Tashme: A forgotten internment camp remembered

📷 Nikkei National Museum / 2013-20-1-9

It was the fall of 1942, and Chizu Negoro was on a train to Hope. Her husband, Shinichi, was travelling with her, as were sons Hitoshi and Takashi (10 and 7), their toddler daughter Kazumi, and their year-old baby girl Emi.

They had little with them. The family had been forcibly removed from their home to Hastings Park in the summer, along with thousands of other Japanese-Canadian families. Their gramophone, 119 records, Emi’s baby bath, and the kids’ see-saw were left behind at their home in Vancouver. Shinichi’s coat hanger machine was left too—the self-employed coat-hanger-maker had been labelled an enemy alien and shipped to a road camp in the North Thompson earlier that year. (He was only reunited with his family in Hastings Park after a cave-in at the worksite killed the man next to him. Shinichi was allowed to accompany the body back to Vancouver.)

In early October, all six members of the Negoro family were loaded onto aging rail cars, along with 144 others. They got on in Vancouver. They got off in Hope, the inside edge of the 100-mile exclusion zone, and walked over the station platform to climb into waiting trucks. From there, the Negoro family would make the 22km journey through the mountains to Tashme: the largest Japanese-Canadian concentration camp in Canada.

The Museum: Beginning

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.