<Begin Segment 50>

TI: I wanted to now go back again, during that period when the government was encouraging people to either go east or to Japan, was there a lot of discussion or friction within New Denver about what people should do?

HS: Oh, yes. They used to have meetings, there was a lot of meetings in the, in the camps about this. And there were, there were certainly a core of Japanese Isseis that were so dead against staying in Canada that they were trying to persuade as many to go back to Japan with them. Because, "They didn't want us, we have to go back to Japan." And all their experience had been that whatever the, the government of B.C., during all that period they were in B.C., they were never given the vote, they were never allowed to be, other than fishermen or maybe the, at the most, schoolteachers, but they couldn't be lawyers, they couldn't be this (and that)... although out of the province, yes, in Canada, but they were basing it on the B.C. restrictions.

TI: And so within the camp, was there sort of heated disagreements about...

HS: Oh, there was heated disagreement, but it never came to a major revolt-type situation where these people going back to Japan (...), they caused a (real) fuss, (...)... there was too many people who felt it's, there's nothing for us in Japan. They don't want us there. When the war ended and they had lost and there was nothing left in Japan, many people realized they would be a burden to the people that were (there) -- and, of course, they had no place to go, a lot of them.

TI: And those were pretty much the two primary options, either go back to Japan or go east.

HS: Go east. East of the Rockies, they wanted us out (of B.C.).

TI: Because staying in British Columbia was discouraged.

HS: No option, yeah. By 1949, that changed. They could no longer push you to get out of B.C., so in New Denver, that was one of the last places where a lot of Japanese people were still there. They just stayed there, and they are still there; those families are still there today. Having, in 1949, when that restriction went on, they said, "Okay, now we don't have to move." And so they, they were old enough -- a lot of them were older, old-age patients. The living was too good in New Denver; the living was cheap there. They could grow all, most of all, they could grow everything that could, mostly all their vegetables. They, the only thing they had to buy were a bit of meat and stuff like that, they were being, getting their pension by that time. They would receive pension like anybody else, old-age pensions.

TI: So to this day, is there still a Japanese Canadian community in New Denver?

HS: Oh, yes, still there.

TI: About how large? I'm curious.

HS: Oh, at one point it was quite large. It would be, I forgot, I was talking to this guy Hayashi, who you saw in the film, and he, he estimated at one time maybe there might have been, oh, up to thirty to fifty families there, still, when we, when the camp officially closed. It officially closed in 1947/'48. They thought that everybody was out. By 1951, they had decided, well, they're not leaving, so they decided they would give them their houses. They deeded, like they gave them the deed to the house, you might say. Just a piece of, piece of little property there.

<End Segment 50> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.