An Invitation: Japanese Canadians from Mayne Island
Are you a Japanese Canadian survivor or descendant with family history related to Mayne Island? Would you be interested in contributing family histories, stories, or images to a signage project related to the Japanese Canadian history of Mayne Island? If so, we would like to hear from you.
Our project
The Japanese Canadian Legacies Society (JCLS) is supporting the Mayne Island Agricultural Society with a grant to install outdoor signage and exhibits at Miners Bay and Dinner Bay that will reclaim and interpret stories of the significant pre-1942 Japanese Canadian community on Mayne Island and the subsequent forced uprooting, incarceration, dispossession, and displacement.
We are gathering information, documents, artifacts and personal stories of pre-war Mayne Island families through interviews and collaborations with survivors and descendants of these families in order to shine a light on this significant and under-represented history of the Island.
Of particular interest are thirteen pre-war Japanese Canadian families who lived on Mayne Island: Ishibashi, Kadonaga, Kashima, Konishi, Koyama, Minamide, Nagata, Nakatsu, Saga, Sasaki, Sumi, Tekeutchi, Teramoto. The work will focus on finding out more about these families and other JC families that settled on Mayne Island between 1898 and 1942.
This project is part of the JCLS BC Heritage Sites program, recognizing communities who made now-forgotten contributions to the building of this province. The JCLS will announce the full slate of BC Heritage Sites projects in July.
Researchers can be contacted by telephone or by email as follows:
Djuna Nagasaki 250.217.4342 [email protected] and/or [email protected]
Jennifer Iredale 778.350.3602 [email protected]
Kesia Nagata 778.202.7714 [email protected]
The deadline is June 30, 2024
