About the Book
Photographs and personal narratives gathered over many years — an important addition to British Columbia’s historical record.
Stories of Nikkei Canadians
Resilience in Struggle
In this collection of photographs and stories, historian Masako Fukawa brings to vivid voice the lives of Japanese Canadians — from nineteenth-century Japan to coastal British Columbia, through wartime internment, and into postwar reconstruction.
One family, five generations
From Yoshimatsu Shinde, arrived 1893, to today
Beginning with the story of her own paternal grandfather, Fukawa follows her family and community through five generations — from hard-luck village life in Japan to the founding of Steveston, and the community’s re-establishment after the devastations of the war.
- Issei First generation — born in Japan, immigrated to Canada
- Nisei Second generation — born in Canada to Issei parents
- Sansei Third generation — children of the Nisei
- Yonsei Fourth generation
- Gosei Fifth generation
Their homes and possessions, fishing boats and farms, were seized and either sold cheaply or left to vandals.
Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Canadian government forcibly removed Japanese Canadians from coastal areas to internment camps. Stories of Nikkei Canadians goes behind that history to recount the impetus for emigration in Japan and the pre-war struggle to establish a place in British Columbia — and the resilience with which the community rebuilt afterward.