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 Powell Street
By Lorene Oikawa, Past President NAJC
The City of Vancouver was incorporated in 1886 and had about a couple of hundred buildings. Less than two months later, June 13, 1886, the “Great Fire” wiped out the city. According to the 1888 Williams Directory, only three buildings survived the fire.
The earliest settlers lived on Cordova, Powell and Alexander Streets what we refer to today as the Downtown Eastside. Rebuilding took place after the Great Fire. As economic conditions improved, the middle class started moving west of the area. Japanese Canadians found jobs and housing in the Powell Street area.
First, it was single men, and the community was built around their needs. Rooming houses, bathing houses, barber shops, general stores, services for banking, translation, and immigration advice.
Boarding houses were multi-functional with rooms for rent, food services, tobacco sales, pool tables. The boarding houses were also associated with certain prefectures in Japan and the men would stay at the houses tied to their home prefecture. In the early days, Japanese came from certain prefectures in the south and west of Japan, such as, Hiroshima, Shiga, Fukuoka, and Kagoshima. There were social organizations based on the prefecture and it was a life-long association. For example, Hiroshima Kenjin Kai which was based at the New Wings Hotel on the north side of Powell near Dunlevy.
Some were rented facilities and then as men build up their savings (sometimes taking up to 10 years) they would buy and add on floors. New buildings had ground floors which were rented out for shops. The 200/300 block of Powell is where property was first being bought and then it expanded.
Japanese immigrant labour was in high demand, in sawmills, logging, fishing, fish canning and railway construction. There was a huge influx of Japanese around the turn of the 20th century and then again in 1906/07. Consider 7,000 men coming through Powell Street – some to stay and some going to work around the province and then returning.
This is like today when “so called foreign workers” or migrant workers are wanted for low paying, hard labour jobs.
At the north end of Gore Street was the Canadian Fishing Company plant. The Canadian Fishing Company has now expanded to six different divisions known as the Canfisco Group. In 1906 Japanese Canadians were working in the plant.
At Ballantyne Pier, on the north end of Heatley Street, people like Japanese immigrants and goods would arrive. Japanese Canadians were working as longshoremen. The pier is more infamously known for the 1935 Battle of Ballantyne Pier when police viciously attacked striking longshoremen.
The Japanese Camp and Millworkers Union was at 544 Powell. It was formed in 1920 by Etsu Suzuki. Japanese Canadians were not allowed to join white unions and in the early 1900s labour unions were working with white supremacists unlike today. It was the first Asian Canadian union to join the Trades and Labour Congress (precursor to the Canadian Labour Congress) in 1927.
As men prospered, more women came into the community. In 1900, about 4,600 Japanese Canadians were living in British Columbia primarily around Powell Street and in Steveston (City of Richmond). Looking at a directory from 1909, there are 568 Japanese Canadian businesses in the Powell Street area. The community continues to expand. By the end of World War I (1918), there is a transition from mainly single males to families.
By 1931, 8,328 Japanese Canadians lived in Vancouver, and over half, 4,520 lived in the Powell Street area and held 858 trading licenses.
Uchida Building 437-441 Powell. Chiyomichi and Kinuko Uchida bought the site, Russ House Hotel, in 1902 and converted it into a boarding house. For years they rented out retail space for tobacco sales or a grocery store. From 1910-12 there was a pool room. In 1916, their daughter Chitose was the first woman to graduate from UBC. By the 1930s their son Matasaburo became a doctor and set up his practice in the building. Interesting to note that two of Kinuko’s sisters Yoko and Ima were the first Japanese women to come to Canada. The building is now known as the Ming Sun – Uchida Building.
Maikawa & Co. General Store 365 Powell. The store opened in 1908 and became the largest commercial enterprise on Powell Street. Tomekichi Maikawa’s brothers opened stores in the same block and behind the stores was a boarding house for their employees. By the 1930s, they bought most of the north side of the block. In 1936 they combined two lots and architect T.L. Kerr designed a new Art Deco style department store at 369 Powell Street in 1939. It would only be open for a few years before it was confiscated by the government when all Japanese Canadians were incarcerated in 1942.
Fuji Chop Suey 314 Powell Street. In 1931, the restaurant opened and served Japanese style Chinese food and the second floor was used for weddings. The restaurant was owned by Fuji Tadaichi and was one of the few restaurants where Japanese Canadians could be served. Other restaurants were usually for men only and restaurants outside of the Powell Gai would refuse to serve Asians. Ironically in this restaurant in 1941, the B.C. Security Commission set up their headquarters and planned the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Canadians, and the disposal of their property and possessions.
Tamura Building 398 Powell Street. This four-storey building was designed and build for Shinkichi Tamura. He was Canada’s first Commissioner of Trade to Japan. The building was known as the World Hotel and was the largest rooming house in the area. Tamura’s bank, Canada and Japan Trust Savings Bank and other Japanese Canadian owned businesses were in the first two floors of the building. The New Canadian newspaper, a Nisei newspaper, “the voice of the Second Generation” was founded in 1938 in the building. The newspaper included articles in English and reported on community news and events and published opinion pieces in its editorials. During the incarceration, it was the only Japanese Canadian newspaper allowed to continue printing.
Anti-Asian especially anti-Japanese movements started in the USA, but it soon came into Canada. On July 24, 1907, 1,177 Japanese immigrants arrived with proper documentation and passports. The newspapers reported on the arrival with provocative headlines to create alarm. The Asiatic Exclusion League formed in Vancouver. The Asiatic Exclusion League contacted their American counterparts for help organizing a demonstration. On September 5, 1907, white protestors attacked about 500 Punjabi Sikh lumber workers in Bellingham in Washington State to force them into Canada.
On September 7, an estimated crowd of 5,000 to 6,000 (10% of the city’s population) showed up at City Hall (at the time located at Main & Hastings) waving placards, “Canada for Whites.” It was planned that not everyone could fit into city hall for a proposed resolution regarding the exclusion of Asians. Speakers including one from Seattle talked about the attack on the lumber workers in Bellingham. The crowd is incited by the speakers. Organizers then hoist prepared signs “Chase all the Asians out of Canada” and “Asian Pollute the Purity and Holiness of Canada” They start chanting racial slurs, “Kill the J–s” directed against Japanese Canadians.
The crowd started going through Chinatown which was closest to city hall, throwing rocks and bricks through windows, looting, and drinking. Someone was able to warn the Japanese Canadian community about the rioters and the community prepares to fight back. Streets were gravel then so buckets of stones were gathered and carried to the rooftops. Some men grabbed clubs and there were about 20 with swords. Even though they were outnumbered they fought back and disarmed some of the mob who had weapons, sticks, iron bars and pistols.
On the next day, the mainstream white media reported about the war like tendencies of the Japanese Canadians without the context of the riot and the families at risk. It turned public opinion against the Japanese Canadians. It also gave the Canadian government the opportunity to enact anti-Japanese legislation. The Lemieux agreement restricted the number of Japanese immigrants to 400 per year.
The anti-Asian rioters came back on Sept 9 (2 days after the initial riot) and attacked the Vancouver Japanese Language School at 487 Alexander Street, but their attack was stopped by the police. A fire was started but it did little damage because it was spotted quickly.
Oppenheimer Park 400 block East Cordova Street. The park, Powell Street Grounds, at Powell and Dunlevy was opened in 1898. The name Oppenheimer came later, to recognize the second mayor of Vancouver, David Oppenheimer. During the 1930s depression era, the unemployed and marginalized would meet in the park. In 1935, unemployed workers started their protest there and left to take the train out east as part of the famous On to Ottawa Trek. The park was the site for labour activists and others to voice their opinions although it wasn’t until 1936 when it was declared the only park where opinions on politics, religion, and other topics could be publicly expressed. The term soapboxing referred to the raised platform on which a speaker would stand to express their opinion. Often an actual soap box was used.
The Powell Street Grounds was also the place where people could watch baseball games. The Vancouver Asahi baseball team played from 1914 to 1941 until they were forced to stop because the players, their families and the rest of the about 22,000 Japanese Canadians were uprooted, incarcerated, dispossessed, and exiled from 1942 until 1949. The Second World War ended in 1945, but racist politicians extended the incarceration without any evidence to support it. The Canadian military and RCMP told the government before 1942, there was no need to act against Japanese Canadians who were law abiding citizens including multigenerational families who came in the 1800s and some who fought for Canada in the First World War.
The Vancouver Asahi baseball team was the only ethnic team playing in the league and they were about five feet tall compared to the players on the other teams who were about six feet tall. They also faced racial slurs and discrimination on and off the field. They persevered and developed a strategy to play smarter. Some called it “brain ball.” The players would bunt, get players on bases, and were faster than the other players. They started winning games and championships and soon became the most popular team.
Jean lived briefly on Powell Street in 1942 and shared her snapshot memories with me in 2016.
“My mother, baby brother and I were uprooted on February 19th [1942] from Ocean Falls. We were on the boat heading for Vancouver with the first batch of JCs. [Japanese Canadians] My brother observed his first birthday on the ship – now homeless. We found a place to stay in a family friend’s parents’ rooming house in the 200 block of Powell Street. That block was demolished to make way for the Police Station.
This hot weather reminds me of the farmer’s horse-drawn wagon parked right by the Powell Street Grounds (on the south side) and they would be selling corn and watermelon. My mother would buy one and I would have to carry this whole watermelon on the streetcar to Hastings Park to hand over to friends in the Park.” [About 8,000 Japanese Canadians who lived outside of Metro Vancouver were sent to Hastings Park to live for weeks or months in disgusting conditions until they were shipped to incarceration camps or other locations. See article http://najc.ca/the-story-of-hastings-park/]
In the Powell Street area, I remember the Yama Taxi, ofuroba [Japanese bath], a grocery store, a dry cleaner pick-up, a tofuya [tofu & age making establishment], and a restaurant. I also remember a shoe store, bakery, Maikawa [store], Furuya [store], King Rooms, and Sun Peking. Armstrong Funeral Home used to be on the corner of Dunlevy and Cordova. There were also rooming houses on Alexander Street, Firehall on 200 block Cordova, Machida box factory on 200 block Alexander Street, one garage on Alexander and Dunlevy, and a barbershop on 300 block Powell Street.”
All was taken by the federal government and sold without permission. The Vancouver Japanese Language School was taken but occupied by the Canadian Armed Forces for administration. Half of the school was sold to pay for war expenses. The school was owned by a society so it’s the only building from the pre-internment/incarceration period to be returned.
The once vibrant Japanese Canadian community in the Powell Street area was erased by the actions of the government. But the area is not forgotten by the JC community. Powell Street Festival, an annual event on the Saturday and Sunday of the BC Day long weekend, sees the return of the Japanese Canadian community. It’s a two-day event to celebrate our Japanese Canadian ancestors who once lived in the area. Food booths, stages with music and dance, exhibits, plays, films, and community booths fill Oppenheimer Park and the side streets and Alexander Street, the Vancouver Japanese Language School and Hall, and the Vancouver Buddhist Temple and Firehall Theatre. In 2025, Powell Street Festival will take place on August 2 and 3. Come and see the Powell Street area filled with the spirit of the Japanese Canadian community. More info at powellstreetfestival.com
Resources:
Honouring Our People: Breaking the Silence, Ed. Randy Enomoto
The Enemy That Never Was, by Ken Adachi
Phantom Immigrants, by Jiro Nitta. Translation by David Sulz
Historic Japanese Canadian District Paueru-Gai Map Guide by the Vancouver Heritage Foundation
Japanese Canadians and the Labour Movement – A History Walking Tour in the Powell Street District – Geoff Meggs and Lorene Oikawa
Jean Kamimura – snapshot memories as told to the author. Jean was a great resource for Japanese Canadian history, and we shared a Vancouver Asahi connection. I miss her.
