Kogawa’s childhood home to be saved
CAMILLE BAINS, VANCOUVER
Published April 29, 2006
VANCOUVER — Canadian writer Joy Kogawa says she’s shocked that her childhood home has been saved from demolition despite a significant shortfall in funds raised to restore it.
“I thought miracles happen and dreams come true and that is totally amazing,” she said.
The house was featured in Ms. Kogawa’s acclaimed autobiographical novel Obasan and has been the focus of a national campaign by the Land Conservancy.
Although the group has managed to raise only $230,000, it announced yesterday that it will go ahead and purchase the house by borrowing money if necessary, spokesman Bill Turner said.
The organization wants the house to remain as a reminder of what Canadians of Japanese heritage endured in the early 1940s.
The conservancy’s goal was to raise $1.25-million to buy and restore the house.
Ms. Kogawa said that she didn’t allow herself to get too hopeful during the campaign.
“I thought maybe life has to teach me that there are these disasters in the world. There are so many disasters and this is a minor, minor disaster compared to all of them, but it may be something that is necessary for me to go through, so be ready.”
Ms. Kogawa was 6 in 1942 when she, her older brother Timothy and their parents were forced by the Canadian government to leave the home she remembers so fondly.
The current owners wanted to demolish the home so they could build a bigger one. Eventually, the conservancy wants writers who suffer human-rights abuses to have access to the house on a writers-in-residence basis.