In 2024, the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) is looking at geographic locations where Japanese Canadians lived after migrating to Canada, since the 1800s, and where they were interned/incarcerated in 1942. We respectfully acknowledge the ancestral and unceded territories of Indigenous peoples who are the traditional keepers of the lands and waters.
The Story of Bay Farm, Popoff, and Slocan
By Lorene Oikawa, Past President NAJC
The Village of Slocan is located in the West Kootenay, the southeast of British Columbia. Slocan is at the south end of Slocan Lake. It’s now a village, but until the late 1950s it was a city until its status was changed for tax purposes. When it was a city, it was the smallest city in North America.
In the 19th century, Slocan was known for its rich deposit of silver and its gamblers. In the opening session of the Provincial Legislature in November 1894, the representative from West Kootenay reported, “ore shipments for the year will easily amount to $1,000,000…”
With the lure of money came those seeking their fortune and plans for development. In 1892, six railway lines were built, extending into the Kootenays, and two had a direct link to Slocan’s mining. Slocan had 12 hotels by the end of 1900, and a population of about 1,500. Hotels, saloons, and dozens of stores lined the main street. None exist today except in photographs.
When the ore disappeared, the population shrank to 200 and Slocan was a ghost town.
The BC Security Commission chose so called ghost towns with derelict buildings to set up incarceration/internment camps in 1942. About 22,000 Canadians of Japanese descent were forcibly uprooted, dispossessed, incarcerated and exiled. Japanese Canadians had 24 hours or less to pack up before being moved, and with no idea of the location or for how long. With little time and limited to a few suitcases, Japanese Canadians were not prepared for the harsh conditions of the isolated areas in the interior of British Columbia.
For those who had to travel to Slocan, Ken Adachi, in his book, The Enemy That Never Was, described it as a “tortuous 465-mile trip on the ancient day coaches with their hard, wicker seats [which] took at least 24 hours.”
George Doi shared his memory as a 9-year-old boy being on a train travelling from Hastings Park with his family to Popoff.
“My memory of the train ride was an absolute blank. I vaguely recall being seated in the train and from the window saw telegraph poles whizzing by and hearing the clickety-clack along the tracks. I tried to block out all feelings of nausea and fell asleep. I cannot remember any part of our rail trip. But, if I were awake and enjoying the ride, I would have noticed the high mountains coming together as we approached the town of Hope. Then, following the Canadian Pacific line through the Fraser Canyon into Lytton and heading east, I would have seen the flat open Okanagan Valley, Greenwood, Grand Forks and Christina Lake. Continuing eastward between the narrow mountains we would come out at Farron (water stop) and the Lower Arrow Lakes to Castlegar and finally into Slocan Valley.”
The family got off at the Slocan City rail terminal.
“After we were checked off by the officials, we loaded our baggage onto a truck and were driven to a place called Popoff (an open field owned by Mrs. Popoff who was also into real estate business), about four kilometres south. Here we were booked into an army type wall tent to accommodate all eight of us. This was to be our temporary residence until our shacks were built.”
From April to May 1942, the BC Security Commission had deployed about 1,021 Japanese Canadian carpenters, plumbers, electricians and other skilled men to the five so-called ghost towns of Greenwood, Kaslo, New Denver, Slocan City and Sandon to prepare for the Japanese Canadians who were being uprooted from the west coast. Even with families sharing rooms there wasn’t enough space in the derelict buildings.
David Suzuki and his family were one of the first groups to arrive in Slocan City. They lived in a small room on the second floor in the Arlington Hotel. The hotel was built in 1892 on the corner of Main Street and Lake Avenue. Suzuki said that the boards of the porches were rotten, and they would wake up in the morning with bedbug bites.
In June, the BC Security Commission announced plans to build three-room, two-family units in the Slocan Valley and Tashme. Within a week, they announced their controversial separation of families policy was rescinded. Married men who were separated from their families and working in road camps would be allowed to join their families by winter. There weren’t enough shacks built to house everyone, so families were then housed in 10-foot square tents with a peaked top.
George Doi and his family were shipped to Popoff in September 1942 and discovered how cold it gets in the Kootenays. Temperatures were extreme, dropping below zero, compared to the mild west coast. The snowfall was the heaviest experienced in years and some would wake up to five-foot piles of snow against their shacks.
“Fall comes early in the Interior and within a few weeks everything started to freeze, and the snow followed. Icicles were forming inside the tent and the additional clothes we wore to bed were not adequate. Every morning, we got up very early and stood outside around the hot fire that we started in a tin nail keg. Our meals were served inside the hockey rink in Slocan City, a three-km walk.”
Teruo (Ted) Harada, a cousin of George Doi, arrived earlier and his family was considered lucky to get one of the hastily built 14’ x 24’ shacks which he generously calls a house. “Houses had one or two bedrooms and a kitchen. Families lived in either a one or two-bedroom house depending on the size of the family. Our [family] had a two-bedroom house plus [we] shared with another, with my older sister’s family. Houses were built with wet lumber so in the winter it was damp, cold and frost formed inside the rooms. Rooms were heated with a wood burning oil drum stove. Most of the older folks got sick and had bad times adjusting to their lives in the camp. After spending a year in the camp most of us [young people] got used to the living conditions.” He elaborated later to say that “All of us young ones had a good time, made new friends but had not accomplished anything worthwhile. Our parents had all the worries and loss of their hard work.”
By mid-October 1942, about 1,200 Japanese Canadians had been living for weeks in tents in Popoff and on the outskirts of Slocan.

Ted’s cousin [and author’s mother] Mae Oikawa (née Doi) remembers wearing all her clothes in layers and it was still cold with ice on the inside of the tent. “We stayed for a month in a tent. And then we went to Bay Farm. [Bay Farm was located between Popoff and Slocan City.] The Haradas lived in Popoff, and they were there before us. It was one of those simple shacks, so we went to use the bathroom there. In Bay Farm, we shared the bathroom, which was outside, an outdoor toilet, with the Uyeno family. No one had a bath. We went down so many streets to go to a bath. It was a public bath, a Japanese style bath, where everyone went. We lived on First Avenue and had to go down to Third or Fourth Avenue.”
George said that since the shacks were built with green lumber and roofing paper, “it was like living inside a refrigerator in the winter. When the winds blew, we could feel the cold drive through the walls and frost would build up between the boards. The two end rooms were our bedrooms. I remember a single and a double bed crammed in one room but cannot remember how many beds were in the other room. The beds were made from two-by-fours and shiplap, and mattresses were filled with straw (or rags). The eating area was even smaller. Quite frankly, I cannot remember what the table and benches looked like. But you could just imagine what it would be like to have 10 people in a 8-by-14 foot kitchen crowded with a table, two benches, a kitchen stove, a sink, some wooden boxes for shelves, pots and pans, and couple of water pails.”
The population of the towns with designated incarceration/internment camps exploded. In the Slocan Valley (Popoff, Bay Farm, and Lemon Creek) housed 4,764 Japanese Canadians comprising about 25% of the population of the incarcerated in the interior of BC.
Mae observed that with the influx of Japanese Canadians, the stores saw their business increase significantly. “I remember the stores would bring in lots of bread, but if you didn’t get there early then they would run out.” “Hurst store. I went with my mother to get groceries. A little later, my mom had a small garden and grew tomatoes, Japanese eggplant (nasubi), cucumbers and green onions.”
George Doi recalls waking up in the middle of night and finding his mother at the kitchen table “fighting to keep awake.” “No matter how tired she was, Mom would complete the work in hand before retiring for the day.” “In the winter she would ensure that there was enough wood in the heater to last till the morning. Her mind was always on the care and safety of the children. Then she would be the first to get up in the morning to stoke up the fire and get the rooms warmed up. She would have hot water ready for us to wash our faces, have breakfast ready, and made sure we didn’t forget our schoolbooks.”
Mae says that her mother would make her own patterns to make clothing and made futons. She was equally creative when it came to food preparation. “Mom used to make tofu and she taught a lot of people how to make it. She made manju and mochi, but lots of Japanese people made manju. She made tsukemono. She would wash the nappa cabbage well and cut it and sprinkle salt on it. She put a round clean board on top of the vegetables in the container. You put a big rock on top to weigh the lid down. She also made takuan using daikon. She would take cucumber and small nasubi and put it in – I think she bought – Japanese bran. Whenever there was a birthday or something to celebrate she always made bota-mochi. Some people call it ohagi. She would make maki-sushi what people call futomaki. You roll it. She was very good at making maki-sushi. She also made inari-sushi.”
Japanese Canadian women put in long hours looking after their families ensuring they had decent food to eat and clothes to wear. It is a common theme in all the incarceration locations.
Japanese terms (described by the author)
Bota-mochi – This was the name in the spring. Japanese sweet rice balls covered in sweet red bean paste. In the fall, it’s called ohagi.
Daikon – Japanese long white radish
Futomaki – rolled sushi with usually 5 ingredients such as spinach, kanpyo (gourd), shiitake mushrooms, sakura denbu (pink fish powder), tamagoyaki (Japanese rolled omelette)]. Author’s memory of (grandmother) obaachan’s futomaki in the 1980s, but during incarceration the ingredients may have varied.
Futon – like a comforter filled with wool
Inari sushi – seasoned rice with vegetables in tofu pockets. Family favourite.
Manju – Japanese sweet baked or steamed with a sweet filling
Mochi – pounded sweet rice until soft and with sweet bean paste filling
Nasubi – Japanese eggplant
Takuan – Japanese pickled radish – white daikon would turn yellow
Tsukemono – Japanese pickled vegetables
Resources:
Honouring Our People: Breaking the Silence, Ed. Randy Enomoto
The Enemy That Never Was, by Ken Adachi
Train ride into the unknown – a child’s life in the Slocan internment camp, by George Doi, in The Nelson Star
History of British Columbia, From its Earliest Discovery to the Present Time by Alexander Begg.