Irene's parents owned two bookstores, so it is fitting that after high school she went on to study English literature at the University of British Columbia. Her education was interrupted, however, after she travelled with her mother and sisters to Japan in 1941. She returned on the last ship back to Canada before the attack on Pearl Harbor that year, her mother and sisters remaining in Japan. Because of the war and the fear it created that the Japanese minority in Canada were a security threat, Irene and her family members who were still in Canada were forced to leave their home and live in an internment camp at Christina Lake, British Columbia.