Last week, my English class went down to Irving K Barber and entered into the rare book library. We had been discussing Obasan by Joy Kogawa for the past few lectures and can down to the rare book library in order to look at UBC’s Joy Kogawa section. We partnered up and each partner group was given a file containing different writings which Jane Kogawa had used to plan out Obasan or research she had done so as to portray the internment camps correctly.

My partner and I received a packet full of old letters which had been sent to the Canadian government by the residents of a evacuation town Slocan. Slocan is the town in which the protagonist Naomi lives after she is forced to leave Vancouver. All of the letters regard the repatriation decision given to Japanese-Canadians in the 1940s. Japanese Canadians were given the option to either “return” to Japan or to be forced to move further east out of British Columbia entirely. One letter written by members of the Anglican Japanese Mission details the vibrant community which has been established in Slocan. The letter is a form of protest against the repatriation, they describe the Japanese Canadian in Slocan as independant of federal dollars, building their own gardens and such. This they say should justify them being left alone. The letter also protests the timing of the repatriation or eviction choice. The children attending school were in the middle of their test season and had to finish in order to graduate on to the next grade. The choice deadline was before the test season was over, so the students would be robbed of their education and their ability to move on to the next grade. They also described the way in which families would be torn apart by repatriation or eviction. Families with older members were scheduled to be split up and sent to different areas in the East, thus destroying the fabric of the family and also putting the safety of the elders into jeopardy because no one would be able to watch out for them. For many Japanese Canadians this concept, along with the assumed prejudices they would reach when they arrived in the East were incredibly daunting.

Kikusaburo Sasaki had been one of those people incredibly worried about the future of his family if he stayed in Canada. He had applied for repatriation along with other members of his family. In his letter Sasaki writes that he thought he would not be able to support his family if he stayed in Canada. However by 1946 Sasaki had changed his mind, presumably after finding a way to support his family while remaining in Canada. He, his wife and all of his children were Canadian citizens, and yet they had almost been forced to emigrate to a country in which they had never lived. One can draw comparisons to the way the Jewish population was treated in Germany prior to the start of the Holocaust, being forced to leave from their home to another country, even though they were not citizens of that country, treated as if they were not a citizen of their own country.

These documents provided Kogawa with insight into the sufferings and dynamics which came along with the repatriation or forced evacuation choice. Insight she likely used in constructing the way she portrayed life in Slocan before and after the choice was to be made.

Devon Tremain.