Rafe Mair has offered to publish the following on his rafeonline.com website and suggested that we send it to the Vancouver Sun and other newspapers as a letter to the editor. Rafe writes:
To whom it may concern
I recently received the following letter, in part:
“I am calling on you now, Rafe, to speak out in support of a local project of The Land Conservancy of British Columbia (www.conservancy.bc.ca). With a Vancouver coalition of friends and writers groups, The Land Conservancy (TLC) is asking for help to save from demolition the modest former family home of the author Joy Kogawa .
Joy Kogawa house is located at 1450 West 64th Avenue, and Joy and her family were removed from the home in 1942 as part of the Government’s policy of internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II. Over the years, the house has become a central image in Joy’s award-winning novel Obasan, which has recieved both national and international recognition.
On November 30, 2005, the City of Vancouver granted a 120-day delay on the demolition permit the owner was seeking for the house. On February 8, 2006, the Kogawa House was listed on Heritage Vancouver’s 2006 Top 10 Endangered Sites. Mid March, TLC recieved a 30-day extension on the option to purchase the homes, allowing us to fundraise until April 30.
Once purchased and protected, it is our intention to use Joy Kogawa House as a writing retreat, enabling emerging writers to create new works focusing on human rights issues and Canada’s evolving multicultural and intercultural society. It will also be open for public and school tours to preserve the memory of the violition of the civil rights of an entire cultural minority community during World War II.”
I support this effort for a personal reason.
In 1942, when I was 11, I was kind of sweet on a classmate, Michiko Katayama. One day she didn’t show up to school and we learned that she had been shipped, with her family, to the Interior, by cattle car. I was told by my parents that the “Japs” could not be trusted, that they got their orders (or so it was presumed) from the Japanese Emperor and would help any Japanese troops that landed bent on slitting all our throats..
Not long after that, an event occurred that I’ve never really been able to live with – my Dad bought a paper box company at 10 cents on the dollar from the “Trustee” of the assets of Japanese Canadians. I owe my education to this and am ashamed of it.
It must be understood that no one, including my Dad, thought he’d done wrong. With very few exceptions most British Columbians accepted the fact that these “little yellow bastards” in our midst were dangerous. My Dad’s action was seen as one of patriotism. At war’s end, the Canadian government, to avoid Japanese Canadians going back to their homes and raising hell about what had happened, offered the detainees passage to Japan – a place that most had never been.
It was a horrible time but many Japanese Canadians were able not only to forgive but to show what they were made of by great personal achievements. Joy Kogawa is such a person and it’s critical, in my view, that we maintain her house not only as a reminder of her success achieved at great odds, but that she is a fine British Columbian and Canadian – and as a reminder to all of us and those to come that great great wrongs were done that must never be repeated.
Sincerely,
Rafe Mair