Main Dispossession Activity:
The Powell Street simulation

This is an overview of the Main Dispossession Activity that runs concurrently with the recommended lessons. Check also the FAQ section for this simulation.

Start this activity as soon as you can so you will be ready to take away the students’ “possessions” when the internment lessons begin. We have found that students want to spend a lot of time making their homes and possessions.

Introducing the simulation

1. Before this activity, prepare a bulletin board with an empty street and print the property cards.
2. During instruction time, tell students they are going to learn about an immigrant community by creating one on a classroom bulletin board. You can use the Powerpoint to help introduce this activity.
3. Give each student a Property Card which includes:
   • A picture of their property
   • The address (so they know where to put it on the map)
   • The name of the family who owned it
   • The kind of business it was

Part 1: Creating the Powell Street simulation

1. Using a folded piece of manila tag or construction paper, each student will create the adopted building.
2. Each card will be folded so that the outside of the card is the outside of the building and the inside of the card is the inside of the building.
3. The businesses were on the bottom floor of the building, and the residences where people lived were at the top.
4. The buildings can be stapled onto the Powell Street bulletin board in relative order according to addresses.
5. NOTE: The buildings should be empty, containing no possessions and no people. We will address these in the next part.

1. Tell students now that we have the buildings, we need to put the people and their belongings into their properties.
2. Show pictures of household and store goods from the 1940s and pictures of Japanese Canadians from this era.
3. For the number of people, students can base their simulated families on their own families.
4. Using manila tag or the blank sides of cue cards (something fairly sturdy), students draw, colour, and cut out their people and possessions.
5. The people and possessions are pinned or sticky tacked into the students’ buildings. These contents need to be loose (not drawn in, glued, or stapled) so that they can be moved, added to, or removed later.
6. Note: if you are doing the other recommended lessons, the removal of their property should coincide with Introduction to Internment: Viewing Photographs
7. Powell Street was a vibrant community. Encourage students to move their avatars around. Have them visit their friends in their homes, chat on the street, or shop at their places of businesses or use their services. They could also trade goods or borrow items from each other. Some pilot teachers moved the avatars when the students weren't there so it was as if the avatars had a life of their own. This created a lot of interest in students who checked daily to see where their avatars ended up.

Part 3: Dispossession

1. Once students have amassed possessions (and have become attached to their properties), Pearl Harbor happens. For maximum impact, let students know this happened at the end of the day or the end of the Social Studies period.
2. When the students are gone, make an internment camp on a separate bulletin board, and move their people to the internment camp.
3. When the students return the next day, if they don’t notice their people are missing from Powell Street, tell them that their Powell Street avatars have been moved to the internment camp. When the students ask why, show them the notice.
4. As time goes on, their possessions in the Powell Street homes and businesses start to disappear.
5. This part of the simulation can be followed by the lesson on Diposession.