Japanese Canadian Internment
The Steveston Nikkei Memorial is a small but peaceful corner located next to the Steveston Tram in Steveston Village. The memorial commemorates the 75th anniversary of internment where over 2,000 residents of Japanese Canadian (Nikkei) descent were forcibly uprooted and dispossessed from their homes, businesses, and possessions in 1942. In all, over 22,000 Nikkei were forcibly removed Canada’s west coast, and were not permitted to return until April 1949, four years after the Second World War had ended.
Steveston Nikkei Memorial
The memorial is a mix of public art and reflective space, imbued with a strong sense of symbolism. The pattern of the paving stones for example, is called “ishidatami ami”, inspired by placemats handwoven from fish and fruit can labels by interned Japanese Canadian women. The Hapa Collaborative, the company who designed the memorial in collaboration with the local Nikkei community, used this pattern because “It symbolizes the quiet defiance of the interned, the way they found small victories in dire circumstances. The placemat became the guiding inspiration for the space.”
Steveston Station
The location of this park next to the Steveston Tram is symbolic of the fact that the Japanese Canadian were taken from the town from the Steveston Station to holding areas such as Hastings Park, before being sent on to the internment camps. The station was located at the time across the road from where the Steveston Tram is today. Using the same rail line at the trams, coaches and baggage cars belonging to the Canadian Pacific Railway removed Japanese Canadians from their lives in Steveston.
“Families Leave Steveston Saturday”
The forced removal of the Richmond Nikkei population became so commonplace, that towards its end in April 1942, it appeared a small column in the Marpole-Richmond Review with the headline: “Families Leave Steveston Saturday.”
A closer read of the short column was much more sobering:
Saturday last Richmond was interested to see two C.P.R. coaches and a baggage car being hauled along the B.C.E.R. by a “shunter.” The train went down to Steveston and returned later with one coached filled with Japanese elders and children, all bound for the sugar beet fields of the Lethbridge area, Alberta. There were seventy-eight passenger in all, there being not enough ready to fill the second coach.
About twenty-five families are expected to go on April 22, today, and another contingent will leave for Manitoba beet field the following day. A last train load is expected to clear out most of the remaining population on April 26.
Mr. Kuba states that Steveston will be empty of Japanese by the last of the month. Farmers, fishermen, storekeepers, cannery workers, etc. are included in the migrants, many of whom are to have their first train ride.
Post-war Steveston
Before the Second World War, Steveston had the second largest Japanese Canadian community in Canada, next to Powell Street in Vancouver. After 1949, roughly only one-third chose to return to Steveston to try to start their lives over again. The Steveston Nikkei Memorial pays tribute to those who returned. According to Hapa Collaborative, the “pathways are curved in such a way to represent the leaving and the returning of the enduring Nikkei.”
To explore more about the legacy and contributions of Steveston’s Nikkei community pre and post war, visit the exhibits in the Japanese Fishermen’s Benevolent Society Building at Steveston Museum.
The annual Asian Heritage Month in May is a time for Canadians to learn more about the diverse culture and history of Asian communities, and to acknowledge their many achievements and contributions.
The theme for 2024 is “Preserving the Past, Embracing the Future: Amplifying Asian Canadian Legacy”, celebrating the rich heritage and contributions of people of Asian backgrounds, and looking to the future for positive change.
