Nisei: Internment Camp Life
Greenwood was the first ‘internment centre’ and Tashme was the last. In-between, there were Lemon Creek, Popoff, Bay Farm, New Denver, Rosebery, Sandon
Nisei: Internment Camp Life
Greenwood was the first ‘internment centre’ and Tashme was the last. In-between, there were Lemon Creek, Popoff, Bay Farm, New Denver, Rosebery, Sandon and Kaslo. Self-supporting camps were East Lillooet, Minto Mine, Bridge River and McGillivray Falls. Other self-supporting camps like Taylor Lake, Tappen, Blind Bay, Christina Lake and Grand Forks had much smaller settlements. These were the internment camps in B.C. in 1942-43.
It must have been a shock to go from a bustling city to towns and villages that were slowly becoming ghost towns. The hastily-built shacks on farmers’ fields looked like old fishing or hunting cabins that you could ‘rough it’ for the weekend. Unfortunately for the Japanese Canadians, they had to stick it out for three to four years! Amenities in the Slocan Valley camps were very limited. The shacks were not built quickly enough to accommodate all the internees, so some of the late-comers were provided with army tents. One mother sarcastically said that she woudn’t have to cook and clean anymore. The shacks were small and a family with five children or fewer had to share with another family. Two families were cramped together in a small shack the size of a garage. The kitchen stove was in the middle. The two farthest walls had bunk beds for the children. Piped-in water and electricity came later as well as stores, schools, and other amenities. Rosebery was called the suburb camp of New Denver. Sandon? Government officials sent Buddhists there. Only Greenwood and Kaslo had any resemblance of a town. They were not segregated like the other camps. Greenwood had electricity, water and plenty of empty buildings. The roof leaked in some of the old hotels. It’s hard to visualize over 100 people living in # 1 Building or the old Pacific Hotel. In Kaslo, Langham Hotel was huge but run-down. The self-supporting groups had to provide accommodation with their own money, but they had a choice of location outside the 100-mile radius.
This was the predicament that Japanese Canadians were in, so they had to make the best out of a bad situation. Resourcefulness and resiliency became a priority. The first winter of the internment days was the coldest in years. Therefore, men had to gather up any newspapers and cardboards to insulate the ship-lapped walls. Wood had to be chopped, buckets of water had to be hauled back to the shack, kerosene lamps had to have enough fuel and the candles stored in the drawer.
Top priority was firewood after that first blustery winter. Firewood came in all shapes and sizes. Kindling was cedar, long, bark-covered slabs and sawdust were most inexpensive, planer ends burned well, but cordwood of fir blocks were expensive.
Most people bought slabs because they were affordable. However, the work was dirty. Long slabs came by truck, and fathers had to make sawhorses. Long slabs were placed on top with a lasso rope tied around. With a cross-cut or Swede saw, the slabs had to be sawed to fit different types of stove in the house. Barks would drop off, and sawdust would be flying in the air when being sawn. Therefore, children working wore hankies like the old cowboy bank robbers to cover their nose and mouth. Finally, freshly cut slabs were piled inside the woodshed.
In a sawmill town, planer ends were ideal. They were hard fir or larch that burned well. This firewood was great for either the kitchen stove or omu stobu (warm stove). They didn’t need to be sawn. These were just loose ends that the lumber graders cut off.
Sawdust was very inexpensive and it worked very well in the winter. Kitchens generally had this type of stove. A hopper was located on one end of the stove. This hopper would gradually drop the sawdust into a compartment where the fire was burning. One bucket of sawdust would last a long time. It wasn’t unusual to see buckets of sawdust inside the house. The danger of this fuel was in the winter time. Some of the sawdust would be frozen in clumps. This heavy clump would melt and suddenly drop inside the stove abruptly. Sparks of cinder would go flying out of the damper! It was a fire hazard.
I personally disliked ‘doing wood’ because all the work had to be done in the summer. That meant loss of playing time! No swimming, hiking, playing games, etc. Our house had to feed so many stoves. One for the barber shop, another for the pool hall, and we also had stoves in the kitchen and parlour (living room). Fortunately, we had a large family. Those who lived in ‘apartments’ finished their work early so they would be ‘hired hands’ to earn extra dime or quarter to help elderly people. Children learned to use the axe or saw with great skill, especially those boys who could sp