A Strathcona resident believes that park board plans for Oppenheimer Park are “another slap in the face” to the Japanese Canadian community.

B.C.–born Tamio Wakayama told the Georgia Straight he was interned as a young boy during the Second World War, along with 23,000 other Japanese Canadians. His family was sent to Chatham, Ontario. Wakayama did not return to the West Coast until 1974.

As unofficial “photographer for the community”, he was present on April 16, 1977, when a tree-planting ceremony saw a total of 21 sakura cherry trees planted to commemorate the centennial of the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants. The ceremony was also a symbol of reconciliation for repatriated Japanese Canadians, who were not officially allowed to return to the coast until 1949.

Now the city plans to revitalize the old Japantown area. On March 10, the park board approved a draft proposal to upgrade the park. Five Japanese sakura cherry trees faced the chop at that time.

“It’s really criminal in this case, because it would be yet another slap in the face to the community and a betrayal to the people who, in the spirit of reconciliation, came and planted the trees,” Wakayama said by phone. “It is really quite callous when you think about it.”

According to Ron Caswell, a park board operations manager, the
Japanese Canadian community initially seemed onside, but when members involved in the 1977 planting got wind of what was going on, they demanded to be heard on the issue. The board is now tweaking its original plans in a way that will accommodate the Japanese community leaders by not cutting any trees, Caswell added.

Park board manager Danica Djurkovic and local landscape architect Jeff Cutler fielded questions from stakeholders and presented three updated options at a May 10 community forum at the Vancouver Buddhist Church on Jackson Avenue. Two options involve avoiding the trees altogether in the baseball-field expansion and construction of a new field house; another would mean replanting trees elsewhere in the park, which would probably mean that a few would die, Djurkovic said.

Outside, walking in the park, retired musician and registered Hiroshima nuclear bomb survivor Takeo Yamashiro said the sakura represent a “spiritual and cultural connection” for local Japanese Canadians of all generations.

“Our point is, we have lost so much already, and this is one heritage site and cherry sakura that were planted by [Japanese Canadian] pioneers,” he said. “The city has not realized the significance of these trees. This area is part of our culture and we would like to work with them, because this is something that is irreplaceable for us. Once we have lost this, everything has gone.”

Yuko Shibata, research associate at UBC’s Centre for Japanese Research, echoed Yamashiro.

“To me, 1977 was a time when Japanese Canadians were finally able to talk about their painful history, because they could finally objectify it and speak about it,” Shibata told the Straight. “There were about 30 years of void there, because many Sansei people [grandchildren of Japanese immigrants] didn’t know anything about their parents’ and grandparents’ past. So the tree-planting was the beginning of the Powell Street Festival that year, and those Issei [pioneer] people in their late ’70s were the ones trying to start talking and relating their experience. And these trees are called akebono in Japanese, which means ‘dawn’.”

In terms of keeping the trees intact, Djurkovic told the Straight she “can’t promise anything as of yet.”

“So far we have had three open houses, and everyone was involved, including representatives from the Buddhist temple, Powell Street [festival society], and the Japanese [language] school,” she said. “We really will try to come up with a solution that works for everyone.”

The coalition has set up a Web page at www.legacysakura.wordpress.com