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GONE FOREVERMother and Father never complained, never said anything, they were always gentle. But they were never able to go back to the coast, they never saw their friends again. Never saw the ocean . . . never heard their beloved fog horn again. In 1949 when the War Measures Act was repealed my father went back to see. If things had worked out we might have gone back eventually. But, when he came back he only said, "Mother, Aya, we are going to stay here." And I knew that our land was gone forever, and we could never buy it back (actually now there are five beautiful homes on our property).
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Aya Higashi (nee Atagi) built a new life in Kaslo after her wartime internment there.1943
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TEACHING AFTER THE WARInitially, I worked as a substitute at the Kaslo School and the principal, Greg Dixon, urged me to go to Normal School. He told me that a job was waiting for me when I came back. When I was at Vancouver Normal School, there were 450 grads. Many of them applied for jobs in Vancouver, which were scarce. TheSchool Board offered me jobs in Vancouver and even offered to find a job for Buck. I thanked them but told them that I wouldn't do that to my husband. I go where he goes. Besides my mother and father are in Kaslo. When we went back to Kaslo, I had other offers (eg. from Castlegar and Revelstoke). There was no discrimination.
We weren't the only Japanese Canadians who had returned to Kaslo then. There were Kitigawas and Babas and a few others. I don't know how they came back.
After the war adult education was popular. I taught many night school classes. People knew that I had secretarial training and that's what they wanted me to teach. I have always wanted to learn things that I didn't know. I went to art school in Vancouver and learned leather working,etc. and they wanted me to teach it too. We did night school for adults through the 50s. Some of the handbags we made were just beautiful. We tooled the leather and thonged it. We did copper tooling, too. All this was besides my regular daytime teaching and teaching Sunday School on weekends as well.
I started as the senior grades English teacher. Later when the Chant Commission (1960's) overhauled the school system they wanted every high school to teach industrial, commercial, home economics courses as well as academic courses or they would bus our high school students to Nelson. It's laughable to think about it. In a small school like Kaslo's we had to develop all those new programs. I taught drafting 11, bookkeeping, business machines and typing. Jack Humphries (principal) insisted that every student had to have typing from grade 9 on. Some didn't want it, of course, but I had to teach it even though they didn't want to learn it. Now 30 or 40 years later, they come back and tell me: "You know, Mrs. Higashi, now that I've got a computer for my business, I'm well away. No hunt and peck." They tell me, "You were pretty tough and you wouldn't accept any mistakes. It had to be perfect so now my work is perfect." It's gratifying to hear comments like that.
When I was teaching grade 11, a couple of exchange students came from Vancouver and Richmond. My students were busy typing away. The exchange students told me that they could not type because, "there are no letters on the keys." When business machine companies first sent me typewriters they arrived with letters on the keys. I put tape on them all, but it would wear off. I had to let them know that it was no good. They gave me blank keys. Once they sent me 33 new typewriters with marked keys. I told them that I could not use them as they were, so they sent a man up to replace all the keys.
Every summer I went to UBC. Whenever there were new things, I went to learn, so I could use it here. The school board was very good to me. I went to Burrough's Business Machine Co. and ordered machines for our school. Even the school board secretaries came to see them. We had more modern machines here than anywhere else in the district, at that time. I was lucky. The school board backed me.
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BUCK'S WORKCPR "bumped him up" when the boom was on in Alberta and set him up at the Palliser Hotel. They gave him an office and a secretary. He was supervising the expansion. When they offered him a permanent position there he thanked them, but said his wife and her aged parents were in Kaslo. They told him that they would buy our house in Kaslo, bring us all out to Calgary and help us find a house there. Buck asked me and so I went for a visit. I suffered from the cold. Then in the summer I visited again. I got the heat stroke and ended up in the hospital. We returned to Kaslo. I felt sad about it. He told them that the company's offer was a rare opportunity for a young person like himself (He was 55 at the time). Promotions like that never came to people until they were 60 -- near retirement. He suggested that he would like to see them start building up potential young persons and promote them to important positions earlier. They are doing that now.
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RETIREMENTThere is no place like Kaslo. In 1986-87 I retired. Since then I have worked in our garden of flowers and ornamental trees. I have always studied history, geography and literature, and trees of course. One year at UBC, I took geology and meteorology. I have always been interested in rocks and also how the earth was formed. I even once took a prospector's course and earned my prospector's papers. Whenever we travel we look at the land, its formations, the flora and fauna of the area, plus winds and clouds, etc.. I own a good barometer.
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TRAVELWe traveled every summer and started doing many serious journeys. We covered a lot of ground and read up on the history and geography of the places we visited. Yet when we went out east all our friends would say, "why didn't you fly out and rent a car? It took you 2 weeks to get here." You'd think there was nothing between Kaslo and Thunder Bay. Far from it, we've travelled from the Atlantic to Pacific over 30 times and have learned a great deal about our country. So much to see and do.
It is indeed an extremely interesting country in every way.
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Aya's Travels to P.E.I.9 April 2006
Prince Edward Island
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With our first glance at Prince Edward Island, while we were still approaching the island on the ferry, we saw its amazing red border. Buck had bought me white Wallabies, special order for small size. The red soil wrecked them. Thinking that this couldn't be iron, I became curious and asked an old man about the reason for the red. "That's the way she come and she grows good," was his reply. They also have trees there that were different from anything we have here, so I asked him what they were. He looked at me, as though I were crazy. "You don't know? Them's Christmas trees". He was serious, so I said, "Thank you." Well, they were all planted in rows so they really did look like Christmas trees, but I had been curious about what species of tree they were. Later, I talked to my friend on P.E. I. (our pre-war neighbour, the daughter of our minister) who was amazed that I was able to get some of the old timers to talk. Many were born on the island, live on the island and would die on the island never once having stepped off the island. They are known to be close mouthed.85
A TRIP TO JAPANMother and Father had decided that they would like to go and visit Japan in 1976. Sadly, they both died before they were able to do so. So, Buck and I decided that we would take the sentimental journey for them, some day. But we didn't think it would come so soon.
My cousin, Shirley was accepted as a student at a world famous pottery school in Japan. While there, she decided to visit my sister, Kimi. She did not speak Japanese well. Her Japanese was worse than my French. It caused a mix up. Kimi thought that Shirley said that we would be visiting the next summer. Kimi was on the phone right away and said she just had the best news. So then, not to disappoint her, we planned our first trip to Japan for the next year.
We tried to get our passports. Mine was not a problem. Buck, however, claimed he was born in Howe Sound. Statistics Canada wrote back that there was no such town as Howe Sound; that it is a body of water. But, Bill Worman, the post master of Kaslo and a stamp collector discovered that at the turn of the century there was a company town at the mouth of Howe Sound, called Howe Sound. The company left and the town is now gone. His passport arrived just before school was over. It had taken six months.
We decided that we were going to Japan to make a pilgrimage for my parents and visit all the main temples on Honshu Island. We sat the day before each visit and learned the history. The temples are all on hills. It was for military strategy in feudal times. Some of them are on pretty tall hills with hundreds of steps to reach the temple on the top. We climbed them!
We saw some of Hiroshima, too - its history is heart breaking. We visited several hot springs. We were in Japan during the Bon season and took in about a dozen Bon festivals (This is a holiday which honours the dead -- when the spirits are welcomed back) It is a cheerful and playful festival. Paper boats with candles are floated down the rivers and folk dances (odori) are held. We watched and participated.
We were asked by our relatives in Japan if we would like to see Tokyo. We deferred that this trip was for Mother and Father. We planned to return in about five years. We haven't been back and probably won't go now. My goodness, this is thirty years since that trip to Japan. We thought perhaps that we would blend in, in Japan, and that for once we would not be marked by our racial features but the people in Japan knew we were not from there -- not one of them. How did they know? We thought we looked like the rest of them. We were foreigners, Canadians!
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WRITING THE WRONGIn the late 80's the then curator of the Langham, Bernadette Lynch, came to me and spoke to me about the internment years and how the wrongs committed at that time needed redress. This project was called "Writing the Wrong". It was a tremendous production culminating in an event that was attended by very important people in government, in politics, and professionals. A "Globe and Mail" reporter also came. What was intended to be a one day event had to be extended to three days with a "full house" at each showing.
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CONCLUSIONHere Aya has written a conclusion to her story.
For over sixty years I have lived in Kaslo and loved the people there - My students, their parents, and other friends. For thirty of those years I was a teacher at the local school.
Those were happy years.
Deep inside me, I could not forget that I had not come to Kaslo by choice. I had clung to the dream that one day I would break away from this wartime "prison" and return to my beloved west coast -- to sea level -- to be lulled by the sighing of the waves, to taste the salt air, to listen to the mewling of the gulls and the booming of the lighthouse foghorn during the thick fog, to be dazzled by the brilliant sunset over Vancouver Island as the golden sun sank below the horizon beyond -- to the west , so free, so familiar, reminiscent of my happy youth.
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Cape Mudge Lighthouse, Quadra Island9 April 2006
Quadra Island, BC
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Since 1967, the Canadian Centennial year, my husband Buck and I have returned yearly to holiday at the coast. Each time my eyes have teared up with nostalgia and my heart has ached, remembering the happy life that we knew before it was taken from us. My gentle parents loved the ocean and the life at the coast but they were both destined to die before ever seeing their home again.In 1988 I felt that the time had at last arrived to search earnestly for a place to retire at the coast. However, that year, on our return from our annual trip to the coast, I literally woke up and everything came into focus.
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Kaslo, BC9 April 2006
Kaslo,BC
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