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In this interview with
This oral history is from an interview conducted by the Oral History cluster of the Landscapes of Injustice project.
Mrs. Brown, Mr. Brown. We never knew whether it was Harry Brown, or Joe Brown, or Mary Black or what. It was always Mrs or Mr. It wasn’t until after the Second World War that people started to sort of loosen up from that ... I call-what Gordon and myself always call-the Victorian era of very strict lines. Manners. Thou shalt not do this. You eat with the fork in your left hand. You called your mom
Mother. You never called her
Mom. It was always
Mother. Dad was a little looser. I never called my father
Father. I always called my father
Dad.
Mrs. Knight.Who’s Mrs. Knight? Heck, there’s probably dozens of us. I remember when we went to England, we went to Gordon’s father’s home in Hereford. He was from Herefordshire , actually a small town outside of the main city called Hereford. In a place called Lyde. L-Y-D-E. And actually, in his lifetime, in the pre-1900s, it was called Pipe cum Lyde, which is Gaelic language of that area. And we looked on the list in the telephone book, hoping to find some relatives. There was about two pages of
Knights.
Musfeldts.
Mrs ... .Whatever. And they didn’t seem to ... I know my own mother was definitely biased. That’s not her ... it’s not her fault. That’s just the way things were. I think it’s hard to describe the Victorian era other than the fact that they were ... it was a very long era. We know that. Therefore, it was very ingrained in several generations that Victorian attitude. And as a consequence, it was a hard thing for my generation to break. Some of us still had it, retained it. I think post-secondary education was the key to the breakdown of ... women became much more positive in their attitudes. They, for one thing, there were a lot of women working outside the home during the war. They didn’t go back into the home after the war. Now that was a disturbing situation for a lot of men when they came back after the war. Their wives had ... whom they had married when they were going overseas, and sometimes left them pregnant. Therefore, their child had no recollection of their dad to sort of ... engender ... and as a consequence, I think there was a general breaking down of that attitude.
Hey, be my bride!
captured populations, and they were very careful to do what they were told to do and not make too many mistakes. Otherwise, I guess they ended up getting a bullet to the head. But we did have a lot of friends. And they just told their parents bye-bye. They didn’t say where they were going. And they came. And when Canada opened their doors to immigration, people didn’t need a passport. People didn’t need a visa. They were just landless immigrants. We had several friends that were landless immigrants. And they became first class citizens. Some of those people ... they became very wealthy. And some came before the war, too, particularly if they were Jewish. And this man that we met, Ralph Hertzstein, he was the only one of his family that survived. And why? He encouraged them to leave Ger ... Berlin while they could, but they said,
Oh ... no, no.They sure shrugged their shoulders at it. Ralph said,
I told them bye-bye.And he went to Britain, to England. And he stayed and learned the English language. And then he went down to Capetown, into South Africa. And what did he do? He ended up in the South African British Army, so he participated in the Second World War with the ... a German ... .
East is east, and west is west, and never the twain will meet.Well, we know that because it’s just like Washington says that folks from the state of Washington, just south of here, say Washington, D.C.,
We may be named ‘Washington’, but that’s about it.The war here was a non-entity in some ways, in many ways, until the Pearl Harbor incident. We had established military here, a little mountain camp, and they were more ... it was more ... .there was a military base out there at Little Mountain because the RCMP had barracks at 33rd and Heather, I guess it was, after your name. And umm ... there was vacant land there, and they had ... built a camp, more or less sort of a ... a basic area for the ... getting people from other parts of B.C. that joined the military. Then they would separate what they wanted to do, whether they wanted to go to the army, air force or navy.
Good morning. And then they had a daughter, Kay. I think she was at least two years older than me. And she was friends ... she made friends with Fuji Kuronaga. And they went to Britannia High School. They were big kids
Oh, you’re a German.
Oh, God! People are buying bedroom furniture for ten bucks!I guess if you offered a dollar for a Japanese antique vase, you got it. They didn’t care. All they wanted was a few bucks to cover the costs of renting that building, whoever owned it. The Japanese belongings ... and I guess by that time ... And this was in 1949? Or ... ? It must have been around ’46, ’47. Forty-six, maybe, because the war ... I got my degree in May ’45 ... and umm ... May 8th or 9th was V-E Day. And we have to remember the Japanese war, the war with Japan, went on ‘til August when we all know that all hell broke loose with Hiroshima, Nagasaki. So maybe it was in there, or maybe it was a little after, I don’t know.
an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, as the saying goes. And I guess the people, the Japanese people, by this time, had established themselves wherever they were, and had gotten on with their lives. After all, ’41 to ’45 ... it was four years. Do you remember, did anyone you knew from school come back after 1949 when people were allowed to go back to the coast? No. By that time, we’d all scattered. I got married in ’50. And I don’t remember any Japanese people coming back. I don’t think so. None ... no. It wasn’t until ... as far as I’m concerned, it wasn’t until ’04 when we had ... Templeton Junior High celebrated their 75th anniversary. And as it turned out, and this seems to be quite usual, it’s always the older generations that participate in reunions. The recent graduates, they’re not old enough. They don’t give much thought to it. They’re in the family raising stage, the professional working stage. And it’s not until they get over 55 and are empty nesters that they start thinking about,
Having the 50th anniversary. That’s kind of cool! Let’s go!So I think that’s the attitude people take. And that’s why in ’04, I think, let’s see, Templeton, they had their 75th, I think it was ’03. Twenty-seven and seventy-five ... uh ... no, it would be ’02 ... ’02. Now I didn’t go because, I’ve forgotten now, I think I was out of town or something. But I didn’t go to the 75th. But they did get in touch with me to have an anniversary reunion for our class of ’38. And the people that got involved in that got a hold of the class list and got a hold of almost 90 percent of us, except for those that lost their lives in the intervening years. And that’s how we got in contact with some of our Japanese friends. And they were good enough, and things had disappeared, that we all became friends. That’s wonderful. Because although the Japanese ... .Margaret didn’t come. Margaret Nishikawara didn’t come. And I’m suspicious that she wasn’t available, or they couldn’t get a hold of her because she by that time had retired. And somebody said she was living in Kansas. But I don’t know how true that was, but the one, of course, who has continued communication with me is Roy Oshiro. Now Roy didn’t come to the anniversary reunion. He was still involved with his work. And there again, Roy had gone back to Okinawa. After the war, he went to Okinawa, went back home, went back to his ancestors’ homeland. It wasn’t Japan, per se. But it was Okinawa. He, in the intervening years, had become a Baptist minister. He’d converted to Christianity, and chose the Baptist Church. And as a matter of fact, Roy, he has ... they had in 20 ... 2012, I think it was 2012, UBC invited all the class ... all the Japanese people that were ... would’ve been graduated in the intervening war years, to 1947, I don’t know, ’46, ‘47, no it would be ’45, I guess, that would like to come back and receive their bachelor degree, whether or not they’d finished four years or three years. And Roy came back, and we made contact. But unfortunately, there again, he was over in Vancouver. And by this time, I wasn’t driving over to what I call it
Bigtown
Bricel, and he did the genealogy for his family. And he got it back to the 13th century.
If we waited til our 50th, there may not be that many to come back.We had it on the 66th. They called it Route 66, anyway. It was a great little party, actually. That’s wonderful. I had two other questions for you. One was ... you had mentioned some of Gordon’s memories of Japanese Canadians and friends that he had. Yes, well, there were Japanese people living over in Kitsilano. I guess, probably, they were fisher people. Or maybe they were in food ... .there were lots of Japanese people in the food industry. And he had a fellow, a friend by the name of ... I think it was Roy Nishio. Nishio was his last name. And they used to play tennis together. And they all went to Kitsilano High School. But Gordon didn’t mention a great deal about him other than that he was Japanese. Kids don’t talk about ... it’s funny. He can have Chinese friends. He can have Japanese friends. He can have German friends. It never bothered him. It’s you. You and me. You said that you’re from Ontario. And I’m from Alberta. Ya. Ya, I like that you mention that in your story, that you had friends of all kinds of backgrounds, and it didn’t really matter. It doesn’t. It never strikes us. It’s like my granddaughter has a boyfriend. And his father is from ... One’s from the Congo, and I think the other’s from Uganda. Guess what he is?
I don’t remember. Oh, I hardly remember going to elementary school, let alone remembering it.I think memory is the one key to people being able to relate to previous generations, particularly one’s going into what their children might call great ... great-grandmom, great-grandpa. If they’re interested ... but are people really interested? Are we more, with our rapid communications of today, compared to even when I was a teenager? Something can happen now, and I talk to my friends on Facebook or Twitter or whatever. And what happened, what I’m describing, is instantaneous. When I was a teenager, what happened had to be about two days old. The only reason we found out about Pearl Harbor was the fact that short wave radio from Honolulu to Washington and New York and Los Angeles. Short wave radio, that didn’t kick in to Vancouver ... oh, I found out about it when I was at the ice rink. But, of course, migrations of people today, too. I mean I can get on an aircraft here and in less than twenty hours, I can be in Africa.
anthropocene. Yes, I’ve seen that. Ya. It’s the age of hu ... . A-N-T-H-R-O-P-O-C-E-N-E. Anthropocene, which is the epoch of our particular human presence on the planet. Now how long have we taken to get here, to this point, when you consider the dinosaurs roamed the planet for millions of years, compared to the presence of the human animal, which has only been here for less than 100,000? And will we see the end of it? It’s hard to say. So what I would think, taking away from it, is that it’s time we rolled the young people, getting them at five and six years old aware of where they are. I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but certainly, their parents, my granddaughter, she’s aware of where she’s at. My grandson, he’s aware of where he’s at, much more than when I was five years younger than them because they’re now in their mid-twenties, where I was. But ... if something can be brought to form, fine. But there was an interesting article in one of the MacLean’s magazines about the human animal being ... aggressive. We all know, at least, I’m speaking now from a wildlife biologist, there are rise and falls of animal populations. And in the cycle of animals in the wilderness, in Canada, we have the mouse cycle and the rabbit cycle. The mouse cycle governs the small predators, and the rabbit cycle governs the middle-sized predators, like the cougar, and wolf, because that’s their main food. And when the mouse cycle is at a low, so is the martens and fish and otters. When it gets up into the rabbit cycle, when there’s a disease of rabbits, it causes the rabbits to die off. Then in the following years, the cougar and ... bobcat population and the wolf dies down.
Oh, another one.
We don’t take women.Well, end of story. So I had to flip around to find something else. So I ended up, I guess, I finally ended up wanting to be a nurse. But I couldn’t ... they wouldn’t accept me in nursing because I was too young. Good luck, eh. So I was working in St. Paul’s Hospital summer of ’42, after I had finished Senior Matric. And I thought I would take a lab course. They gave a lab course there. So I applied, and I was accepted. And Dr. McNair thought I would do okay. So anyways, came August, and I got my marks from Senior Matric. I topped the class with biology
Well, you’re eighteen. It’s time you paid a little bit of your way.Well, how am I going to go to university? I got the money to go to UBC. No problem there. Plus, I got $25 extra for books, so it was a total of $200. So anyways, Dr. McNair said to me when I went to him, and he pointed his finger at me and said,
You go! You go!I’ll never forget that. It’s implanted in my memory so deeply. I thought,
Oh, he doesn’t want me to be a lab tech ...No, what he said later is ... he said,
You’re so fourtunate.He said,
You got university fees. You got books.I said,
But I have to pay board at home.He said,
You’ll make it.So as it happened, the way I worked at St. Paul’s Hospital, I couldn’t spend much money because I was either working split shift from seven o’clock to eleven, then three to seven. So, I had no evening life. During the days, most of my friends were going to the beach; I was working, particularly on weekends. So anyways, I did have some money saved, so I was able ... I think I had something like 150 bucks, so ... umm ... I gave my dad and mother fifteen dollars a month.
MissJackes. I think she was a relative of the Spencers ‘cause all the head honchos of Spencers were family. Anyway, she said,
You come at 8:30 on Saturday mornings and we’ll find something for you. And you’ll get ...I think it was 35 cents an hour. I made three dollars a week. So that was enough to provide car fare, and a few pennies to boot. And so I worked Saturdays. And when I set my course up at UBC, I had four sciences and two arts. I figured that, well, I work from 8:30 to 5:30, so I should take courses from 8:30 to 5:30. That’s what I did. So, as a consequence, I had lectures or labs from 8:30 to 5:30, five days. Wow. I stayed out at UBC ‘til the library at night ... I’d take two lunches, one for lunch and one for dinner. And I’d do my ... write up my notes from the day and do my labs and that. Then I’d go home. I’d be home about ... The library closed at 9:30. And I’d catch a bus back to ... uh ... Tenth and
Ian, did you have any more females?He said,
You know, you were the only one.I said,
You’re kidding!And all the girls that had gone into wildlife biology. He said, actually, he says they started coming in after I finished teaching. So there are a lot more now. And they are accepting women as game wardens and in the field. I noticed ... .I’m quite active with the Nature Trust of British Columbia, and they have quite a few young women in the field. So we’re making inroads, but the thing is a lot of us don’t stay. And I guess, much like myself, I left the field. But I did go back as a volunteer at the aquarium. Oh, fun. And I did a lot of stuff over there for seventeen years when Murray Newman was the director. Murray and I got to know each other when he was doing his Ph.D. work at UBC. What a wonderful, winding career path you’ve had.
Oh, why not take them with us?So we took them with us. Well, we were the only couple that had kids. Well! It was a door opener! The Japanese people just went gaga over these two little white kids. And we got into places where the other people didn’t get into at all-because of the kids! Towards the end of the trip was a little bit of jealousy. Well, most of the women and men that were on the trip were couples. And they had kids that they left at home.
Don’t follow us. Stay with the guide.And of course, they got to places that we never got to. Keiji and Mike. One was Keiji. The other was Mike. And Keiji would take the two of them, and they’d go to places. Well, I wish I had been one of them.
Oh, oh ... !She didn’t speak English that well, you see. Anyway, a translation went on between Keiji and the gym teacher. She was a most attractive lady. Gosh, she was pretty! So anyways, she said,
Wait.So she went back to her apartment. She got Tammy her obi, which is the big bow that goes on the kimono dress. And Keiji told Tammy later that the obi is a very precious thing. And so Tammy, I think she still has all this stuff. Well, that kid travelled the planet. She had, well, with gymnastics, and Canada having the Olympics in ’76, she had trips to Europe. She even went to Israel ... with a gym team that went to the Royal Hopewell Games. They were all Middle Eastern teams and they were from Singapore, Malaysia. All the other ... .Afghanistan ... they all sent teams to this Hopewell Games. It would be held until