Welcome to Historic Joy Kogawa House

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The organizers behind a fundraising campaign to save the childhood home of writer Joy Kogawa in south Vancouver are buying the historic home even though they're almost $1 million short of what they initially wanted to raise.

What this means for the Land Conservancy which is coordinating the campaign is that the charitable organization will have to go to a financial institution to get a mortgage of a little less than $500,000 on the house at 1450 West 64th. TLC will continue to fundraise over the summer and to target major private donors as well as the provincial and federal governments.

"We're moving ahead with the purchase," said Bill Turner, the TLC's executive director. "We'll borrow whatever we need to purchase it so that the house will be saved from demolition for sure. We'll then have to raise the rest of the money to pay for it."

Since starting the campaign in earnest in early January, TLC and the Save Kogawa House Committee has raised $230,000 from more than 500 donors from across the country and in the U.S. and Australia. That amount includes a donation of $100,000 from one Japanese Canadian in the Vancouver business community who wishes to remain anonymous as well as numerous smaller donations from people who have organized bake sales, used book sales, twoonie-drives, and special Japanese luncheons in B.C. schools.

The TLC first wanted to raise $1.25 million to buy the house, pay for restoration and establish an endowment so that Kogawa House could be operated as a residence for exiled writers from around the world. But as fundraising stalled, TLC decided to focus on raising enough to just buy the house, a figure estimated at about $700,000.

The TLC, which has already negotiated an option to purchase the property, was also facing a deadline of April 30 when a demolition permit for the house is set to expire.

Turner said that TLC would be exercising the option to purchase this weekend. The purchase will close at the end of May.

Kogawa said she found out Thursday just before a reading in the Chapters outlet in downtown Victoria.

"I'm completely happy," Kogawa said. "I'm overjoyed. I can't begin to put into words what I feel about this. Now we can move forward to healing, forgiveness and reconciliation. It's wonderful."

The modest house is a physical reminder of a shameful chapter in the country's history. Kogawa grew up in the wood-frame house in Marpole and was interned in one of several camps in the interior of the province during the Second World War along with 22,000 other Canadians of Japanese descent. Kogawa later wrote about her experiences growing up in the house and of internment in the Slocan Valley in the novel Obasan and the children's version, Naomi's Road.

Interned Japanese Canadians, many of whom lived in the neighborhood around the Kogawa house as well as in Steveston and in what was called Japantown in the Downtown Eastside had their property auctioned off by the federal government without their consent. After the war, Japanese-Canadians were initially prohibited from moving back to Vancouver and other coastal areas and instead were dispersed across the country.

More information is available at www.conservancy.bc.ca and 604-733-2313.

kevingriffin@png.canwest.com