Do you know your Japanese-Canadian history?
1 of 1 2 of 1
To a lot of people who weren’t alive during World War II, the war is something that happened “over there”. But even Canadians who stayed in North America experienced the war, and Japanese Canadians had a particularly brutal time of it.
For 8,000 Japanese Canadians, being held in Hastings Park in 1942 preceded them being interned in the B.C. Interior or sent to work camps further east. A total of 21,000 were interned. On April 26, four panels were unveiled at Hastings Park describing what happened there.
Hastings Park walking tours related to the internment are being offered on three upcoming Saturdays at 10 a.m. Powell Street walking tours on three other Saturdays at 10 a.m. will explore the neighbourhood where the Japanese-Canadian community was centred prior to the war. (Cost for each tour is $10 per person plus tax.)
The Powell Street Festival's 39th edition happens July 31 to August 2, 2015. Last year, the festival took place on Alexander and Jackson streets rather than in its usual home of Oppenheimer Park. The festival's website currently lists its 2015 location as "Powell Street Area".
Comments
1 Comments
Ilene Terry
May 11, 2015 at 6:42am
I do know a little of their history. I have read a couple of books written by Japanese authors who lived through the experience and went to school and church with children who had been relocated inland from BC to Ontario with their grandparents and their mothers, no fathers accompanied them.