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evacuated
at four or five years of age. Her family had gotten permission to stay in not very nice
to them. evacuation
of Japanese-Canadians. The interview closes with
This oral history is from an interview conducted by the Oral History cluster of the Landscapes of Injustice project.
Oh yeah, sure I could type. I could type 163 words a minute or something
oh yeah, sure. He's going to take us, after we finish packing and all, he's going to take us to Marine building and we'll be able to meet Justice Smith and we'll see the inside of the Marine building.By the time we finished packing it was pitch dark and nobody could do anything
I'll bet you, you couldn't do it.I got sick and tired of hearing that all the time and I finally told him
well, if that's the case why don't you just throw me out on the road and see whether I can manage or not.Then he never told me that anymore. He realized, I guess, that that was not a nice story to tell me and not nice to, you know, make me feel guilty because I didn't do the same as him. I know I was incapable anyway but ... You couldn't have hacked it on your own in Canada? I don't think so. I was a very naive child. I didn't know anything about anything. I only knew that I had to look after my younger brothers and sisters. So you weren't that naïve, you had to look after them. Well, yeah. I know but I didn't know much about anything else. I knew how to get down to church or wherever on the streetcar and that kind of thing but didn't know much of anything else. Your siblings relied on you then to sort of ... Well, yes at that time because you were all so small. I was maybe six to twelve years old while they're all, well Eddie's two years younger than me, Blanche a year younger than that, Meech is a year younger than that, and Greg was two years younger than that. Inside of five years my mother had six children. So, I think that's what did her in. But anyway, I was responsible for looking after them. Eddie kind of looked after himself after a while because he had his own set of friends and he did things on his own, but I still had my two sisters and younger brother tagging along everywhere. I had to make sure that they didn't get hurt. Anytime my sister fell, the second one, the Blanche there. Not my second sister, this is my first sister. Anyway, every time she was a cry baby and anytime she'd be skipping along on the sidewalk and trip on the little bit of grass that rolls in between those blocks of cement, she'd fall and of course she'd cry because she was hurt and I got into trouble for it. It was my fault because I wasn't looking after her. The bar was higher for you then. It was and I was to set a good example all the time, forever
you know, Florence, those children are older now. They're over eighteen and there's no reason for you to worry forever and ever about them. You have to let them go. When are you going to let them go?I thought about it, I didn't know. But when I thought about it I could see that she was right. I shouldn't have to say anything all the time. It's up to them now. They're over twenty-one so I just let it go. And of course, I was still working in the sawmill but they were all going out to teach and do other work. My brothers are both at university, so they come home in the summer. Your mom at this time, she was busy running around after the five of you? Yeah. See, when you don't have electricity you have to wash all your clothes by hand. You have to cook with a cooking stove. She made sure we did our homework by light. It wasn't easy for her. Not only did she have, well she had seven people to wash and cook for but then sometimes her father would come and visit and stay for a few months so there were eight of us and she was busy. And then, when you consider the fact that my parents are city people and move out to a place like Alpine Inn where it's all country, and other people all had gardens and my parents had never gardened before but they had a plot of land set aside for them so
I guess we'd better try
well, we'll buy some plots of land and we'll supply the lumber and you people supply the labour and then you can have homes, houses to live in.So, that was what they did. Started building the houses on end of March and by May twenty-fifth Alpine Inn was empty. Everybody had either gone to Japan or gone east. The rest of us had gone to live out by, it was at Christina Lake. Down the lake. Was there any conversation in your house about where you all would go? They talked about it for a while but not much because I think my parents always wanted to come back to Vancouver. So they didn't want ... My dad says
well, I'm not taking my family to Japan where everybody is starving.We thought that was true. We don't want to starve. Well, there was nothing for him out east either. He didn't have any business connections or anything. We just waited until the government said we could go back to the coast. Then my dad went to the coast. How long before you followed and did you get back to the coast? I didn't go to the coast. I was getting married
oh yeah, I worked for the government for all this time, I got paid. You know how much I got paid for it? One dollar!He said. If you could ask your dad a question about what he did, how he got into what he did, what would you want to know? I don't know. He went to Japan on business. This is before the war and I still have the doll he brought back the last trip he made. It was quite a lot tall Japanese lady doll and as soon as I saw it I knew that was the one I wanted
well, then we should hire somebody to do part of the bookkeeping.That took some of the pressure off. I used to do everything there, even first date
you should work every morning, or every afternoon.I said,
well, that's only, five times four is twenty hours a week and I'm going to work three days a week, three eight hour days, so that's twenty-four hours. I'll be working more my way than your way.First he suggested that I work 100%. I said
I don't know enough about housekeeping to do that kind of work so I need some time to do my housework and that.My husband didn't know anything either. He was even worse than me
you learn to drive in the first year you're marriedand I said
okayso that's what I did. You had family close for a good while up in Christina Lake? Yeah, about three, two and a half miles away. You'd have to walk there if I didn't know how to drive. That's right. If you don't know how to drive three miles is a good hoof, especially in the winter. But eventually your family spread out? So where did everyone go? As you know, Eddie came here to the coast. He was working in Merritt for a while but after he got married he was here. My sister was teaching in Richmond. My younger sister was working in the Ottawa hospital. She was a lab technician, and Greg he was mostly working in Cranbrook and then he got his degree and he started working down at the coast. There were just different lumber companies there. Acorn Lumber is one name I remember. So, I think he was selling lumber. I don't know, we're pretty stationary. We don't move around from place to place. Well, you find something good that works right? It's nine years now that you've come down here. But your children would have been raised up in Christina Lake. So how many kids did you have in total? Three and when we first moved in ... I told you we were living in this little log cabin. Yeah, my husband put one in and he put in a washer-dryer too. He's pretty handy. He knew how to get a pump house for getting water out of the lake and that was what we were drinking. After the first baby was born, well, drafty log cabin, but we managed but then when we got pregnant the second time we didn't have room
oh, there's all these things I want to tell you about, what your mom and dad went through and ...I'm going to write an autobiography one of these days, then that will tell them. What do you think you want to talk about in your autobiography? Everything, from the time I was a little child. My first recollections as a child; I've already written about that in my dad's biography. You wrote your dad's autobiography? What was that process like? It wasn't too bad. I just don't have time for it. Right now I'm trying to write my mother's biography but I don't have time. Yeah, and today was a very lax sort of a day. Well, that was the day I finished off my washing. I had a load full of dishes that were finished and then I put away the clothes that I wore down to the states. In the meantime I'm also trying to make some things for the bazar at the end of this month and then I had to cook supper and lunch but usually there's something else. Today I could have gone to meditation but I didn't go to it. I could have gone to book club but I don't belong there. I just refuse because I don't get enough time to read books and then they had a religious sort of a speech, kind of a talk and I didn't go to that either because I'm not a very religious person
yeah, I'm going down to Safeway and I'll meet you there.So, here's something I've been thinking about lately because it's coming up on Remembrance Day, right? Well, what do you think I got this for? Oh, yeah I see. You've got a very nice one there Yeah, I got it in Ottawa when I visited my sister It's beautiful. Yeah, I know. That's why I got it. So, my question is, I guess, who do you remember on Remembrance Day and yeah ... I remember when we were children my dad always went to the Japanese memorial in Stanley Park. He laid a reef there and so he'd hire a taxi and all seven of us would pile in there. That was in addition to Remembrance Day and what not that we did at school. During the evacuation we didn't do anything but after I got out it was a holiday, a work holiday, so I was busy at home working. But now I find time. I remember the soldiers that looked after us. I know there was one friend in Vancouver, she just moved from Saskatchewan so she didn't know about racial prejudice so she was friendly with us and her mother was working in a shipyard or something. And, I don't know, I knew there was a son, a young fellow who belonged to a family down the road on our same block and he was killed, I guess. I read in the newspaper afterwards that his mother had gone all the way out to Holland, I think it was, to see his grave or something. His name was Arney. They had four girls and then the one boy. The oldest was the boy and he got killed. I was thinking that's kind of sad too. Yeah, for sure. Was there a large RCMP presence around the Alpine Inn or in Christina Lake. Yeah, they'd come once a month to check and make sure we're still there
well, what are you getting the worms for?
oh, for medicinal purposes
you know what's funny? I never seen it on any menu anywhere.I know that my dad liked the traditional Japanese foods so when he had quite a bit of dementia my younger brother would take him out to dinner every week and I know that one day he said
he disappeared into the kitchen and he didn't come out for a long time. I don't know what happened but all of a sudden here comes this boiled tofu like the way I used to have it all the time before. My was I ever happyhe says
Oh, feed them to the cat.
Well, could I buy one or two from you?
Oh yeah, I'll just give them to you or something.So I got it and I cooked it up with soy sauce and sugar and my dad, oh he thought it was so good. He would stay down here for a while and then after a while Blanche couldn't stand it too long. Eddie was up north in
ohhhhe ate the eyeballs and he thought that was wonderful, he just loved the eyeballs. I didn't mind part of it but not all of it. He took all the meat out of the cheeks. He thought it was really good. He liked the traditional Japanese foods that my mother used to make for him. It sounds like your father was not well towards the end of his life. Well, he had dementia. He used to drink and smoke so much. I didn't see him drunk that much but I know that he used to drink quite a bit. During business hours and stuff he would end up drinking. He'd come home tottering around, weaving his way into the house. He never drove. Always had a taxi then; Yama Taxi. Anyway, other times, well, I know he smoked all the time. He used to smoke two packages a day of those Big Player cigarettes. Well, he decided he was changing to Menthol cigarettes because every time his pals came along they would think that this players were their own and he'd find his cigarettes had disappeared. So, he decided he would just smoke the Menthol cigarettes which he did for quite a while until the evacuation and then he went back to players. He used to smoke two packages a day, and they were larger packages too of players in those days and he smoked two of those every day. He used to drink Colbey's Specials and he'd drink two of those a week. That's what I mean, he used to drink and smoke a lot. During the time I was working in the sawmill office the sawmill office is filled with his cigarette smoke and I'd breathe that all in and out. He said
oh, you don't have to worry, if anybody is going to get lung cancer it'd be me.That's the way it was in those days. Everybody thought the smoker would get the lung cancer, now they're finding second hand smoke is worse. But I didn't know any better either and I couldn't tell him to stop. But none of our family smoked except him. We had a family gathering and nobody smokes. On my husband's side too they either quit smoking or they don't smoke at all. We had a family gathering with them and there's forty people and nobody's smoking. All the children and grandchildren, nobody is smoking. At some point did you ever want to get your dad to quit? I couldn't get him to quit anyway, I knew that so I never mentioned anything. My mother was the only one who would have any control over that. Yeah, and she couldn't. No. So I figured why should I bother it will only upset me and it will upset him too. Sounds like he was a stubborn guy. He was, very stubborn. Sometimes he just would not give in. Did he have a temper? Oh yes, he would get really mad sometimes too. But, well, you just have to get used to it he's your father. What can you do? Not much I suppose
how can I do all of what you're telling me plus what I know I'm supposed to do and you're not doing your job. You're leaving out things and I asked you to fix that up and you told me you were getting to old and couldn't remember and if that's the case you should quit.He was really hurt then and my mother wasn't really well. She had a lot of asthma and she had heart trouble and so they moved down to the coast in 1961-62 or something like that. It's hard to work with family. It is and especially when they have such high expectations of you and he's the boss no matter what. So, it's hard. I managed
well, as a church member you have certain obligations to the church.I said
I couldn't go because my mother needed me at home.She says
well, there are certain obligations.I said
well, I'm sorry I can't do it.She was quite upset with me. Well, I knew that I had to help my mother. My sister Blanche is doing all the family ironing and my other sister was cleaning the house, you see. Was religion important to your parents at all? No, I don't think so. My dad, he had been going to church more or less but when his mother got the Spanish flu and he asked for the minister to come over because my mother was dying, the minister said he was too busy. So he asked again a third time and he was still too busy. And my dad said
well, that's it with religionand he never went back to church again. I think he went back to church to get married but that's about it and of course when my mother passed away, well, he went to the funeral but Blanche is the one that bossed him around and did things. But anyway, he didn't go to church very much. My mother used to try to go at Easter and at Christmas. But, you know, sometimes she was just too busy and of course when we got to Alpine Inn there was no church at all. I've been going to Sunday school every Sunday until the church closed down with the evacuation. The United Church minister would come once a month or so from Grand Forks but he's preaching a message for a three year old to a sixteen year old. It wasn't much fun. So it didn't really resonate with you at that point. No, so I never went to church. I still don't go to church. Your dad would have moved down here then? You parents moved down to the coast, not to here, not to Port Coquitlam per say but to the ... They moved to a place out by the Dunbar area. Mhm. Yeah, that was in the early '60s. Yeah, so I have their first grandchild and he's covered in eczema from head to toe and she tells me that I should just put liqueur chrome and swab it with boracic acid solution and swab liqueur chrome on him. Liqueur chrome is red. I said,
well, I have other things that my doctor told me to put on him.She thought that ... we all had eczema too but it was in the crook of our elbows and the crook of our knees and that kind of stuff. Maybe a little bit on our faces or something. But my son, well we have allergies on both sides of the family because my husband's family is very allergic too. Poor thing, he was just covered in ... all crusty and everything else. He did spend two and a half weeks in the Trail Hospital. They still didn't have him in clothes. They had him spread eagled in the crib there, naked and they took him off of my milk and gave him soybean milk. The first fruit they gave him was bananas and he's allergic to that. They tried to give him some meat and they gave him a mixture of veal, lamb, and chicken I think it was, yeah. He's allergic to that. We go to visit him in the hospital and there he is all broken out.
Well, what happened?
Well, we gave him some meat.
and what was in the meat?
chicken.I said,
well, I gave him chicken at home and he was allergic to that.I told the doctor and he says
mother knows best.He's the first doctor that ever said anything like that to me. Until that the doctor always knew better but this is a very good pediatrician and I had to make splints for his arms and legs and have him spread eagled in bed. While he was in the hospital, he told me to use old material like old sheets and old pillow slips and use them to make the splints and stuff because they're well washed.
Don't take any new material and don't use any gauzeand all that kind of stuff. Did your parents enjoy being grandparents? They were ... Oh yes but my mother at this time was so weak and she wasn't able to do much. When we went down, and my son was so used to us looking after him, he wouldn't go to his grandparents very easily either. But the very last day my mother was carrying him, well he'd put his head right to her forehead so that really pleased her. We had the second one about November to June, anyway, about sixteen months later and when we went down, well, my mother just couldn't hold her. She was sitting on the recliner chair and we put the baby in her arms, that's all she could do. And your dad, was it like a ... I don't know my parents say that being grandparents is better than being a parent. Did your dad seem to take on that role? No, not really. Well, you know he never really took on the role of a father with us too much. He was around once in a while but my mother did all the work and all the disciplining and all the teaching. My dad would just give us some stories sometimes. So he was a storyteller? Yeah, and there was a man down here the other day and he said
I understand that the Japanese people, instead of disciplining their children, they would tell them a story.And I said
yeah, that's what my dad would do. He would tell a story.Did you like listening to his stories as a kid or was it sort of like ... Yeah, they were interesting. He always made them sound interesting because he was a good storyteller and his vocabulary was good. Yeah, and he had traveled a lot. But he didn't tell us too much about his travels or anything. It was only when he was trying to tell us a story about our discipline
you might fall down.I said
you're the one that's always falling down
I do not fall down!
well, they're just the same as everybody else. They're very nice people.So they accepted us at Alpine Inn. I saw a newspaper article from Life Magazine or Time Magazine from the time period and it talks about how to distinguish between a Japanese person and a Chinese person.
This person is the enemy and this person is not the enemy.And I just thought, my goodness this is ... Well, what's the difference we look kind of alike. There is a Chinese person living here, a Chinese lady, and we have a Pilipino lady and ... Here we are today and it just doesn't even cross our minds to matter. But there was a Chinese man living here, he passed away now but he was a little bit older than me and he said that when he got to grade eight, finished grade eight, his parents decided it was time he went to work. So he did and he worked for what is not BC Hydro and he worked himself up to being almost an engineer. He went up around the countryside and made sure that telephone, not telephone poles, power poles were built properly and those great big whatever things, towers, were built properly and he designed some of it and that. He was a very accomplished man and you know, but anyway. One day I gave him a piece of paper to read and he laughed
I can't read your Japanese writing there it looks different
I can't read that
I don't care anymore, I want to get married.That's what I was waiting for him to say and then we got married. It was a very small wedding. Just our families and a few people from the community and that. But as a child I think you're more at your parent's mercy for the books that they provide and ... Well, there were no books they were put away in a carton and I couldn't get at them. There was no room anyway to put books. They said
oh, well there's a library.So I went to see, maybe there's a book I can borrow. I went to see and they're all Japanese books. Shakespeare in Japanese. I couldn't read any of them. In the local library? Well, the library at Alpine Inn. There's no way for me to get out of Alpine Inn. I got out once or twice a year to go to the dentist and I got car sick every time because you know you don't go into a vehicle at all and then all of a sudden you're in there and I was so sick going there and then we have to eat lunch and then after that we come home. I just hated going to Grand Forks but it was necessary. So, you missed the books? Oh yeah, it's the reading material. Well, sure there was a newspaper but that was up at the hotel and we were living in the cabin by this time and so that was a block away. You can't read it during the daylight hours because we're going to school and doing other things and at night time, well, you don't go wandering around in the dark especially when you're a young girl. I don't think any harm would have come to me but you never know and there were bears and coyotes and dear around. Fair enough. Well, Florence thank you so much for your time this evening it was a pleasure chatting with you.