there wasn't—overall, the kids were really good. Both, the white and the Japanese, they got along. There was no great distinction with the children, except Laughs. when it came to art classes, the Japanese excelled. And sometimes there was some comments made by some of the kids, “Well how come they could draw so well,” or whatever. But they were all very good artists.

Can you tell me what a typical day for you would have been like going to Minto school?

Well, to begin with we lined up at the bottom of the stairs. When the bell rang we all lined at the bottom of the stairs and had to march up the stairs into our classrooms. And we always had to sing, well we sang O Canada, and I'm not sure if we sang it everyday or only on Monday's. I don't remember doing the Lord's Prayer at school. I think we did have prayers of some kind at times, but I don't remember it as a daily thing in school. But certainly O Canada. And one of the boys had to put the flag up the pole every morning. But then there was just the regular classwork, mainly arithmetic and . . . One thing we had, though, for learning to count, there was about the size of toothpicks—we had coloured sticks. And the teacher would give us so many on our desk, and then we had to figure them out by counting one stick at a time, and the different colours for adding and subtracting and so on. I don't think they do that now in the schools. But that was one thing we had to do, Laughs. which was quite interesting. Every year we had to learn songs, of course. And every year we entered, the school was entered, to the Music Festival in Nanaimo. That was, you know, everyone, the Japanese children as well as the rest of us. And we'd go down. It was a competition with other schools of the island. So it was kind of a fun thing, because we got to leave our own environs and spend a day in Nanaimo, which was kind of neat when you're a kid and don't get away from home. Of course, this was the day before everybody had a car to go anywhere, so it was always—we only visited each other by foot—and it was kind of neat to have the day off like that, especially to the big city. Laughs. But I don't know. We'd play ball, a lot. But any of the games we played was with all the children. We never segregated. We never even considered that. It was just the normal thing to do. And of course the boys, and especially the Japanese boys, they were always good ball players—all of them. There were a lot of the white kids who were pretty good at playing ball, too. We joined in, and I don't know, it was usual that the girls played with the boys. We didn't have really separate things. We all played marbles together. And any of the races or whatever we were playing in the yard—and they weren't structured games. Like we just, at recess time or lunch hour or that. It was just whatever you wanted to play.

Did you have any particular friends among Japanese Canadians?

Yes. May, for one. I kept in touch with her too after relocation. And Mitsuo, and Satakazu of course. The one Japanese family didn't live at the mill, they lived on Minto Road because they came later and there was no houses left at the mill. So they lived not far from us, I don't know, it was over half a mile I could think. The thing with the Japanese children, though, they couldn't play after school because they had their Japanese language classes. And they had to attend their school for, I think it was two and a half hours? After they'd been in school all day. And also half a day on Saturdays. So, in all reality, we didn't have that much time to play with them other than at school. And I think they had classes during the summer, too. Or part of the summer, anyway.

So, last night you took me to the former Royston, or Minto Mill site.

The Royston.

The Royston Mill site.

The Royston Lumber Company, yes.

Right. And you said that you used to have performances in the Buddhist hall.

Yes, there was one year, before they put the new room on the school. The Buddhist Church Hall at the Royston Lumber Mill had been used for the higher grades of Minto school. And so they, all the white children, went to the mill and they were still taking classes, and the Japanese children that were in those higher classes, too. But the younger ones still went to Minto school because there was so many children, there was three rooms for grades one to eight. Grade one and two in the new room, when it was built. And three, four, and five in the next room. And six, seven, and eight in the third room. And with the amount of Japanese children at the mill, and when production picked up, there was more workers of course and more families then, so there was too many children for the two rooms, they had to build a new room on. And the one year while they were building the new room, the older children used the Buddhist Church Hall for their classes. And the teacher went with them over there for their classes each day. But when I started, the new room opened. All the kids, from grade one to eight, were at the Minto school, and it was at least two-thirds Japanese children for the whole school. And the new room, when the lumber came from the Japanese mill for that, but the Japanese mill community itself, they paid for the dishes, because the new room had a lunch room under it. And the Japanese had provided all the dishes for the lunch room. And the mill had sold them the lumber, of course. That was a building contract. But the dishes were supplied by the mill community.

I don't know, there was—Oh. Also, there was a traveling salesman had come around selling the Encyclopedia Britannica. And if so many families bought a set of that—and they were expensive too—and if so many families in the community bought a set, then a free set was donated to the school. And I know it was a thing that quite a few Japanese families had bought the Encyclopedia Britannica sets too, so that it would get the number, and the school got their free set of Encyclopedia Britannica's. And I don't know Laughs., of course being in the younger grades I don't think I used the Encyclopedias that much, then. Laughs. But it was something that the Japanese community, they supported the school, and the whole community. And then at Christmas time, we were taken over to the mill for our, to the Buddhist Church Hall, for the Christmas concert. We all practiced at the school, but for the concert, because all the parents were invited, we used the Buddhist Church Hall. And the mill provided transportation for the people that didn't have vehicles, which most people didn't. They'd clean out one of their sawdust trucks and put a couple of benches in it, and come around and pick up the parents and the kids for the concert.

And what was it like performing in the Buddhist Hall for the concert?

Oh, that was really neat because they had a stage. Laughs. The Buddhist minister, I think it was the Reverend Asaka at that time, and he didn't live in—there was a little side building attached to the hall, and it was where he kept his vestments, and papers, and whatever. But he lived at the mill in a separate house, not the one joined onto the hall. But we were allowed to use that room to change costumes if we were doing a play that required a change of costumes, and so on. It was neat because there was—In the church hall, they had the Buddhist shrine and it was closed off, like the people in the hall didn't see that because it was closed off with a big velvet curtain. A heavy, black velvet curtain. But it had in the minister's room at the side, you could get onto the stage. It had a hallway, I guess you could call it, around the back of the shrine. And you could come in from both sides onto the stage to perform whatever you were performing. Laughs. And we had, I don't know, it was sort of like we were in Hollywood Laughs. because we had this big stage to perform on. Laughs. And we really enjoyed that, we thought we were big time. For a little country school, we hit the big time.

And the last concert we had there was the 1941, December of 1941, and there was, I think six? Six or eight Japanese girls, some of the older girls in school, and they did a dance in their kimonos. And I remember watching the mothers, of those girls, came to help them get into their kimonos, and the obi that they put on them. And the one mother, I thought she was going to strangle her poor daughter, because she pulled the obi so tight, and then put a pin through it, and she had her knee on her back practically, and then cinched that obi up tighter, and put the pin in again, and I thought for sure that poor girl wouldn't be able to breathe. Pauses. And anyway, that was how we did our concerts until the Japanese left and then we had to use the school room again, which of course was small and cramped. We lost our Hollywood status. But, I don't know, other than that it was just school days, you know, ordinary school days. Playing, and whatever.

Were there other times when you would come to places on the Royston Mill site?

Oh, yes. They had a little convenience store, I guess you’d call it. It was the office, it was the office. And a little part of it was a little bit of a store. It wasn't like a store in town, because it had all sorts of things. in it It was just a real convenience store. There were times when we had to go there, mother would tell us or we'd have a note and the money to take, and we'd go over to the store to get certain things. But mainly they stocked school supplies, because, we weren't in town. We were at least three miles from Cumberland. And no one had cars in those days. So they had this convenience store, and we could get our scribblers, and pencils, pens, erasers. As for foodstuffs, like butter and eggs, usually. Oh, chocolate bars. Always chocolate bars. And that was when they were five cents for a chocolate bar. And bigger, I think, than the chocolate bars you get now, too. But they always had chocolate bars. And the one time, they got a shipment of chocolate bars in that had come from a warehouse in Vancouver, and they said that there had been a fire in the warehouse. And the boxes still smelled of smoke when they got them at the store, so they put those chocolate bars on at half price. They didn't charge a full price for them. And I remember, they were the Cadbury’s Almond Chocolate Bars. Laughs. So we could get two chocolate bars for a nickel.

But, it was always nice to go over to the store, because in order to get to the store there was two houses that lived off off the mill site, just across the road. And the one was the Iwasa’s, and Mitsuo had a pet monkey. Not monkey, a squirrel. Laughs. He'd caught a squirrel and he had it in a cage, and we'd always stopped and have a visit with Mitsuo and the squirrel on the way over to the store. But also at that store, there was a neighbour across the road from the mill, They had a farm. They had a couple of cows, and they made butter. And they'd take it over to the store, make it, pound shapes, and sell it to the people in the mill there, the Japanese families. And they got eggs from one of the neighbours there, somewhere too, so they always had fresh produce of that kind when they couldn't get to town. And I don't know what else. For all that the Japanese families lived right at the mill, all around the machinery, the trucks coming and going, and so on. We couldn't play there. We couldn't play with the children there because it was too dangerous. Pauses. I don't know. We certainly knew all about the mill, but like I say, we couldn't really wander around there at that time. Not when the Japanese had the mill running. And that mill, we were told, it was the only mill on Vancouver Island that made finished lumber. There was a lot of sawmills—well the whole of the island pretty well is logging, and fishermen I guess, too, but logging and mills, sawmills—but the Japanese mill was the only one that made finished lumber. They didn't just send the green lumber to the big mill in Vancouver for finishing. They made window and door frames, and mouldings for the houses. They had the planer shed and the drying kiln. So they made good, finished lumber products there. But they did ship a lot of lumber out. A lot of it went to Japan. They had ships come in to Royston—the mill had built its own wharf at Royston—and ships came in and took the lumber from there. And I don't know where else they sent the lumber too, other than the raw lumber, but it would certainly go to Vancouver to be finished. And a lot of it did go to Japan.

Do you remember who owned the convenience store?

Well, the Japanese. It was owned by the mill people. Mr. Nishimura worked in the office, and Mr. Fred Kato did, too. There were two Kato families, George Kato and Fred Kato. But it was Fred Kato that worked in the office, too. Mr. Nishimura, he had a really good camera. And he had taken a lot of pictures of the mill, and people, and so on. Pauses. But I don't know, we didn't really know that many of the parents at that time. Mainly the kids. Except for the Sato family, that lived on Minto Road, that never did live at the mill. They arrived later, when the mill was already in production and there was no empty houses at the mill site. So they lived in a house on Minto Road. And that's mainly how we got to be more friends with them. But we certainly knew all the other families, too.

Would you often visit your friends at each other's houses?

Not so much at the houses, because they were—like the only free time any of them had really was on the Sunday, I guess. And then our family, we had to go to our church, too, on the Sunday. When we were young.

So you would mainly play together at school?

Yes. Usually it was just at school time.

Do you remember if your parents had interactions with Japanese Canadians, or was it mainly the kids that would play together?

Well, mainly us kids. But in the summertime, mother had a couple of the Sato girls, they came, she was teaching them canning for one thing, preserving. Doing some, like baking. Because all the mother's stayed home and made their own meals and baking and everything, Japanese or Canadian. It may have been different foodstuffs, but mother's stayed home and looked after the family.

And your mom taught the Sato girls how to preserve?

Yes, it was mainly—because I remember the pickled carrots. Loved them. And she was teaching the Sato girls how to preserve. And I don't know whether she taught them any other baking. Possibly.

So they would make their own pickles, like Japanese food things, and she taught them how to can them?

No, no. Not the Japanese foods. No. It was what we grew, white people, what packages, grew, ate, and pickled and so on.

Oh, like jam and things like that?

Yes.

Oh. And you'd make pickles, too?

Pardon?

So pickled carrots was part of what you also had?

Oh yes, yes. I loved pickled carrots. Carolyn laughs. There was a lady, Mrs. McQue, her husband was the steam engineer for the mill, running the motors that cut the logs, the saws. And she did a class teaching the Japanese ladies, I think they call it Fujinkai?

Yep, the Wives Association.

Yes. Mrs. McQue was teaching them how to make English/Canadian type pies, and cakes. And I remember May telling me that when her mother made a pie she said it was so hard they Laughs. were using it like a puck, Both laugh. kicking it around the yard. Both laughing. So, I don't know that, that isn't, that wasn't necessarily because you were Japanese that it turned out like that, because quite often baking didn't turn out like it was supposed to, no matter who was making it. But I don't know, Mrs. Sato, she used to make, and I don't know what it's called, but it was like a jelly and it was sort of a yellowy-golden colour. Dark. I don't know whether it's bean curd they make it out of. It's a Japanese dish. And if we visited their house, she'd always give us a little square of it. It was quite a solid jelly, but oh, is that every nice. Really liked that. Carolyn laughs. I never did really find out what it was called.

Was it sweet?

Sweety, salty taste. But it was really solid jelly. Sort of a golden, golden-brown something. I don't know. It wasn't dark, but it wasn't really light either. But it sure was nice.

I want to ask you about when the Japanese Canadians had to leave Minto.

Oh.

Do you have memories of—

Yeah. Well, for one thing, they were, Voice a little emotional. they came to school for a short period of time after the Pacific War started. But then they had complete, not isolation, but they were confined to stay at their houses. Like, the kids couldn't come to school. But in a way, I didn't understand why they had to leave. Voice becomes emotional. Because I knew the war was on, I was old enough to understand that. But it was always in Europe, it had nothing to do with us or the Japanese. Pauses. But, anyway, they left, they had to leave. I don't know what, it was early in the morning when they were told to leave. A truck took them. All the families were rounded up and they were taken down to Union Bay to the Calderies Wharf there, well there was a government wharf at Union Bay, too, beside the Calderies Wharf, but they were taken down there and put on the boat, and that was early in the morning. And that boat didn't leave until almost five o'clock in the afternoon, because they were still bringing people from up island and all to the boat, and they were all taken to Vancouver. I don't know whether we wrote to any of them in, when they were in Vancouver, but certainly when they got placed into the camps, into the towns, in the old, abandoned towns up in the interior of BC. We wrote to them all the time. There was several families we kept in touch with.

Were you able to say goodbye to any of your friends before they left?

Well not really, not a proper goodbye at all. I know my parents went over to the mill to see them leave.

And did you go to see them leave as well?

Well. I don't remember going there, too, but the one family, they sent me word, I have a book from them, and they said we had gone, that us kids had gone too. But I don't really remember that, having gone there.

So, later you heard about the truck and the boat that didn't leave the harbour?

Yeah, well my parents went and they told us that they were gone. Like, they went to see them go.

Do you remember if they shared with you how they were feeling, or could you tell how they were feeling about what was happening?

Well, I don't remember we talking about it, really. But. . . Pauses.

Did they share what they thought about what was happening? Did they have opinions that they talked about?

Not really. Like, they knew they had to go, and that was that.

It wasn't something that they criticized or tried to explain to you in any way?

Well, they sort of criticized at times, but they couldn't do anything about it. They knew they couldn't. Which was, you know, they were, it was just something that they were told they had to do. And the police were the authorities, and they came, and they were in uniform. So they knew that they couldn't do anything about it.

I just paused it, so if you'd rather, we can just go somewhere else. Change the subject.

Well, after the Japanese were sent out, there was piles of lumber still there. And I'm not sure exactly how long it took to dismantle it all, but there was still some logs still there. So they hired a couple of men, and the logs were run through the saws and made into lumber and shipped to. But the incinerator was still running, of course. Well when the Japanese had the mill, well running the mill and still living there, for one thing, for all that they made the lumber—and they made finished lumber—but they had the saw dust from the cutting, and the slab wood, what they called slab wood is when they cut the bark and that off the logs, because you make the logs square, of course a tree does not grow square, it grows round, and they cut the, they square the logs. So that’s what is slab wood. And Mr. Sato was the one that when the mill was running, he had the job of getting those big pieces of bark and log, and he had to cut it into firewood length, and they sold that as well as the lumber they were selling. They were selling firewood, because we bought it, too, for our house. All the slab wood.

But they had, they also saved the sawdust, the good sawdust. It went into big bins, there. And they sold saw dust because a lot of people had sawdust burners—stoves—too. And saw dust was sometimes used sometimes for making compost and whatever. From the rest of the stuff, sawdust and other junk wood and that that couldn't be used for sale, it went into an incinerator. And even after, I don't know it was a year later I think, that incinerator was still burning. There was so much sawdust that had gone into it, and when the fire gets into that, it just keeps smoldering away. And the one time, my brother and I, we crawled up in the shoot that would take the saw dust and that up to the incinerator, we crawled up that and looked over the edge of it, into the incinerator, and could see the fire still burning down there. Until our father caught us up there. Laughs. We got down in a hurry. Both laugh. But when my father was night watching there, he called us the one day to come up from the house. He said, “Bring shovels and a bucket, and get up here as fast as you can.” The fire had gone under the wall, the metal wall of the incinerator. Because some of the sawdust had blown when it was up in the air, like in the shoot going to the incinerator, and it would blow over. And it was on the outside—it had blown on the outside of the incinerator, too. And the fire had gone through the, underneath the walls of the incinerator, and the incinerator was burning on the outside. And there was bush, there was the trees all behind the incinerator. So we had to get the fire out. We did. We had to dig a trench all around the bottom of the incinerator and then pour buckets of water into the trench, and hoping that it had got all the places where there was sawdust, where it was going, where the fire could catch. We got the fire out, anyway. Laughs.

At that time, did you and your family think that they Japanese Canadians were going to come back and start running the mill again?

Yes. We figured they would, but then just at the end of the war, I guess it didn't really get dismantled until the end. But I'm not sure that it was even the end of the war in the Pacific. When it was victory in Europe, and I think that was when they started selling off the Japanese stuff.

Do you remember being aware of that happening at the time?

Not really. I was fifteen when the war ended, so I should have been. . . But I don't know. . . It was never really discussed with us, I guess, what the outcome would be.

What other changes did you notice in your community when the Japanese Canadians left?

Oh, it caused a big change because a lot of the people associated working at the mill—there was quite a few white people who worked at the mill, and of course their jobs were lost, and some of those families moved away. Certainly we had moved over from beside the Minto School, we'd moved over to the Royston Road, just opposite the mill. Because the house that the steam engineer fella lived in, him and his family they had moved away because he had to find new work. My father was training as an electrician and got his certificate and all that as an electrician, so he didn't have to move. Like he had a lot of local work anyway, so it didn't affect him the same. But there was a lot of the white children, too, who had gone from the school eventually because the father's had to go and find work elsewhere. There were some parents of the children at the school who were working the mines, so they were still there. There just wasn't the population around anymore. It completely changed the whole area.

What happened to the houses that the Japanese Canadians lived in?

They were mostly pulled down. I'm not sure if people just got it as scrap lumber or what. There was one house, the new house, the newest house on the mill property was the one that Mr. Minato had built, and it was still there. And that house was rented out for years to different people, and then finally sold off. Well the whole property was sold off to a logging company. And the logging company, they took all the tracks up, they changed from railway logging to truck logging. The Van West Company was a logging company, but it ran trucks only, so they took up all the railway track and made it into gravel roads. They kept some of the buildings, in fact they were using the Buddhist Church Hall as a store room. But that building is, that and the old school building, are the only two buildings still there that were used by the Japanese.

And did they tear—the houses that they tore down—did they tear them down pretty much right away, or did it take a few years?

No, they were there for quite a while. I don’t know, I don't know the timeline, like a date. I don't remember when they got rid of all of that.

Can you tell me about the friends you wrote to when they were in the camps?

Oh, I still write to them. Well, especially May and Sadakazu, and Setsuko Nishimura, Mitsuo. And of course a lot of them have passed on, so. Voice becomes emotional. But I kept in touch with them. As a family. Because my sister had a couple friends, she wrote to, too.

Did you correspond with them frequently? Right away? Or was there a period where you didn't hear from them?

Well, we didn't contact them I guess until they got relocated into camps, into certain areas. Like Slocan, Sandon, Tashme. The major camps. Not when they were in the horse barns in Vancouver, because that was only a holding spot, anyway, and it wasn't permanent. And they knew they weren't permanent there. But the first ones to leave from the Hastings Park area was the ones that went to Sandon, because that was the Buddhist minister got—And I don't know how exactly it all went, but he made arrangements to have a Buddhist Church there in Sandon. And he went with him. So they left earlier than some of the others. And of course with the camp Tashme, they, internees themselves were sent there to build the camp before they would intern them there. Which is similar to, “We're going to build a jail” or “You're going to build a jail and we're going to put you in it.”

Did your friends, would they write to you, would they share with you in their letters things about Hastings Park and about life in the camps? Or did you learn those details later?

No, not a great deal of that. They were just trying to get on with their life. But they did write like what they were doing because for one thing, they, one of the Sato girls, she went in, actually she was put teaching. They petitioned the government to send teachers to the camp, because the kids left, they were halfway through their grade because they were sent out in April and they hadn't been to school I guess since Christmas. They weren't allowed, of the year they left. And the people were petitioning the government to send teachers, and they said no, they didn't have any teachers, and it wasn't important. So, they, a lot of them, they put the oldest, older girls—or boys—that had been in high school, had finished at least high school or were in high school, and they put them to teaching the young kids. Because the government wouldn't supply teachers. And the one Sato girl, she taught in Slocan. She was teaching in Slocan. And then when they moved to Ontario, they didn't go back to Japan. Because a lot of them were told they were to go, that was the edict: they were to go back to Japan, or they’d have to go east of the Rockies. And that girl, Saoko was the one, she was teaching in the school in Slocan, and then when they got to Ontario they had to find work, and they weren't hired because they gave their names, they said their names, they were asked their names.

See, for signs in the store. And they'd say what their names were. “Oh no, I'm sorry, we should have taken the sign out. That job is filled.” So then they'd go on, and the next day they'd go looking for work again and they'd see the sign back in the store. And they knew, they were told, “Well, you can't give your Japanese name.” Their faces didn't change, but they had to take a different name, an English name, to get a job. So all the girls, they changed their names. And then they wrote us a letter and signed it with their Canadian name, and we'd go “Who the heck's that?” Carolyn laughs. But Saoko, she turned to be Gloria. And she went on after she was in Ontario, she went to teaching college and got her proper certificate and went on teaching school. So she could, she could do that in case she had an English name.

And did you ever get to see any of these friends again? Did they ever come back here to visit?

Some of them did at times, they'd come back, but not many of them. Because they got settled and of course, the young ones like that, they got married and started raising their own families. But my friend Sada, Sadakazu Sato, he came back and he built, he took architecture, he went to university and studied architecture. And he came back and he built his own place over at Tofino, right on the beach. Long Beach. The famous Long Beach. He built a Bed and Breakfast. And when I found out he was over there, I made sure I went over at least once a year and a had a good visit with him.

What was it like to see him again?

Great. Emotional voice.

Did you talk about the times you had before the war?

Some of it, yes.

And did you talk about what had happened during the war, as well?

Well, I don't know. I don't think we really discussed a lot of that. But his, Sada's dad, he was one of the few that, he got the notice that his property was sold. Because he owned his own house on Minto Road. The property, it was acreage. And he got the notice that it was sold. They sent him the money. And he was to turn in the deeds. And he refused. He kept the deeds. So in all reality, and it said right on the package, that the deeds were in, that the property was, no what was the words? “That the property could not be sold without the deeds being turned in.” He got the money, but the government just disregarded the fact that they didn't get the deeds.

So, Sadakazu came to Tofino?

Yes, he was there for several years and then he sold it and went back to Ontario because the rest of the family are there. And that wasn't all that long ago, he sold out. I don't know how many years he was at Tofino.

And none of your friends every came back to visit Cumberland or Minto?

Oh, yes. They'd come back, some of them would come and visit. May came and visited me. I have a picture of . . . Rustling of papers and movement. Florence shows Carolyn pictures of her children, May, May's children, the Minto school pictures, as well as photographs of others. Some seconds of transcription not included. That’s May Doi, she's married, Mrs. Oikawa. This is her daughter, Laurine Oikawa. Do you know her?

I know her, yes.

Yeah? And her brother. And this is George Hirata, which is a cousin to May, and his wife and their two children. But George's dad, no mother, is a sister to Mr. Doi. And May's dad was Kenichi Doi, and he was a really top ball player, and the Asahi team, Assai, I forget how to say that.

Asahi, yeah.

Asahi. He was called to Vancouver to try out for their team.

Wow.

At one point. He's a crack ball player. And they were, the Doi's, were one of the first families that came with the mining group to Cumberland. Because Kenichi's dad, he was, Pauses. hmm, I forgot his first name. The two earliest ones to Canada with the Japanese that stayed was Umitaro, Pauses. was that Doi? And Mr. Iwasa. Pauses. Yeah, Umitaro Doi, I guess. And I forget Mr. Iwasa's name. They came as conscripted miners. And her dad was the son of Umitaro.

Wow. So this picture was taken a while ago, I guess. When was it?

Oh, this would be in the, before 1988. But not much before that. We went to Nootka Island in '88, and it was just before, we were in the house before we sold it and went to . . . That's the house beside MacKenzies.

Do you think it was in the 70s, or?

Okay, so in the 70s they visited. And did they go around the neighborhood where you both were children together?

Oh, I don't know. They had definitely been at the museum. I know that. And this is, this is 2003. Referring to a photograph. And that's—he never lived here. He was an Iwasa, but he was born and raised in Alberta. His dad was Kojin Iwasa. Not his dad, or was it his dad? Maybe his grandpa. Anyway, this is Huruo Minato, and that's one of Huruo's brothers. And it was his, their dad, that was one of the owners of the Royston Mill. And this was taken in 2003 when they came here, I took that picture. That was at the Royston Mill site. And I told them that's about where their house was. It had been pulled down by that time. But that’s about where their house was, and I took the picture. So they stood there to get their picture taken on that spot.

Wow. What was it like to visit that site with them?

Oh, they were quite interested because, well Huruo's younger than I am, so he didn't—I don't know, he's two, three years younger than me. But his brother is older. Huruo is one of the younger ones of the family. There's a picture, '87 at the mill. And you can see the cupola on the roof there, so you know that's the old school building.

Oh, yeah.

And this is Mitsuo Iwasa, that lived at the mill. And his older brother, Tatsumi, no his cousin. Tatsumi would have had to been his cousin. He worked as a bookkeeper or something at the mill. And he was 102 or 3, Tatsumi, 102 or 103 when he died, just a few years ago. And I think he was in the living place, beside the Nikkei museum there.

The Nikkei home?

Yes.

Hmm. Wow.

And this is his, Mitsuo's sister, Moriko. And the two of them died in 2016, three days apart. October of 2016. Pauses. And I was hoping to visit him. That summer I had been to Alberta for my grandson's wedding, but he was in hospital in Calgary at the time. He'd had heart problems. But the two of them, they died three days apart.

Wow. So different people had visited you here?

Oh, yes.

Around Cumberland. And then, you tried to visit Mitsuo elsewhere. Were there others that you visited? That you went to visit?

May. Oh here's a picture at May's house. That was in 1997.

Wow.

And this is a picture of Setsuko Nishimura in Tashme. In the camp at Tashme. Just before they left the camp, after the war. It was taken in January, but it's been in the album and my sister kept in touch with her.

So this was to your sister?

Yes.

To Alice?

Yes. And she lives in Toronto at the Momiji Centre. And I write to her, now. And that's Yoshiro Tomihiro that lived at the mill. But he's quite a bit younger than me. And I was, his older brother Yusushi was in my class, and Satsuo was a little bit older in my brother's class. And then these are just all the school pictures.

Wow.

That's May Doi, and me. Both laugh. And Naomi Kato. No, wait a minute. No that's Hanako Kimura. There's May.

Oh.

Naomi. Mitsuo Hirata. Satsuko.

Satsuo in Tashme, later.

Satsuo Nishimura, and Emily Kato. But they're not cousins. I was told the dad's were not cousins, but they were both Kato's. That's Fumio Nishimura. Sadakazu Sato. And I'm not sure if that's Mitsuo. Tetsuo Hirata, I know that's him in behind there. And that's Yusushi, I think. Tomihiro.

So what year is this photo? Looking at the photo. 1939.

'38. '39.

Hmm. Grade four.

Yeah, Alice would have been in grade four, so I would be in grade three, I guess.

Oh, okay.

Oh, and there's another one up there. Who the heck is that? Hmm. This is an early one, this is 1934. And there's quite a few of the Japanese kids in that, too.

Yeah.

But it's the same, like because I only got pictures of whatever grades I was in. And of course all the kids moved along with us, so each picture has the same kids in it.

Laughs. As they get taller?

Yeah. Both laugh. And these are mostly reprints, so some of them are pretty dark. Yeah, because there's one of them, that thicker one there, it's the same one. That's, see there's a picture of the school. Now that's the first one that has a proper picture of the school.

Oh, yeah.

And this is the new room.

I see.

These two rooms at the front were the same, and they'd been down on the ground, originally. They jacked it up and put the basements under them, like this. The open basement. And then they build this new one on, and put it at the same height, of course. And the basement under that was closed in, because that was the lunchroom. And all that, this was torn down, the front part, was torn down. And this was made into a house. And that's what is still there, what we saw, well what we could see only with the lights because it was getting dark by then.

When was it torn down, the rest of the old school?

I don't remember when it was torn down. Because it closed, it closed in '43. The end of, in '44, I guess it closed. And then it opened again, before 1950 it opened and it ran for about two or three more years, and it just had like really young kids, because by then they had put buses on and they were taking the higher grades to Courtenay. The buses never to Cumberland. For all of it, we were closer to Cumberland, but the way the bus ran it, the school buses, they took us to Courtenay.

From Minto?

From Minto. So I never went to school in Cumberland. I just went from Minto school to high school in Courtenay.

And why did the school shut down?

Because the Japanese left. There was nobody there, not enough children to keep the school open. And then the teachers joined up, before the war had ended. The teachers were gone, too.

So a combination of the two things?

Yes.

At the same time. And then they put the school buses in?

At the same time. And the population dropped because of the war. Because there wasn't the industry in that area anymore with the mill closed. That was the industry for that whole area.

I get the sense that you're very involved in local history, in general. Not just about Japanese Canadians.

Yes.

And I wanted to ask you more about what, when the interest started for you? If it's been a lifelong thing, or it started at a particular time in your life?

I don't know. Laughs. Well I've always been interested in, you know, people, I guess. And what they do, and where they're at, and whatever. I don't know when it started really. Because I remember, you know, I can remember things from quite young. Especially momentous happenings, like the big fire that went through, started about Campbell River and got almost to Courtenay, which is a matter of miles. It was a real, it was called the big fire. It started from a spark in the woods and it burnt all the logging. It was like a logging disaster, really, because it burnt so much of the forest. And there's signs now on the roadway into Gold River, the highway into Gold River, there's the signs that say, “Reforestation Program of 1938.” And that's from the big fire that went through. And, actually, at that time, we were all picking cones, furr cones mainly, for replanting there. And we were, that's when we lived right beside the school. We were young, and we were picking cones. And the one fella was Terry Carter, he was a junior forest warden, and he got a lot of his friends, kids and that, to pick cones, because they’d pay us. I don't know what we got paid, very little for it, the big sack full. But they were using them and replanted the forest up there. And it's kind of interesting, because I go, driving, when I used to go by that going Gold River, and I'd see the sign and think, “Oh yes, some of the trees out there I own.” Carolyn laughs. “They're my cones.” Both laugh.

And these are just school pictures again and again, because I have so many. Although these are—this one is the original. It's got all the names on the back. That's 1941. So that's the last picture all the kids were in, all the Japanese kids. I'm not in it.

This is your sister's picture, then?

Hmm?

This is a picture of your sister's class?

Yes.

Oh, and all the names are on the back.

Her name is on it. She was— '41? '42? Yeah, I guess she'd be in . . .

Grade seven?

Yes, because I was in to grade eight in '42, '43. So I'd have been in grade—but I’d have been in grade seven in this one.

Oh.

Well I was in grade six when the Japanese left. So this was the last one that the Japanese were in. Well it says right there '41. So it must have been taken in September of '41. Pauses. Yeah, '43/'44 I was in grade eight. And there's my friend May, May Doi. Satsuko Nishimura. Mitsuo Hirata. Grace and Gwen and Alice. Numiko Kato. Naomi Kato, and Hanako Kimura. Mitsuo Iwasa. Sadakazu Sato. Sachio Tomihiro and Yusushi Tomihiro. And Pierce, of course. George Iwa. Kenny Macquwan, Dougie Macquwan, it was their dad's house that we bought. Their dad was the steam engineer at the mill. And that's my brother, John. Tetsuo Hirata. Hideo Nishimura. Yoshio Fujimoto. Harold Miller. Mazuyoshi Kojima. Jimmy Whitworth, and Paul Bailey, and Bert Wariner.

And this is the teacher?

That's Mr. Dalloby. He joined up. He was the first one to leave. But he never got overseas. He did clerical work.

So you just named every single person in this picture by memory.

Yeah.

Laughs. That's amazing. This isn't even your class.

Well, yes, that's grade seven/eight. Six, part of six,and seven and eight.

Wow. So, if you were to—I don't know if this is something you often do, to tell people about the history of Cumberland and the surrounding areas, including Minto and Royston Road. How do you fit the Japanese Canadians story in the broader story of the history of the area?

Well they were certainly an integral part of industry. Very much, that. They, to begin with, they were the ones that were, the original Japanese that came in 1891, conscripted to come and work on the mine, because Dunsmuir was still running the mine and he conscripted Japanese because they would work for less. And that's a big misnomer. It was because they were paid less, not because they would work for that. It’s all they would get. But they had to pay back their conscription price.

See, the Sato family that lived on Minto road, to a degree, they were, even a sort of shunned by some of the Japanese at the mill because, for one thing, they were, their mother was quite educated, too. She wasn't like just a girl that had got married because most girls did at that time in life, too. But she was educated, as well. And the children were very educated, more so than just from schooling. But the Sato's came as farmers. Mr. Sato was sponsored by an uncle who was working for Mr. Kishimoto, who owned a big farm in Courtenay. And he worked his three year contract there, and then called his wife over. And then they, because that was an intended marriage before he left Japan, and they lived in Courtenay, actually just out of Courtenay. Mr. Sato leased the farm for ten years, from a white man. And he was, they were selling the milk, it was a dairy cattle, he didn't have that many I don't think, though. And he was selling the milk to the creamery in Courtenay. Courtenay had a big creamery that made butter and really top class butter, too, because it was mainly dairy, Jersey cattle. And then when his, at the end of ten years, the white owner, he wanted his farm back. So the Sato family had to leave. But by then they had the sixth children, the seventh was born at the Minto Road area. And they left Courtenay and came to work at the mill, because he knew Mr. Kishimoto. Mr. Kishimoto had sold his big farm that he owned in Courtenay and had put money into the mill, to get the mill. Because the Royston Mill was set up actually in the, I don't know, before 1910. Before the mines even started here in 1891, the Grant and Mounce Mill was in Cumberland here, and they cut the timbers for the mines, and a lot of the timbers to build the original mine houses. And then the, Mr. Grant and Mr. Mounce, split their joint ownership. Mr. Grant went to Victoria for a few years and then came back, and set up a mill right where the Royston Lumber Company. And it’s what it was called originally by Mr. Grant. He'd split from Mr. Mounce. And he had a Mr. Fuji supplying him with timber for the mill, but Mr. Fuji didn't get paid. So he petitioned of several of his Japanese friends, and they bought the mill out, they bought Mr. Grant out. And Mr. Kishimoto was one of them, because he had sold his big farm, he had a huge farm in Courtenay, dairy farm. And he sold out because there was another problem with the farming there, in Courtenay. The Comox Creamery had an argument with one Japanese fellow about something, and there's no indication, it's never been said what the altercation was, but they immediately quit taking milk from any of the Japanese farmers. Because of that.

Because of an altercation with one Japanese farmer?

Yes. And whether that was even about milk even is another factor. Carolyn laughs. And Mr. Kishimoto sold his farm, and he had a huge farm, a big dairy farm. And he had money, and he put it into the Japanese mill. And by 1923, the Japanese had taken over the Grant Mill. Had bought Mr. Grant out.

Wow.

And that's where the mill, the Royston Mill, got its real start. Like as a real, good, producing mill. And then went in to the specializing with the dried lumber and making the fashioned doors and mouldings for houses.

How did you get to learn so much about how the mill started?

From the different Japanese, mainly. Especially from Sadakazu Sato. And then just reading about things.

So would these be conversations that you'd have with your friends, later when you were adults? After the war?

Sometimes, yes. Yes, some of them.

And would you be actively asking about this information, or was it something that would just come up kind of naturally?

Well, yes, and . . . Laughs. I don't know how to answer a question like that. Because, well, always knowing the Japanese, being friends with them Voice becomes emotional., and so on, and you kept them as friends. And well people would say, “Well how did you know all those people?” “Well, talked to them.” And I still get questioned on different people I've known, and they'd say, “I've lived here a long time, and I never knew them.” And I said, “Well, if you talk to people then you know them.” You get to know them, anyway. And I guess, I don't know, I'm inquisitive. I ask questions. I've met a lot of people just by, “Excuse me, but have you been here long?” And get their name, and talk to them. And I'm interested in history, too.

So do you think you've gotten to know more about, or you're gotten to know more Japanese Canadians than others who've been in this area, even from the same time period?

Oh, yes. Yes, half of them don't know. Some of them don't even remember or know that there'd been Japanese here, even ones that've been here a long time. “Oh, I didn't know that.”

And why do you think that is?

Hmm?

And why do you think that is? How could they not know?

Laughs. I'm not answering for them.

Okay. Laughs.

I don't know. Both laugh.

You don't think—there's not a difference in yourself that you see, that you could identify?

No, I don't know. I'm just interested in it. And it's funny, because it has been said by some friends, “Well weren't you afraid? You know, weren't you afraid to turn your backs on them that they might stab you or something?” What are they talking about. Laughs. We were friends at school. I don't know. Maybe in this day and age, that could happen, because things do happen in schools even now, you know violence and so on. But it never entered our heads, that they were any different. Sure we knew they were Japanese. And we knew they did different things, and so on. But so did a lot of white people. They weren't all the same. We never even considered it different.

Do you remember, did you follow the Redress movement at all? The 1980s, when that was going on?

Not really. Not a great deal, no.

But you were aware of it?

Yes.

Was it something that you had, did you have any interest in it? Or was it mainly just in the background?

Well, yes, I guess you'd say in the background. But I knew they were completely cheated out of all their homes, their belongings, their life. Their lifestyle.

A big part of our project, as I've explained to you before, is we're trying to educate Canadians about this history. So, I wanted to give you the opportunity to say—if you could say anything to someone who’s listening to this recording and learning about Japanese-Canadian history, or just learning about the history in any way—what do you think is what they should take away from the story of what happened to Japanese Canadians? What would you want them to learn?

That the Japanese came as honourable people, did an honourable day's work, were really very honourable people, and should be treated as such. Not as an enemy. And the Japanese that were here were not the enemy even during the war. Governments, politicians, I don't know what you'd call them. The ones that create wars. Because no war just happens, it's created. And it's mainly a lot of business propositions go along with war, and so on. But the Japanese people that lived here were just ordinary people, the same as we were. And should be remembered as people.

So that's all the questions that I had to ask you. But is there anything else that you'd like to share? Any other stories or things that you'd like to add?

I don't know. Laughs. No I can't think of anything, really.

Okay. Well thank you so much for sharing everything you have with me today. It's been really lovely to hear from you.

I'll likely think of this later on. “Oh, I forgot this,” or “Forgot that.”

Well do you want to take a minute right now to think about it? Florence laughs. Or should we just wrap up?

Well, you could close that off for a bit maybe.

Okay. I can always start it up again, too. I'll pause it. I'll stop for now, though.