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'Trick or Treat' Wartime Propaganda6 November 1943
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"Most of the people in Kaslo had never seen Japanese people. With the propaganda, they had heard terrible things about us. Suddenly a town of 500 was to receive 1100 or 1200 hundred new residents. Were they enemy or foreigners? You could see why the townsfolk would be apprehensive. But most of them treated us very well."... Aya Higashi from the Langham tape collection.
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Train Departing to Ghost Town Camps1942
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The Japanese Canadian community was leaving everything behind, suffering family break-up and facing an unknown future."I was 7 when we were forced to leave Vancouver. On the train, an Italian Canadian conductor befriended us. He said that it was a real shame what they were doing to us. They weren't doing it to the Italians or the Germans. We stayed in Slocan for about 5 months I think. My father was apparently still in Vancouver because he was ill. When Tom Shoyama called him to set up a Japanese section of the New Canadian we moved to Kaslo to join him."
... Marge Umezuki from the Langham tape collection.
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Internees Arrive At Slocan1942
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SLOCAN WAS A REAL MESS"That was a long train ride. We didn't know anyone else in the group. It was late summer when the train unloaded us. Slocan was a wilderness to us. It was a real mess. People didn't know where they were or where their families or friends were. It was as though you went to a rally with two thousand people and you didn't know anybody and you were totally lost. And nothing was familiar. Everyone was running around trying to find loved ones and trying to get settled and things like that. I don't even remember what housing we had."
... Aya Higashi from the Langham tape collection.
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Japanese Canadian 'Road Camp'1942
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Able-bodied Men were sent off to work camps. Contact with wives and families in the "ghost towns" was near impossible. All correspondence was censored.22
by Takeo ujo Nakano as published in PAPER DOORS an Anthology of Japanese-Canadian Poetry1942
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With the Ghost Town Exodus, The New Canadian resumed publication in Kaslo on November 30, 1942. It had become the main source of community news and government policy directives within the Japanese Canadian community. The Authorities had realized that communication with the Issei generation of Japanese speakers would require Japanese language media, so the decision was made to turn the NEW CANADIAN into a bilingual publication."Junji Ikeno's father Munisuke had just returned from a special trip to Vancouver. The government had asked Mr. Ikeno to recover all the fonts to replenish the needs of The New Canadian. That weekly bilingual newspaper was being published with permission of the government as the only news and communications source for the Japanese-Canadian population which was being scattered across Canada. Amongst the articles confiscated by the Custodian of Enemy Alien Property, warehoused together with the fonts of Japanese type which had belonged to his printing business prior to the evacuation, Mr. Ikeno found a box of Harmonicas. With the beginning of the Japanese language section of the New Canadian, the Lemon Creek Harmonica Band was also founded."
... Former New Canadian Staffer Noji Murase as cited in the Nikkei Voice, Toronto, 2002.
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The New Canadian staffer Junji Ikeno on the linotype machine.1944
Kaslo,BC
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HOW THE NEWSPAPER WAS PRODUCED by Frank MoritsuguOn Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning we wrote and edited all copy in the office and sent it on to linotypest Ikeno next door in the "Kootenaian Newspaper" shop. On Wednesday afternoon, Thursday and Friday we composed the type in the forms and picked headlines by hand in the plant. On Saturday we addressed, wrapped and mailed the week's issue.
Another thing: The week's issue could not be "put to bed" on the press until the wire arrived from the censor (usually late Thursday) giving approval or suggesting certain deletions. What the Censor of Enemy-Language Publications, based in Vancouver, got from us were carbons of all our copies - English and Japanese. And accompanying the Japanese copy were English summaries, which the assistant editor had whipped together on Wednesdays with help of the Kenkyusha dictionary, help from the Japanese editor and a lot of curses.
From…The Kaslo Years … How the Newspaper was produced by Frank Moritsugu. First published in the June 14, 1958 in the New Canadian.
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Aya Higashi with former New Canadian staffer Frank Moritsugu at Homecoming Show.1992
Kaslo,BC
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Frank Moritsugu, former New Canadian staffer, and Aya Higashi at the 1992 Homecoming Tour. |
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