<Begin Segment 34>

TI: So this is fascinating. So it's interesting, so Tom Shoyama, a Japanese Canadian, was sort of tasked to go scout out potential places for the, the community to be removed to. And so he's, he's trying to balance the fact that, he has to make sure the local community would be somewhat accepting of this community.

HS: Yes, they had to go, they had to go there and talk to (communities).

TI: And you would need some infrastructure in terms of buildings or something.

HS: So what eventually they came down to was if you look into the interior of B.C., there's an area in the Slocan city area, which is in the Kootenay area, had been at one time a booming mining frontier during the early 1900s. They had discovered, mainly it was silver, but they thought that it would be gold there, and it was kind of a mini gold rush going on. And the whole valley of Slocan Lake, which is just adjacent to the Kootenay Lake, which would be directly south, directly north of, probably north of about the Spokane area. Not, no, not that far. Just one of the... it would be almost, as a matter of fact, it wouldn't be that far (...) east of Seattle. If you go directly (north) from... let's see, it would be, yeah, it would be around, maybe around Spokane or a little bit further west, if you went directly north, you came into this valley, the Slocan valley where there had been at one time, fifteen thousand people living in that area, various towns. And those towns had become ghost towns. Like they had become abandoned, and there were towns there where there was big buildings just sitting empty, because everybody, once the gold, idea of the gold rush, they thought it was going to be a gold rush, but then it turned out to be nothing. And eventually that, even their silver (mined out) so much that they have very little further mining that they could do, so they all, all the people in those areas left, and left behind all these old buildings. And so they thought, "Well, we'll take, we'll put the Japanese in those buildings." That's why Tom and Len Boltbee went by car. He said it was a great big Buick, and they went through, at that time, he said the roads were still just the gravel roads, and they had to go through the mountains. He said it was a hairy ride that they had to go through. And they finally got to a place called Kaslo, which is on the (lake) -- Kootenay Lake. And when he got there, they said the town, there were empty buildings there, and they thought, okay, they could put some of them in there. Then they went from there to (another) place called Sandon, which was also an old mining town. And they were completely abandoned, all kinds of buildings, and only one hermit living there. (...)

TI: Now, the man that Tom Shoyama went with, the realtor, was he part of that B.C. Security?

HS: Oh, yeah, he was a part. Well, I don't know if he was a part of the B.C. Security Commission, but he had, he had been appointed by Austin Taylor to be the, because of his knowledge of real estate, they thought that he would be the ideal guy to, to negotiate, negotiate these areas by going there, talking to the people there, can they bring the Japanese to this area. Well, New Denver was the next place. New Denver was kind of, became kind of a center for the administration of all these, all these towns, because it had a hospital, it had a bank, it had grocery stores, it had, still had hardware stores.

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.