Kevin and Suzy Higo, interviewed by Josh Labove, 06 May 2016

But there’s so many other people, that’s been interesting other people, that might be able to give you some more thoughts.

Well, we’ll talk to everybody, but today I am gonna start with you all. So, let’s see, it’s Friday May 6, 2016 and I’m at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery with Kelvin Higo and his mom Suzy Higo.

Suzy.

Suzy. So like I was saying, I really just kind of wanted to start by reflecting on some of your earliest memories. Suzy you’re welcome to do the same, maybe even fill in some of his gaps but you were saying you were born in Winnipeg.

I was born there in 1949 in Winnipeg, due to the relocation of the Japanese. My father was born here on Sea Island in Richmond in 1918. My grandfather had come here in 1904 so I wasn’t a willing person being born in Winnipeg. It was a matter of circumstance. So my older sister and I were born there and, like I said before, my brother was born in Raymond. My mother. . . In 1949 when the Japanese were allowed to come back my dad came back first to try to reestablish himself in the fishing industry and a year later my mother was charged with bringing the whole family back. That would be grandma, grandpa, Ronnie, Karen, me. . . who else was there?

No, I came first with the children first and grandma and grandpa came after.

By themselves?

No. I think auntie Mary came with her.

Oh, okay. So, anyways, she had the arduous task of bringing everybody back to BC while my father and them were already here. They moved to a house on Woodwards Road first and they paid forty dollars a month on that one.

Yeah.

And then because my father fished for BC Packers he was allowed to move into a cannery house. So we moved to Pacific Coast Camp and we lived there from 1952 to 1967. So it would be my mom and dad. . .

It was convenient because the boat was there and he could go back and forth and I could go out helping with the nets.

Basically, everybody that was from Kagoshima area was at Pacific Coast Camp. You tended to congregate with people that came from your area of Japan. So all of dad’s compatriots there, they would work on the boats while it was dry docked and everything else. When they went to the fishing grounds they would also work together, they would eat together, they would fish together, they would share secrets. They’d have these codes they would use to tell each other that the fishing was good wherever they were located and they would only want to tell their fellow countrymen, so to speak. So, you know, growing up in Steveston, like I said I lived there for most of my growing up years. I guess we were kind of poor but. . .

Of course we were!

But, you know, we always had food to eat.

We had nothing when you came back from Winnipeg because the house that we had in Winnipeg was under two names: my brother-in-law and my husband’s name. We had to keep that going too while we were living here until my husband’s parents sold it and then they moved to come back to BC. We were the first to come back to BC and then my brother-in-law, uncle Koji. He wrote to us to see what kind of a situation it was back here and then he decided to bring his family here and then by that time all the rest of the family, my husband’s family, came here. My side of the family went eastward to Leamington, Ontario. Somehow, Leamington sounded good to my father’s ear.

We don’t know how this Leamington thing came up. We think it might have been through a friend saying, you know, “we’re out here in Leamington it’s great,” you know, whatever. So grandpa got a bug in his head and said, “okay” he’s going and mom was saying that grandma wasn’t too happy about that because she was the oldest daughter and had just gotten married and I don’t think grandma wanted to leave you behind.

Tomato country.

Yes. Yeah, the highway just closed there.

It did, yeah.

But somebody else opened it up.

I think so.

So they’re just down the road from the plant. So they went there. Grandpa was a farmer in Mission. When did he first come to Canada?

He was eighteen years old. Now, figure it out for me. Laughs.

It would be the early 1900s anyways. Again, I think one of his friends must have gone already because, to me, if you were going to go to farming why would you bypass all the fertile land in the Fraser Valley, go up to Mission, have to clear forested land, and, you know, I don’t think the soil is that great up there either. It’s more rocky and. . .

We had a strawberry farm.

An acre, right?

We had a strawberry farm there.

In Mission?

Yeah. They had a ten acre property and then grandpa had cleared about an acre of it.

Four acres.

Four acres?

Four acres.

And then grew strawberries.

That was our livelihood. When the German family. . . he had raspberries and the whole family would go pick raspberries for him. After that we would go to Sardis, mom and me. My dad stayed home with the younger sisters and we would go pick hops.

Oh, I didn’t even realize those were growing out there. But, hops?

Yeah.

Hops. You know, for the beer.

Right, yeah.

And actually they’re starting to grow hops again because of all the craft breweries.

Yeah, makes sense.

They had acres and acres of hop fields there. They had a big, what do you call it, a communal home type of a thing. Each one had a little room to themselves, a bed, and a kitchen. Just enough maybe the whole place would not be bigger than this from there to here with a little kitchen and a stove and then there was a place to sleep.

So you would have been more aware of the change from the coastal communities of BC that you left to Winnipeg. You were just sort of born into this. Did you miss BC when you were out in Winnipeg?

We went to Alberta first. We went to Alberta and we were in a place called Coalhurst that was north of Lethbridge. After I got married and I went to live in Raymond and that’s us.

And then after Raymond?

My husband’s sister was out in, the two sisters, were out in Winnipeg. So we went to Winnipeg after that.

Did you think you’d come back out west? Was that a goal? Was there a goal to make it back to BC at some point?

Hm?

Did you want to move back to BC at some point when you were out in Alberta and Winnipeg?

We were not allowed.

Yeah.

We were not allowed to come back.

But after you’re allowed to come back.

Oh, yeah. My husband worked at the foundry and foundry work was very hard for him. He was a small man, a thin man too but when he came back to BC his friends that knew him thought he had TB because he was so thin. He was a thin man to start off with but the job he had was too much for him because there was nightshift, dayshift, and midnight shift. Some mornings he would come home at four o’clock in the morning, you know, his shift but he had to wait. There was no buses. So at four o’clock that morning he would be finished work but he would wait at the station in Winnipeg, wait for the bus to come home.

Were you worried about coming back to BC?

Huh?

Were you worried about coming back to BC, about the racism, or. . .

I don’t think so because I felt, well, my husband’s choice was to come back to be a fisherman. He felt that working in a foundry was not going to be a good job and when they allowed. . . From the time he was little he knew fishing. His dad took him out fishing so from the time when he was old enough, maybe ten or twelve years old, he’d be rocking for his dad so he knew nothing but rock fishing.

Yeah. You were saying the other day that you thought the fishing industry was, maybe, not the most. . . It was all divided, you were saying.

Yeah, as we grew up the heyday of fishing was in my younger years before I graduated from grade twelve and I remember days where they would go out fishing. I remember Sugar Hamada, he would come back and he would just wrap his net, there was so much fish he would just wrap the net with the fish in it and then he’d come back to the thing and he’d hire us young kids to take the net off and pick the salmon out while he loaded this other net and rushed it out because you can’t catch fish if you don’t have your net in the water. So he would keep doing this but I’m not sure that was the best thing for the fish because, you know, it comes out squashed and everything else. Quality-wise I’m not sure he got the highest price. So you had those kinds of runs. About four or five years ago we probably saw the last type of that run come through. It was at Adams River, thirty-million fish came back and there’s all sorts of theories why this happened. Some say that there was a volcano in Russia that spewed all this phosphate into the water so that the plankton grew and so the salmon flourished. Whatever reason, thirty-million fish came back and it was months. When you went to the river you could just see the fish jumping upstream. Those were the days that I grew up and my whole life I was associated with the fishing industry. Every spring the boats would come up and we would copper paint and do all the maintenance on the boat. I think back to it now we had copper paint just dripping down our arms, we would paint the holes with zinc paint, and this would go into blue stone copper sulfate. The chimneys and the boat were wrapped with asbestos insulation, you know. So you wonder why do any of us even live this long.

Heavy stuff.

Yeah. There was no knowledge of environmental hazards back then. We just went and did our work. As each child became older they would go out and fish with my father. So my brother would take the first shift because he was the oldest and he would fish probably three or four years.

Hm?

Ronnie fished three or four years in the summer with dad and then he would go to the cannery to work. If you fished for the cannery you’re basically guaranteed a job. So the cannery took care of us and so then I was second to go and I used to get seasick just horribly, but I’m stubborn so I stuck it out in the west coast. We fished out of Ucluelet and I stuck it out all summer. The first year I have just horrendous memories being sick every day but the second year I realized what you have to do is just go to the back of the stern, start picking fish up, get sick, and then lay down and in a couple of days you’ll get acclimatized. Once I did that. . . but I know that I was never the fisherman my brother was because he was the first born and my dad, you know, he was the apple of my dad’s eye and taught him everything. He didn’t teach me everything but I did the best I could and I enjoyed it. I did it for about three years and then I worked at the cannery. One summer I went to Namu and did herring roe up there for the Japanese companies. So that was kind of our life. I said to you, the other day, it was a very idyllic life along the water because mom and dad were both working. Dad would leave in April of every year and not come back until September. Some days he would come back if the fishing at the Fraser was good. That was the days you could actually fish wherever you want to fish. Now you have to choose and buy a license for this.

Um, spare me one second.

Yeah. Tape is paused briefly then continued. Yeah, so like I was saying, growing up here was almost like a Huck Finn experience. Mom was working in the cannery at the time. Dad’s away fishing and so grandma and grandpa kind of watched us. They weren’t great at child-minding. We kind of ran rough shot over them. I remember grabbing a can of spaghetti, a pop, my fishing rod, and I’d get a rowboat and I’d go across to shady island all day. I think the only time they would know if anybody survived was at dinnertime they’d do a headcount and they’d know everybody’s there basically. But we all took care of each other. We had, like, the whole neighbourhood . . . All the children all played together and, you know, we kind of watched out for each other. There were a few accidents. One of the Kumagai boys. . . Yeah.

I’m listening to his secret.

One of the Kumagai boys drowned and, you know, there was the odd. . . because none of us could swim.

Your cousin drowned, too.

Yeah, my cousin drowned. He fell off. . . How old was. . .

Four years old, I think.

As he fell off the dock I guess he must have hit his head. He just sunk like a rock and my uncle had just turned around and next thing you know Ricky was missing.

See, the mother was working in a cannery and so when the fisherman comes home the children were looked after by their fathers but the father’s too busy mending a net. He gave his son a little string to play with. He went backward and he fell into the river. My. . . Unfortunate, they had five children and now they only have two surviving children.

Wow, that’s not great odds.

No, but the first two died at birth.

Okay, wow. What was Steveston like at this time? It sounds kind of fun. I mean. . .

That’s why I always get amazed, you know, I give diversity talks. People always talk about, “Oh, why don’t these new immigrants be more Canadian?” and I always tell people Canada is in the eye of the beholder. My experience as a Canadian is completely different than yours. I celebrate. . . I’m just as Canadian as anybody else. I celebrated Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, all those but then we had New Year open house. What do you call it in Japanese? New Year.

Oshogatsu.

Oshogatsu. So that would be a three day celebration and mom would cook all sorts of. . .

I hated it.

Yeah. All sorts of sushi and everything else, right? And then the men folk would come by and get drunk as skunks and sing. I remember my grandfather he loved this, he loved his booze, he loved his singing, and he would just participate in all this and. . .

Uncle Satoro.

Uncle Satoro. Mr. Kuromoro. The intent was that you would just go from house to house and have a drink, a little bit to eat, and visit all the homes. Now days, I’m probably one of the very few people that still does this. Most of the people that come to my house are Caucasians because they’ve adopted this tradition now because they come and get free Japanese food.

Which now everyone loves and appreciates, right?

Right, right. Back then somebody says, “well, where did you go have your Japanese food?” I said, “well there were no Japanese restaurants like there are today.” I think Aki’s might have been the only Japanese restaurant back in that day. . .

Yeah, but down in Powell Street.

But it was down Powell Street. Here in Richmond there was no Japanese restaurants. So you got your Japanese food either at the Japanese language school bazar, held once a year, or the Buddhist church bazar and maybe the United Church bazar. They did chow mein and a little bit but it was those bigger community events where you can get Japanese food, otherwise you had whatever my mom would make at home was our normal fare.

What were you making at home? What was dinner? These were long days of hard work so when it finally came time to put food on the table. . .

Well, when you had a mother and father-in-law living with you. . . My mother-in-law didn’t want me to spend money on meat. So it was always fish but she says, “fish is there”. She doesn’t realize that one piece of fish that my husband brings home, it would have gone into the family.

We would have gotten money for it.

Yeah, right. Yeah, into the bank.

But grandma never thought that way but she thought that. . . but then, too, fish was good for the kids.

I tell the story of the time. . . I always consider myself a great hunter. I was eight or nine years old and so I was going down the dike one day with my slingshot and I saw a goose. So I went and I killed it and I brought it home to mom and I was so proud, you know, and then my mom says, “well, you know this is a tamed goose.” I didn’t know the difference. It’s out in the wild. Laughs. I shot it. So she hung it up to age and every day I had to walk by it for, I don’t know, three or four days. I felt so guilty. I couldn’t eat the goose when my mom decided to pluck it and cook it. So she invited all the aunts and uncles over and had a great. . .

It must have been a Christmas dinner. Laughs.

We figured out afterwards there was a farmer over at No. 2 road about half a mile away. We figured it must have escaped from there and it’s waddling down the dike. Being eight or nine years old I never put two and two together, like, why didn’t it fly away or anything. It was just trying to waddle away.

Low hanging fruit.

Yes, yes. It’s also kind of memories, you know, and then we lived right next door to Hangul Store which is kind of like the first quote unquote supermarket or superstore. They sold meat and fruits, the whole gamut, as well as all the supplies that you would need for fishing.

Fishing supplies. Men’s clothing, too. Rain coat.

So when the boats would head out at the start of the season they would just place the order with the owner and they would just fill boxes of stuff and take it to the boat. So we lived next to that. My sister, I know, worked for them and we would help them every spring when the water flooded through the floors and we’d have to put everything up on the counter and things like that. But I’d say it was a very idyllic life. The things we were allowed to do you’d never be allowed to do now because of worker’s compensation rules. I used to ride my bike along the BC Packers and I’d watch them unload fish and you’d never be able to go into those work zones anymore but us little seven, eight year olds on bikes we’d go there and we’d watch this and move in and out through the shipyards and wherever else. We used to come into Steveston and when we were a little bit older, probably when we were about eleven, twelve we used to sit and eat the. . . Right by Garry Point we’d had these big SAE nuts that we would sink and we’d hang lights up and then the eulachon would come in and there would be millions of these things. They were so plentiful that we never ate them. I would just catch them for my, you know, sometimes to put in the garden as fertilizer but, you know, you’d have buckets of it. Every one of us had buckets of it to count but now there’s no more eulachon or smelts and that’s because of the degradation of the environment along the Fraser River.

You paint an idyllic story but I have to imagine you also went to school amidst all this right?

Yeah, I went to school. School was fun for us. All our friends were there and after school we played whatever seasonal baseball. We didn’t do organized sports. We couldn’t afford organized sports but you knew that when spring time came it was baseball season so out came the baseball gloves and then we transitioned into the fall for football. We played football and when winter came we got the ice skates out, those of us who had ice skates, right?

Sure.

Remember Mr. Moe taking you to Anvil Island?

Yeah. We went to church and the church had a youth program so we would do all sorts of outings with them, too.

And language school?

No, never went to language school. Never. Well, first we had to pay for it so that was an expense that I don’t think that I would want to have incurred on my family. Plus, I didn’t. . . You know, you go to school all day I don’t want to go to school all night. So I never went. Did anybody in our family go to Japanese language school? Karen never went, did she?

Karen went but she said she was never called up to say anything because she’s a quiet girl in the first place. She said she didn’t like it. The teacher called all the other kids but never her. But she speaks more Japanese than he did.

I can understand a little bit but I can’t speak it.

Yeah.

There’s a guy that used to work at Nelson Brothers Cannery, Jerry Miller, and he spoke fluent Japanese. I asked him . . .

He grew among the Japanese and he went to Japanese school, too, in Steveston.

Jerry Miller?

Mhm.

Yeah, so I asked him one day. I said, “Gee, how did you learn your Japanese?” He said I took Japanese language school. I said, “you must be the only guy that’s ever gone to Japanese language school and actually came out speaking Japanese,” because the rest of the kids went there just to, you know, because they were told to go there.

But his friends were all Japanese.

Mhm. He was with, like, the Lees on the cannery and the Japanese fisherman and he could speak fluent Japanese. He was probably more Japanese than the Japanese were. In fact, his mom when he was growing up at the end of No. 2 road used to worry about him. She’d say, “you know Jerry, he doesn’t eat or he doesn’t talk.” So the neighbor who is Japanese says, “Gees, Jerry’s over here. He’s just pigging out.” He’s eating Japanese food and speaking Japanese but when he goes home I guess he’s tired or everything else. He doesn’t say anything but the mother was actually worried that he wasn’t developing properly. He was just devastated when all his Japanese friends were carted out of here. You know, Tim Shurikawa was one of his best friends. The only guy that was left that he could play with was a man called Jimmy Pattison, the Jimmy Pattison. So that’s how he got to know Jimmy Pattison.

Wow, that’s quite a story.

So I’ve lived here all my life except for two years I took a bursary to Saskatchewan. I’m a health inspector by occupation and when I graduated from BCIT I took a two year bursary to Saskatchewan. So, other than the one year I was in Winnipeg and the two years I was in Saskatchewan, I lived my entire life here.

Well, I lived over on No. 5 road for a bit and then my mom had the brilliant idea, colluded with my life, to buy a house here in Steveston. It’s probably the best idea that they ever had because we got into the housing market. I didn’t think that we could afford it but it turned out once I worked out the mortgage, it was basically the same as paying rent. She generously lent me a few dollars for the down payment and so that’s how we started our home ownership here. So that developed my ties and then I worked for the city for twenty-five years. The last ten years of my career I worked for the Vancouver Coastal Health Region because they amalgamated all the health services.

So Richmond is under Coastal Health?

Yeah. So it’s Richmond, Vancouver, North Shore, Sechelt Peninsula, and Bella Coola.

It’s bigger than I realized.

Once we amalgamated I was still in charge of Richmond. I was the chief health inspector back then. When we amalgamated, because they say a manager’s a manager, they gave me all these duties in the hospital as well. In the last three years of my career I was in charge of the whole health department, all the nurses, and everything else. The endoscopy clinic, the diabetic clinic, the cardio-rehab clinic, and I built this project called the Wellness Center. That was kind of my coup de gras and out the door. So I had a long career. I know this community a lot and I’ve been president of the local community center, community society. I’ve been involved with a variety of projects here in the community. I guess what I’m most proud of is I was chairman of the Japanese Canadian Cultural Center. When the redress monies were determined we made a presentation to the committee that came out. We wined and dined them. I made the pitch and they agreed to give us $500,000. I argued that of the 21,000 that lived here close to 2,000 of them, 2200 came, ten percent came from Steveston and that there should be something here to recognize that. So they were in agreement and then one of the brilliant strokes, maybe I didn’t realize it at the time as much as I do now, but I talked the city into having it built on city property because I didn’t want to be forever having to raise funds to pay the telephone, the heat. So having the building built on city property meant that they had all those obligations. So they paid for all those things, the taxes and everything else. All I’d do is I just run programming. So right now we run an early onset dementia program for Japanese seniors using culture, tradition, food, music. Once a month I have a lunch program and right now I have, what, ninety-five seniors eighty years and over that attend these lunches. I run the Japanese Cultural show on July first and a variety of other things. I do walking tours and things to try to keep alive the history of the contribution the Japanese Canadians have made. Again, that portion of the. . . from 1949 to the present time. I always say that Steveston is the living embodiment of the official multicultural policy of Canada where you’re allowed to come in and maintain your own culture, traditions, as well as. . . You know, like, everybody says you have to be a melting pot and become the Canadian. Well, that’s not the official multicultural policy. Here in Steveston we’ve blended the two. We’ve become part of Steveston and the thing that really struck me was when, in 1955, Ken Fraser, the president of BC Packers came to our Japanese elders. I think when Rintaro Hayashi was there and some. . . I heard there were three of them and I don’t know who the other two were but I know that Rintaro Hayashi was involved.

Would it be Mr. Sakamoto?

I think one was Mr. Kosaka but I’m not sure. One might have been Mikey Isaguchi. They came to the Japanese elders and said, “look, rather than living separate lives let's work together and build something. Let’s build a community center together.” There was about $15,000 left over from the sale of the Japanese hospital. That’s kind of why I’m interested in your project because I’d like to see whether that was true or not. Somewhere there was this pot of money and it was being held by this guy in Winnipeg so Mr. Hayashi and the other elders sent for this money and then donated it to the community center. Back then it represented probably one fifth of the total cost of the construction. In return, and again this is the handshake agreement there’s no paper or anything, they said, “one room has to be dedicated to judo, and the gym to be used by kendo.” On that basis they gave the money to the building community at the community center.

So there’s a kendo side to Steveston and there’s also a judo side?

That’s right.

And you’re on the kendo side?

I’m the kendo side. The only reason I’m the kendo side is I married into a kendo family. My brother-in-law is the head instructor at the Steveston kendo club and I’m president. I’m only president because my brother-in-law is the head sensei and I’m just trying to help him out. But, yeah, like they say, you’re either a kendo family or a judo family in Steveston. Having said that, there’s a lot of crossover by the parent groups so the parents will donate both to the judo and the kendo to whatever activity that the Japanese are involved in. You want to add anything?

I was really too busy raising a family and going to work that I never got involved. I was involved with the United Church for a time when they were little because the lady that was sent from the United Church missionary, she came to Alberta and that’s where I met her. Like I say, she was. . . After my parents moved to Ontario then she went to various places. She’d go to Victoria, Vancouver, she’d go to other places but she was in Steveston for a while, too.

I heard that the UCC was, the United Church, was quite supportive and helpful over the years, particularly during the war.

Yeah and, beside that we had our Canadian person who went to Japan as a United Church Missionary and he spoke fluent Japanese so he was working among the Japanese in Alberta, too.

That’s one of the things that I think there should be more attention paid to is that not all the Caucasians were against the Japanese. There were quite a few that helped us. The Doukhobors were quite supportive because of the situation they were in. So when you went to Grand Forks the Doukhobors were one of the first groups that would help us. In fact, the stuffing recipe my mother-in-law uses is a Doukhobor recipe. It uses mainly potato and things like that, bacon, and so there’s this crossover between cultures.

The Doukhobors are a known group that were quite supportive and the United Church is another case.

But Barty, as we got to know her, she was my kindergarten teacher. She married all my brothers and sisters and she was like a second mom to my mom, regularly visited, and it’s people like that. . . There’s another guy Ken Elston who was quite supportive, worked for Nelson Brothers and there’s a 1934 picture, baseball picture, Steveston Fujis. Apparently in the day, they were just as famous as the um. . .

Asahi.

Asahi! Here’s Ken Elston, a white guy, in the middle of this picture. I’ve been trying to track this, the story behind this, how this white guy got onto this all Japanese baseball team. I’ve got the picture but that’s the story.

Yeah.

In fact, there’s an oral history of him in the Richmond Archives. In passing, he mentions his involvement with the baseball team but it’s just like, “Oh, yeah. I played for the Fuji Baseball Team.” It’s just a normal every day thing not realizing the special, you know, the specialness of it.

Yeah, which is good I guess right?

It was because I don’t think the Japanese ever tried. . . you know like right now we have all this language and cultural clash with the Chinese that are here but, you know, people forget there’s been, kind of like, three waves of Chinese immigrants recently. One was the Hong Kong when Hong Kong was going to be taking over. Then you have the Taiwanese and now you’ve got mainland China. So, you know, the slangs they were. . . there’s nothing in English and things like that. The Japanese, when I look back, never had those issues. When they had the thirty, twenty-seven stores in Richmond, or Steveston, you didn’t see signs all plastered in Japanese only that would only attract the Japanese. They realized that you had to serve the whole public to make your business viable.

Smart.

Yeah, and I think they tried to contribute to the whole community at all times.

How is Steveston different then? There was Powell Street, there was Steveston, there was Haney, Maple Ridge. How is Steveston unique? What is the. . .

The obvious one is fishing based communities. I guess the other attribute of it is that the majority of the Steveston residence all originate from the same prefecture. They’re all. . . When Gihei Kuno first came in, what, 1887 or so he attracted about 250 other compatriots from his village. Now, I find that hard to believe because I’ve been to Mio and it’s a very small village. I don’t know, back in the early 1900s maybe it was more bustling and. . . but you go there now and it’s just a very tiny village. Maybe it’s from Miho and the surrounding area is what he’s talking about. When I read, they always say from Mio. He enticed 250 other residents to come and these are the people that are the predecessors to the majority of the people here in Steveston. We’re from Kabushima. We’re just a very small percentage of the thing. There’s a Wakayama Kenjinkai alumni group and they’re quite strong. I think at one point they were over 1000 members in the lower mainland area. They’re diminishing now because the new generations don’t want to belong to things like that or don’t see a need to belong to it. They belong to the wider Canadian community so their group is diminishing a bit. I think those are two primary things. It’s the fishing based industry and most had a common ancestral background.

That would change the interactions you had with other Japanese Canadian kids then because you’re all sort of coming from a similar background within. . .

Well, growing up we did kind of hang with the Steveston guys.

Oh, okay.

We always said we were from the other side of the tracks because the tram line ran this way and we’re over on this side. I guess it was distance, too, right? You tend to. . . Like, my playmates were everybody from the pacific coast camp. There were enough kids there to play with and I always thought the kids over at Steveston were a little bit tougher. They were more like a gang and we see them at school but you didn’t really hang out with them. We hung out with our own group where we were from.

So would you have ended up at Lord Byng?

Yup.

So Lord Byng, then the. . .

After that we went to Hugh Boyd. We were the first class to attend Hugh Boyd Junior Secondary and then we went to Steveston High School after that. Then Steveston High School was ten, eleven, twelve. Then it turned into just eleven, twelve. Now, they go from grade eight to twelve.

Yeah, I was going to say. Okay.

So you went one to six at Lord Byng, seven to nine at junior high school, and ten-eleven-twelve at senior high school.

It was nine to twelve for me. I always pity the eighth graders that have to go to high school because that. . .

Well, I think it’s too much of a jump to go from elementary school and you’ve got grade twelves, you know?

Yeah, all the same. Oh, boy.

It’s, I think, a bit intimidating. I remember the first time at senior high school and everybody was heading out of the door at lunch time and I thought, you know, what’s the routine? Because you don’t know what the routine is, right? I found out later there was this huge fight down at the cross box. These guys all went down to it. I don’t know who was fighting who but Denny Murashita and those guys come back and they’re bruised and bloodied. You hear stories of this fight and you think, “wow.” I’m thinking, “what have I gotten myself into coming to school?” Now, these are the same guys that play floor hockey, I guess. Like, are they going to drop the gloves on me and things like this. I was a bit intimidated but. . .

I’m hearing this for the first time, too.

Well, you don’t come home and tell your mom that you’re scared to go to school. It’s not only the guys. The females would fight. There was one girl that was a real tough beehive. They went out to the back there and they duked it out and they came back bloodied and bruised, too. I’m thinking, “wow” because, you know, my age group we never drank. We never fought. I think it applies to certain years. The ones that were four, five, six years ahead of me they were gangsters. Guys wouldn’t come. . . When basketball teams came from Vancouver to play us they would never come back because if we lost we’d see . . .

Good thing I didn’t know all this when they were growing up. Laughs.

No, no. It wasn’t me but if we lost the basketball game they would meet them outside the school and they’d have a punch out back. So they’d never come back.

Well, Steveston has a hard scrabble reputation sometimes. It’s a very idyllic place now.

Do you remember that time Cook boy stuck a toothpick in his head? We’re coming home from school. . .

No, no. Actually, it was a cigarette.

Yeah.

But he was nuts. He’s probably in jail someplace because he’d come to the bus stop early and he had a blow dart, a homemade blow dart. He would hide and he would shoot these things at us. The needle would be like this, right?

Yeah.

He was just a. . . I’m sure he’s in prison someplace.

But he didn’t want me to do nothing about it but I was very angry about it. I phoned the principal, the school principal, and told him what this kid did to my son.

So they called Randy in the end, and mom, and the principal says, “you know, I think Kelvin could probably beat you up,” and I’m going. . . because this Randy was, I think, two years older than us. He had flunked a couple of times. He was a big kid. He’s one of those guys almost like a sociopath. Laughs. You want to stay away from him. We gave him a broad. . .

Maybe he felt he was the only white kid among all the Japanese kids that was waiting for the bus at the bus station. I don’t know.

Was he a good student?

Huh?

Was Kelvin a good student?

I don’t know. I don’t know. He got to where he is without me helping him so. . . My education was stopped at half of grade nine when we were evacuating and after that when you went to Alberta it cost my parents seven dollars to pay the helper, the government, for my sisters to go to school. I had three younger sisters so my education finished there.

In Alberta?

Hm?

In Alberta?

Alberta, yeah, but later on I think they made, Alberta and BC made a negotiation.

I think it must have been the War Measures Act.

Huh?

It was under the War Measures Act I think because they were non-Alberta residents Alberta would pay for their education.

Right.

Until they cut this deal and then once they cut the deal then they paid for the. . . because they were compensated for it.

Yeah.

But we were poor at that time so my parents couldn’t afford school. They knew that the younger ones. . . my youngest sisters maybe was in grade one and so they knew that they need the education more than I did. I was up into grade nine by that time.

Yes, that would have made you fourteen or so?

Fifteen. When you’re born before September you could go to school but if you’re born after September you have to wait a whole year. I was born in November.

So you waited a whole year?

Mhm. I don’t know whether I learned anything at home or not but . . .

Sometimes there’s more to be learned outside the classroom though.

Hm?

Sometimes there’s more to be learned outside of the classroom.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. You learn how to get along with people.

Well moving around a lot too, I suspect you learned how to get along with different types of people, in different places, and walks of life.

Well, you know, I commend this generation because how would you and I have reacted to being locked up, basically, for seven years and not be able to pursue your career, your livelihood, everything else? And then you had to start all over again.

See, with my husband’s family they were able to get two boats. One for dad and the younger son and one for my husband. They were just gradually getting some daughters married off so they were getting to the point where my in-laws were becoming comfortable.

That would have been in ’42?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I thought my in-laws are much older than my parents. My father lived until 96.

Wow.

His father was 95.

Good genes.

Good genes.

Well, I hope I got my Higo side genes rather than her side genes because all her brothers had died of cancer.

Okay. Higo side is. . .

Is more, there’s more longevity there.

Yeah. Well you have to follow the Higo family diet. Presumably fish works then, apparently.

Well, when she talks about no meat, the only time I ever saw meat. . . I used to love liver. Mom would cook. . .

It’s an acquired taste.

Yeah. Mom would cook liver and I used to love it; liver and onions. One day, I see her at the sink and she’s got this big thing that she’s cutting up. I said, “what’s that?” She says, “liver.” I’d never seen liver being prepared. I said, “that’s what we eat?” After that I never had liver again because liver has a certain odour to it.

Yeah, and a texture. When I was working at Jericho Hill School in the kitchen we had students coming in from out of town and they used to live in a dorm and we had to, some of us had to cook and look after them. We didn’t have to look after them. We did most of the cooking and serving but they had liver and you should see the pile of livers there. The kids wouldn’t touch it.

It’s an acquired taste.

Yeah, it is an acquired taste. I think. . .

I used to bring it home, you know? Mrs. Morizawa’s family liked it. Whenever I brought some home I would just send it down to Morizawas.

I used to have liver sandwiches. That was popular growing up was the liver and onions on a piece of white bread.

We had chow mein sandwiches.

What’s a chow mein sandwhich?

Well, you made Japanese chow mein and then you put it between two pieces of white bread and you have a chow mein sandwich. In fact, I’m famous because when I was traveling across Canada they had this contest, you know, regional sandwiches. So I’m listening to all these recipes people have and type of sandwiches. I said, “well . . .” So I rode in and I said, “you know, in Steveston when my mom made chow mein, we had left over chow mein, we made chow mein sandwiches and take them to school.” Well, unbeknownst to me this is quite common in Prince Rupert and Greenwood and other places. I guess word travelled that this is a good way to have your sandwiches but they played it on the radio and then people would say, “you know I heard your story about chow mein sandwiches.” It had brought back memories for them.

It’s probably a very cost effective way to fill up, a chow mein sandwich.

Yeah. Well, when we used to go to sports day mom would always make the Teriyaki wieners and the rolled up egg. What else would you make? Nigiri, and we’d have a picnic. I remember being a little embarrassed because this is not the normal fare that you would have, right? Everybody else is having sandwiches but you’d see people coming by and, kind of, looking at you know but today it’s . . . We used to go to the movies and rather than popcorn and pop, because we couldn’t afford that, mom would give us bread and she’d take half the neighbourhood kids with us. We’d be up in the balcony with this bread out with all this Japanese food and rice balls and. . .

My house, when we were living by the river, it was almost like a kindergarten. Every kid used to come over. My nephew, two of them, eight o’clock, eight-thirty, rain or shine, they’d be at our house. Something just drew them to our house.

Was it your cooking?

No, it’s because they had playmates.

We were kind of the orphanage.

If I fed them my sister-in-law would get after them because they had to go home for lunch.

So you were kind of the ring leader of the whole . . .

Yeah, I liked to organize things. We used to have what they called wad fights and you take a piece of paper, roll it up, and you bent it over so it looks like a, what would you call it, almost like a bullet or something and then you make an elastic, you can even use your two fingers, or you make a little, out of a coat hanger, a little slingshot. We’d go to the net loft. We’d always get in trouble because there’d be like twenty of us in there playing. We’d be knocking over nets and equipment and stuff like that so the watchman didn’t like us in there. He’d always be chasing us out but there’d be twenty of us all hiding up, you know, in this. We spent hours in there, right? Now the kids just spend it on their electronic toys. We’d go get a boat and the fisherman would know when they looked across to Shady Island and saw a boat, they knew it was probably me. They didn’t mind if I borrowed their stuff as long as I returned it in good shape and we’d go over there and we’d spend a day. It was very Huck Finn existence. I fished and poached because we were a poor family so my brother and I we used to go out there and set nets illegally in the wintertime to catch fish. I’m not sure we did very good, though. I don’t remember catching too many fish.

I think that it’s a different kind of a childhood these kids had, right, by the river. Remember that time you were. . . and Ron was up there by the top of Shady Island and these kids got. . . They had to save these kids from drowning.

Well, they were men actually. Three men that fell into the river and we went up there in a canoe and saved them. They were all wearing hip waders so as soon as you start paddling all the hip waders swell. It was like sea anchors. I remember one guy, he had a rope. He was panicking because the water was up to his chin. He was sinking. I said, “don’t worry, we’re going to get you back.” But I said, “if you panic and you try to come here and capsize me. . .” I got my knife and I said, “I’ll just cut the line” and I said, “you’re nobody to me so. . .” So he calmed down and we all get them to shore and they didn’t even thank us. They were probably in shock, mind you, but they didn’t even thank us and we got them sent off to the hospital.

You give a lot of tours. You were a busy guy this week. I know you’ve been out and about talking with folks. There’s some new interpreters at the cannery on the history of Steveston. I guess my question is why and what do you tell them?

Well, this time a few years ago I wanted to keep the history of the Japanese community alive to highlight the contribution they’ve made to this community. As you walk this community everywhere you go you see the footprint of the Japanese Canadian community. So that got me interested in doing these walking tours, too. I did some research and I developed a story. So for Mimi, I do it for her summer students just so they get that kind of background to the work they do here. The story I tell, it depends on who I’m talking to, I kind of custom make them. The group here, I started at the Fisherman’s Memorial because I think it’s a very apt place to start because that’s what drew, the river drew, the first Japanese settlers here. Some of them ended up there on the memorial. They died pursuing their livelihood. Next to it is Kuno Garden so there’s kind of a natural progression right through Steveston. I usually end up at Britannia and we do Murakami house. I touch upon all the different aspects and I weave this story of how we got here and how our community developed. The other tour I did this week was for a bunch of Japanese businessmen. We started at the other end. We did Britannia first and then we talked about Murakami house, how the Japanese first arrived, I took them on a tour of the martial arts building, the cultural center, the Fishermen’s Benevolent Society building, and then I brought them here and then they did a tour of this place. This over here, there’s a section on herring and that’s what they’re interested in is the herring industry. They’re quite fascinated seeing some of the old equipment and stuff. So it really depends on who I’m talking to. I’ve got forty students coming next Friday. They’re all forty and they’re Caucasian kids and Chinese kids that are taking Japanese language school in West Vancouver. The teacher wants them to find out a bit about the history. So they’re going to do the Nikkei Stories of Steveston signs, the kyokos, and they’re going to do that but they wanted an overview. So, right at the start I’m going to meet them at the cultural center and I’ll give them a fifteen, twenty minute overview of the history here and then set them off to do the touring.

I guess Steveston’s unique in that Japanese Canadians came back and there are some real strong markers of the Japanese Canadian community in this area whereas in other parts of the province maybe they’re harder to see or harder to find. Is that something that you notice about Steveston or you think. . .

I think we do have a stronger identity and I mentioned this when we did the Nikkei stories premier. I credited city councils. Some of them have been with us for many, many years but I credit staff and city council for recognizing the contribution of the Japanese Canadian community. They supported us when we started the community center, when we built the martial arts building, when we built the Japanese Canadian Cultural Center, when we built Kuno Gardens, when we planted 300 cherry trees at Gary Point, when we did Murakami house, when we built the statue, you know. There’s all these things that we partnered with and the city has been kind of in the background lending us that support. None of this could happen if city council didn’t give us the support but you don’t see this happening with any other cultural group, and we’ve had a long time Chinese presence here. We’ve had a long time East Indian presence here. You don’t see them having this type of identity here.

Well, does that make things tense or difficult?

No, people ask me that. I said, “well, if they go and do the same things the Japanese Canadian community has done, they deserve the same things we’ve got.” But they haven’t come together yet.

Yeah. So what happened? What was that, sort of, kismet or magic that . . .

Well, I kind of think it was people like our elders like the Rintaro Hayashi and the Sakamotos and the guys who worked hard to start the judo club. Our kendo club goes back to 1914. It was the birthplace of kendo here in Canada. So the genesis of a lot of things that happened here, like, you hear about Hide Hyodo the first certified elementary school teacher who ends up getting the Order of Canada. You hear those stories and there’s a lot of firsts here. The hospital, in our mind, was the first example of socialized medicine in Canada. It was open for, what, three dollars or something a year. Anybody could participate. In fact some of our aldermen were born there. Some of our long time Caucasian, you know, Joe Bauer and those guys were born there at the hospital as well as my father-in-law was born there. There’s that first. So I think the genesis of all the things I do is to pay homage to that generation. The issei, nisei. When I heard the story about the six years after and guys like Rintaro Hayashi donating the money to the community center I thought to myself, “would I have been big enough a man to be forgiving?” I’m not sure I would have been. I think I would have harbored a bit of resentment saying, you know, “screw you. You did that to us and now you want our money?” And yet, our elders were smart enough to look to the future and say, “for the betterment of the children, that’s the best way to go.”

Yeah, and any number of great. . .

Well, you know, we were very fortunate to have people like that who had the smarts to think of about the community first, I think.

So when you hear folks say, “Shikata Ga Nai” is that kind of wrapped up in that? That we sort of put the past behind us and look forward?

I think to a certain extent. I don’t dwell on the injustice. That happened, you can’t go back in time and correct it. Redress was one aspect of trying to reconcile that. I liked the process that the Aboriginal or First Nations are going through with the reconciliation. I think there needs to be reconciliation more so than with the Japanese. That to me was cultural genocide. They don’t like to use that terminology but I think that’s what happened to the First Nations where you took children away, you put them in residential schools, and then you mentally, physically, and sexually abuse them. You know? And they say, “well, why can’t they get over it?” Well, it’s going to be a generational correction. They were without their parents, they didn’t know how to parent, none of that was passed onto them, and then they sunk into alcohol and drug abuse, there’s high unemployment. What do you expect? Anything we do to help that population we should do because of the genocide we perpetrated on the culture. Now, having said that, the things that happened to the Japanese was bad. It was related to civil rights and human rights and everything else but, again, to me that’s passed. That’s why I focus on what’s happened since 1950.

Sure, I mean I guess sometimes I find myself focusing on it only in so far as, “could it happen again?”

Well it can! You just heard about it in the states. They want to monitor the Muslim communities, they want to restrict Muslims from coming into America.

Sure.

That’s trump saying that.

I know but there’s about fifty percent of the Republicans believe the same thing. In fact, you’re seeing this manifesting in Europe also in Germany, France, and places like that.

But realize, America was not a white country until all these immigrants came from Europe and other white peoples’ country in order to make America. The American Indians were the first people that lived there.

And yet these newcomers perpetrated a genocide on that population.

Yeah, there’s a long history of that in Canada, too.

Oh, yeah. We don’t have clean hands. They talk about, “Oh, the Underground Railroad” and how we got all the slaves to Canada. Well, we treated them like shit when they got here. So what happened is that they talked them into going back to Africa. That’s why Freetown got established. Right?

Sure.

Look up in your history the guys that were in Nova Scotia, they were living in hobbles, basically holes in the ground with mud thatched roofs; no jobs, no agrarian culture. So what they did was to solve that they said, “oh, what you need to do is go back to Africa.” So they went to Africa, established Freetown and right across the harbour they could still see ships taking black slaves to America. These guys were, you know, it was almost like a full circle. Canada has got dirty hands in this. They were just as racist and. . . They weren’t slave owners per se but they discriminated against the blacks and everything else. This whole thing where they all came in the Underground Railroad and Canada saved them was bullshit. We never did that. If you look at our history with the First Nations and all the incoming countries, they’ve practiced the same thing.

Head tax, Aboriginal injustices across the country, internment and dispossession.

Yeah, it just goes on, and on, and on. I always laugh at American because they always talk about nuclear disarmament. They’re the only country in the world that’s dropped a nuclear bomb on another country. Not only once, but twice. I think they would have made the point once, don’t you think? But they had to go do it twice. There was no reason for it. In fact, if you read history, Japan wasn’t the first target. They were going to drop it, actually, on Germany. There are some theories that they didn’t want to drop it on a white population.

Pearl Harbor sort of becomes this strange catalyst all the way up the coast. All the way up here and I can’t even imagine what folks were thinking at the time but it seems to me like, you know, otherwise smart, capable people became incredibly nervous and anxious and did incredibly. . .

I think they saw it as an opportunity to get rid of. . . because the Japanese had taken over certain industries and they saw it as an opportunity to get rid of this problem. In fact, after the war is finished, the American Japanese were allowed to go home. Here, they said “okay, your choice is stay east of the Rockies or go back to Japan.” Well, most of these people were Canadian born. You know, Japan was a foreign country to them.

Right.

About 4000 went back. In fact, my father-in-law went back to Japan. He was so upset with how he was treated he was getting into a boat and he threw his Canadian citizenship papers down at the foot of an RCMP officer. He says, “fortunately, the officer picked it up and says ‘you may need this sometime in the future.’” My father-in-law said “thank god he picked it up and gave it back to me.” But he was in a prisoner of war camp in Angler. He was pleasantly surprised when he got there because to me he said, “oh, you know when I got there they gave me this uniform and it had the flag of Japan on the back.” Unbeknownst to him it was a target. So there’s this big red circle on the back but it was a target. In fact, he was saying that one guy went stir-crazy and tried to climb the fence and he was shot in his camp.

Where was this?

Angler, Angler Petawawa, Ontario.

Yup.

He was the one of the guys that the immigration officer here, they put him up there and they locked him up and they had a riot because they kept on restricting. The family used to be able to come to the building and they used to talk and they would say, “no, no talking in Japanese.” Every time they disobeyed they kept on moving the people back until they were back at the overpass bridge which you could barely hear and so they had a riot. My father-in-law said he wasn’t involved in that but they tore out the toilets and all this damage. So they actually had to call the riot police and that kind of stuff but it was all the young guys saying, you know, “we’re Canadians. You can’t do this to us.” They all got upset and they said they could and they sent them to a prisoner of war camp.

It’s amazing how all of us orderly just packed up our belongings and got on the train, for us anyway, and went to Alberta.

Well, I think we wanted to be loyal Canadians.

Hm?

I think the Japanese Canadians wanted to show that they’re loyal Canadians. I hear the story of the four-fourty-second battalion. They were cannon fodder. They would send them into the worst situations. “Oh, these guys are trapped can you guys go rescue them?” and it was up against impossible odds. They’re the highest decorated regiment in American military history only because, to me, they were trying to prove that they were true Americans, right? They sacrificed their lives.

They sacrificed so many of their own people in order to prove that though.

As you remember it, it was just orderly? It was, got on the train and headed out to Alberta?

Well, we thought it was fun getting on the train. That was the first time we got on a train.

Remember how old she was, right?

Right, fourteen, fifteen, right.

I’m sure grandma and grandpa were quite worried.

Hm?

I’m sure grandma and grandpa were quite worried and I think my dad, you know, because you kind of had a choice. You could go to Lillooet or Greenwood on your own and live in those locations. I think Lillooet had a self-made camp outside of the city property. Greenwood City was the first place that really welcomed the Japanese; the Franciscan monks there and the mayor because by then the industry had deteriorated so they thought this was a good way to replenish the community. I think dad figured, to keep the family together, because there was this unknown about what was going to happen. . . because if you went to internment camps they literally took the men and the elder sons and sent them to the rural camps or wherever. So you were separated and there was no communication. I think dad wanted to go to Alberta to keep the family together just because of the unknown. They worked there for about two years and in the wintertime they want to Slave Lake area and they logged. This is forty, fifty below weather.

That’s because they had so many young men loafing around and then the BC Security Commission tried to find work for the men folks for the winter months. Summer months they came home to the farm, winter months they went up north to fish at Slave Lake and, where was the other one. One was close to where Karen lives right now.

When they tell me the story of the treck to Alberta, it reminds me of the story roots. These families would arrived at the train station and the farmers would be there and they’d be looking over all the families looking for the most able bodied people. Well, even grandpa, you were saying grandpa even. . . I guess he was in his early 60s but he was still strong and able-bodied. He’d be, what, 5’2 or so. He was quite a short guy but he was quite strong for a man of his size. So the farmer would come and say, “okay, I’ll take that family” and away they went. They would put them in, basically, chicken coups. My aunt says the first time they went in there she went to lie down on the bunk bed, she looked up and the whole bottom side of the bunk bed was just covered with bedbugs. She ended up lying on a bench.

Bed bugs!

Well, it was basically a chicken coup they put them in.

My husband said he said he slept on the and he still got bed bugs on him.

The conditions were pretty horrific and there was no insulation in the things and you know Alberta weather in the wintertime.

But, you know, one thing is that no Japanese people ever fought against it. We were told to go there and we stayed there. People there were more of a European nation people that had farms there. A Hungarian, he was very nice to us.

Well, he gets free labour. He should be happy.

Not only that. I think he understood what had happened to us.

Well, coming from a European situation they probably experienced war and things like that, too.

I don’t think he was in Canada that long.

Okay. How many families were there working for this Hungarian guy?

Just one family.

Just you all?

Our family that consisted of three brothers and four sisters and mom and dad.

That’s a lot of staff, that’s a lot of people working.

Mhm.

When we first planted his sugar beets we had to thin them out so that. . . you put one plant that much by. . . But when they were planted they just dropped the seeds down so you had to go. . .

Thin out the plants.

Later on they got smart and I heard after we left there they were able to put them a little bit further apart without nothing in between so that. . . The seed itself was costly to them with the way they just planted it like that but if somebody had figured out to drop a little bit, it’s about six inches apart I think, later on. That’s when you went to Winnipeg.

Hey, last chance, I’ve got to get cracking pretty soon.

Okay.

Is there anything else you want to. . . I kind of gave you a kind of overview of life here in Richmond but. . .

But you know, it’s not just only our story. There’s a lot of other Japanese people that have different stories than us. . .

That have gone to different parts. Not all of us went to Alberta. My sister-in-laws went to Manitoba and then they went to Dryden, Ontario.

And then one to Leamington, apparently.

Well, that’s one of the things. You’ve got this separation of the families and I never really got to know her side of the family other than that they would come and visit once in a while. When I went across Canada I stopped there and got to meet first cousins I had never met before. That’s what those kind of historical events do to families. They separate them and, fortunately, we came back. Not everybody came back. Maybe a third of the people came back.

My husband knew nothing but fishing and he wasn’t a young man, how old was he when he came back?

Well it was 1918, so 1950, so what’s that? Thirty something?

’50 and ’18, I’d say minus that.

But the fishing companies cherished the contribution the Japanese fishermen made that they sent emissaries to Alberta, Manitoba to try and entice them back because the productivity. . . It was mainly Japanese in the fishing industry. All these other guys didn’t know how to fish. There were some Finns up at Finn Slew.

So what happened in 1942?

Well, they sold all the boats off and I guess people learned how to fish by trial and error I guess. After the Japanese left, the Vietnamese came in and took over. They bought all the Japanese boats and they didn’t have a clue. They would head out not knowing where they were going or what they were doing and it’s amazing that none of them survived. There were some very violent interactions because, you know, if the Vietnamese is told “we’re going to kill you because you set the net wrong.” Well, they take that literally because they’ve come from a country that’s been at war for hundreds of years. The other thing is, they didn’t know what the rules were because there were no rules, written rules. But we know that you can’t cork somebody, which means setting a net in front of them, you wait your turn. When you come into port you wait your turn to unload the net. These guys were cutting in front of people because time is money to them.

There’s a code.

Yeah, there’s an unwritten code on the water but nobody told them the code, right?

No one was around to tell them the code.

Well, there were still a few guys so they finally had a meeting and said, “look, this is the way we work here.” Once they were told they said, “well, fine. Why didn’t you tell us?” After that we never had another problem with the Vietnamese.

Well, with the school group coming in I think that’s our cue to call it an afternoon.

I hope that helps you in your. . .

It does, it helps me quite a bit. Thank you so much.

You’re very welcome.