By Lorene Oikawa, Past President
On the 2024 Internment Camp Bus Tour, we boarded the ferry, M.V. Columbia, at Galena Bay (east), crossed the Upper Arrow Lake, and disembarked the ferry at Shelter Bay (west). We headed north on Highway 23 and at about 49 kilometres, we went by Revelstoke and took Highway1, west to Rutherford Beach towards Sicamous. We stopped and took a look at the road signage which showed the incarceration camps that held Japanese Canadians who were forcibly removed from their homes on the west coast and incarcerated from 1942 to 1949, four years after the Second World War ended.
In 1942, many BC politicians continued to contribute to the fear mongering by suggesting that Japanese Canadians were a threat to the province/country’s security. This had already been proven to be false by the RCMP and the Canadian military. To quell some of the fears, the federal government separated adult males from their families and forced about 2,000 Japanese Canadian men to road construction incarceration camps in BC, Alberta, and Ontario. One highway project was from Revelstoke to Sicamous. About 346 men on that project had to live in camps along the highway. One of the signs that we saw on the bus tour showed the camps: Three Valley Gap, Griffin Lake, Taft, North Fork, Yard Creek, and Solsqua.
The conditions were rough including extreme weather that the men from the west coast were not used to, and they did not have the proper clothing. The married men were worried about their families from whom they were separated. The men would speak out about the unsafe and unjust conditions sometimes calling strikes. After a few months, it was recognized that the Japanese Canadians would not be passive prisoners, and it resulted in many being removed and reunited with their families. Work was still needed to build the roads so the young single men were kept on some of the highway projects while others closed. The Blue River – Yellowhead Highway Project ended on May 31, 1946.
This was not the first time that Japanese Canadians experienced the harsh conditions in Revelstoke which is in the southeast part of British Columbia, west of the Selkirk Mountains and Glacier National Park, and on the banks fo the Columbia River. It’s home to the Sinixt, on the traditional, unceded territories of the Secwépemc, the Syilx, and the Ktunaxa. Indigenous peoples have been here for millennia before settlers arrived.
The building of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) drew in settlers from Europe in 1885, and Japanese Canadians not long after in the late 1890s to work on the railroad and sawmills. According to Census records, there were 19 Japanese Canadian men in 1901 and then 144 Japanese Canadians (men, women, and children) in 1911.
On January 16, 2026, the Revelstoke Museum and Archives hosted an in-person and online event to launch their new online exhibit on the history of Revelstoke’s Japanese Canadian community. You can access the exhibit on their website www.revelstokemuseum.ca/japanese-legacies The website has pages covering the early years, 1910 avalanche, work camps, profiles of Japanese Canadian families, Japanese Canadian Citizens Association, oral history videos, and a bibliography and resources.
In the section on work camps, you can click on a link to see a List of Highway Work Camp Internees. The list was researched by Tomoaki Fujimura.
Each listing shows the camp(s) where the Japanese Canadian worked and indicates their location after working at the camp. For example: Yoshikazu Peter KARATSU (1921.11.8) Kagawa, Logger for Capliano Shingle Company Hatzic, Griffin Lake → Taft → New Denver*
Christine Kondo had commented on one of my social media posts that her great uncle was sent to the Sicamous – Revelstoke Road Camp. I contacted her and she confirmed that the listing for Yoshikazu Peter Karats was her Great Uncle. She is quite interested in this new exhibit because she doesn’t know much about the details of her great uncle’s time in Revelstoke. She does know what happened to him after the incarceration.
“After the war he moved to Toronto and became a successful businessman, owning dry cleaning businesses. He was one of the original donors to the project to help build the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre in Toronto in the 1960s.”
Christine said her dad told her that her great uncle did not talk about his experience in Revelstoke. “My dad did say he used to say “gambare, gambare” all the time to him – perseverance and don’t give up.”
Besides researching the Sicamous-Revelstoke road construction incarceration camp, Tomoaki Fujimura is a ski guide and avalanche search and rescue instructor. He says, “My 31 years of Canadian life has been an interesting journey of meeting people and navigating in the mountains.”
Tomoaki met his first Canadian friend, Mary Obara, in Cranbrook in 1995. He was alone and didn’t speak English. Mary helped him and shared her story about her life in the Sandon incarceration camp.
“After I was involved with a Size 3 avalanche accident at Fernie Alpine Resort in 2006, I became interested in avalanche forecasting and deeper in avalanche phenomena. Then, I moved to Revelstoke in 2007 and proceeded in my life to become a Japanese origin avalanche professional instructor and avalanche forecaster.”
Tomoaki is also the co-producer of the movie, 1910: The Uncovering, about the 1910 Rogers Pass Avalanche. His interest started in 2009, when “the Revelstoke locals formalized a committee for the 1910 Rogers Pass Avalanche 100th commemoration and approached me to investigate Japanese victims, who they were, how many of them, how they were involved with, where they were from, where they were buried and whether they would have any bereaved families in Canada or Japan.” Tomoaki said, “this moved my heart” and he thought it was a good opportunity to build Japanese avalanche awareness.
The Revelstoke Museum & Archives online exhibit has a section on the 1910 avalanche and tells the story of the tragedy on the night of March 4, 1910. More than 60 men were clearing the railway tracks for a passenger train that couldn’t move just east of the summit of Rogers Pass because of an avalanche. Another avalanche came down killing 58 men. 32 were Japanese workers. As the bodies were discovered, they were buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Vancouver. The list of memorial profiles may be accessed from this section on the website.
As part of his research, Tomoaki “found the payroll of those railway workers and recognized there were many workers to get involved with rescue efforts. There were also some possible survivors from this accident. Since one of the 32 Japanese victims had his younger brother, Takayuki Abe, [who] was interned in Kaslo B.C., and his wife Kaoru Abe was interned in New Denver B.C.”
Tomoaki has “…collected over 28,500 pre-war Japanese names and their original towns and villages.” He said, “I hope that my effort and curiosity will help Japanese Canadian society, which I hope to receive some help in the Japanese avalanche world. For some future awareness, I worked with many Canadians to produce the film called, “1910: The Uncovering.” Please watch this to expand many perspectives of our human contributions. “
The NAJC ACE Committee is planning on an online and in-person (Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre) screening of 1910: The Uncovering on February 21 at 2 p.m. (Pacific). Information will be posted on the NAJC website najc.ca and social media. 1910: The Uncovering was produced with an Endowment Fund grant from the NAJC
Resources
Japanese Canadian Legacies – Revelstoke Museum & Archives
https://www.revelstokemuseum.ca/japanese-legacies
Honouring Our People: Breaking the Silence Edited by Randy Enomoto
The Enemy That Never Was by Ken Adachi
