Touched By Dispossession
As our project evolves, we have gathered stories of individual and communities that were touched by dispossession. We are grateful to the contributors and we are honoured to to share these with you.
Do you have a story?
BC History Magazine – The piano
BC History 55.1 Spring - Michael Abe
BC History Magazine Family Case Files
BC History 55.1 Spring - Michael Abe BC History 55.2 Summer - Michael Abe
Family Stories #23 Rage at the Plunder
Submitted by Kate Michi Ettinger I came to this resource a bit sideways. Shortly after redress in the early 90s, my Mum started a family history project focused on her grandfather, Koichiro Sanmiya, a business leader in the early Canadian Japanese community in...
Family Stories #22 A World War I Vet Loses his Farm
By David Iwaasa I have spent most of my life examining my family history and know quite a bit, especially on my father’s side. I know a lot of names, dates of birth, when and where they died, etc. However, I don’t know as much on my mother’s side and this is where...
Family Stories #21 Reconciling the Past with Music and Visual Arts
Reconciling the Past with Music and Visual Arts By Annie Sumi As a mixed-race, yonsei artist living in Canada, Landscapes of Injustice has played a vital role in helping me to deepen my relationship to my ancestors and my “story”. Growing up, I had a peripheral...
Family Stories #20 Custodian Case File 1556: Heijiro Hiraoka
Custodian Case File: 1556: Heijiro Hiraoka I never knew my paternal Issei grandfather - Heijiro Hiraoka was born December 1, 1883 in Oshima-gun, Yamaguchi-ken, Japan. He passed away on December 5, 1953 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The only original document source I had was...
Family stories series #19 Four Families, four journeys
Four families, four journeys My name is Stephanie Kawamoto. I am a yonsei and a descendant of the Kawamoto, Koyanagi, Hyodo, and Kagetsu families. I grew up hearing about my mom’s side of the family, especially Hide Hyodo Shimizu and Eikichi Kagetsu, but not much...
Letters of What Was Lost Family stories series #18
Hirasawa/Fujimagari Family SharingMy name is Tamiko Hirasawa. I grew up in Hamilton, Ontario and I am currently living in Nanaimo BC. My late father was George Hirasawa. His family lived in Strawberry Hill, Surrey BC prior to 1942. My mother is Yukiko Joyce (nee...
Landscapes of Injustice Claim series #17 Connecting memory of historical documents
Connecting memory with historical documents: Landscapes of Injustice digital archives By Kelly Fleck Often stories about my family's history, especially those from the distant past, feel like legends or myths. They are stories from memories belonging to people long...
Landscapes of Injustice Claim Series #16 Heroism in the everyday: Soul Friendship
Heroism in the everyday: Soul Friendship By Laura Saimoto Out of the blue a few weeks ago, a stranger from the States reached out to me after having read the Globe and Mail article I wrote about getting to know my grandfather through the declassified case files from...
Landscapes of Injustice Claim Series #15 Property Lost-Found in Case Files
Property Lost-Found in Case Files Stitching together family (hi) stories Stacey Inouye Do you know what was lost? You probably know about the confiscation of fishing boats, radios, cameras, and vehicles. You know that homes were sold and that there were limits on...
Landscapes of Injustice Claim Series #14 Accessing the Archives-Connecting the Dots
Landscapes of Injustice will launch their Digital Archive Database at the end of March, details in the next issue. In our continuing series of the four claims, we have been focusing on the loss of home and that dispossession is permanent. Here is an article from Nana...
Landscapes of Injustice Claim Series #13 Teaching History through History- An Interview with Greg Miyanaga
My name is Matt Billson, a first-year student intending to study both History and English at the University of Victoria. As a part of my HUMA 295 course, a first-year seminar course that looks at research in the Faculty of Humanities and explores what it really means...
Landscapes of Injustice Claim Series #12 The Case of Akira Namba
This article in our series on the four claims highlights Claim #2: Dispossession is hard work. It comes from Isabelle D. Tupas, an undergrad at KPU and practicum student volunteering at the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre. Claim #2 states that the...
Landscapes of Injustice Claim Series #11 The Journey of a Piece of Furniture, a Piece of Family History
Listen to this story on CBC Radio North By Northwest with Sheryl MacKay December 12, 2020 The Journey of a Piece of Furniture, a Piece of Family History Michael Abe Prologue In 1991, my Auntie Katy (Kaoru nee Toyota) and Uncle Kumy (Kumeo) Yoshida came from London...
Landscapes of Injustice Claim Series #10 9609 Meeting My Ojiisan (Granddad)
Claim series 10 Laura Saimoto 9606 meeting my ojiisan 9609: meeting my ojii-san (granddad) Laura Saimoto When I first opened my grandfather’s case file (about 500 pages) from the Office of the Custodian, there was a handwritten number: 9609. What did this mean? ...
Landscapes of Injustice Claim Series #9 Preserve’d in History
Claim series 9 Michael Abe Preserve-d In History Landscapes of Injustice Claim #1 Killing of Home Here is an entry in the series on the four claims that is food-related. The forced uprooting and dispossession of Japanese Canadians during the 1940s destroyed a...
Landscapes of Injustice Claim Series #8 Without a Trace
In our continuing series on the Four Claims, this story follows the provenance of a small but important piano. Claim series 8 Michael Abe Without a Trace Claim #1 Killing of Home Without A Trace By Michael Abe With the invention of the incandescent light bulb in the...
Landscapes of Injustice Claim Series #7 The Case of George Tamaki
Claim series 7 Kaitlin Findlay George Tamaki Continuing in our series of short essays relating to the four claims of Landscapes of Injustice. This essay explores claim # 3: Reasoning Wrong. In the 1940s, officials found ways to justify their actions. While racism was...
Landscapes of Injustice Claim Series #6 Rebuilding of Community
Claim #4 Dispossession is Permanent. The internment era was far too long-seven years, most of them after WWII had ended. But dispossession lasts forever. The lands, possessions, and opportunities lost can never be fully restored. Here is a submission by Project...
Your stories of dispossession are important to us.
If you have a story of an individual, family, or community that was touched by dispossession, we would love to be able to share it with visitors to our site.
Do not worry if your story in incomplete. Important pieces of this history exist as fragments, half-remembered accounts, or rumours within communities. This site is a forum for sharing and working together to fill in the details of these partial accounts of the people who were directly impacted by these events.