<Begin Segment 52>

TI: Okay, so we had... we're now in hour six, and we had just ended talking about how, or why you went to Edmonton, the Catholic church, and they provided the jobs for not only your parents but the two of you boarding, so that... before we talk more about Edmonton, you had just also mentioned how your father was able to sell some things from the Prince Rupert place, and I just wanted to, in general, talk about how that all worked in terms of all the property --

HS: The B.C. Security Commission, in an effort to try and... it was really in an effort to prevent us from going back to the West Coast, because of the pressure of politicians and some other people that, economic, people that were in associations of fishermen and things like that, they didn't want us to come back. So they decided that they would sell our properties, which they were, it was under their -- they were sort of at the time, custodians of our property. They just came out and said that, "We're going to sell your property," they did sell it. And it was, no question, I gave you that letter by that guy about that Rafe (...). That's exactly what they did. People bought these properties at fire, what you call fire (sale).

TI: Fire sale.

HS: Fire sale prices. And so Papa had the restaurant and a few of these, he and his partner had a few of these houses, and he got a few thousand dollars out of that whole deal.

TI: Now, did the government sell it to the family that was renting it? I'm curious who this...

HS: We don't know. I don't know the exact, because he never mentioned who it was that took over these properties, but they were sold to whoever happened to, they were put on sale on auction, I don't know how they did it. But most of it was on auction, and people bought, like the boat I found in, the Japanese fishing boat, same idea. They were just sold on auction, they may have had a number of auctions in which property was sold, they might have been sold also to veterans from the war, that were given the opportunity to have a first say in buying these things as a reward for having, having been in the army and stuff like that.

TI: So this is probably, again, probably a difference between the United States and Canada. I couldn't imagine that happening in the United States.

HS: It would have been difficult because you guys still had a Constitution. And there, and there was a, you had a, and your, and individual rights.

TI: To property...

HS: To property. Whereas in Canada, you didn't have a Constitution of that nature.

TI: So the government, through the War Measures Act, was able to just say...

HS: They were using the War Measures Act to do everything, you see.

TI: "We can just sell the property."

HS: "We can sell it," that's, that's our, we can do it legally.

TI: And then this money was then, what did they do with it?

HS: That money that you sold it for, we got some eventually, but before that, a lot of that money that came was used to actually pay for our internment in the internment camps. [Laughs] They pay for a lot of the expenses of doing that, then all the bills that came up, they then said, "Well, you have to pay for all this stuff that you guys had, train rides and all that sort of thing." So...

TI: The materials to build the shacks.

HS: Shacks, and the materials...

TI: The food.

HS: That's right. So they, they were using it to sort of, to house ourselves. So we, that was done on the basis of the War Measures Act, and the Order in Council. This had never been brought up in Parliament. Once it got into Parliament, then that's when that '49, 1949, when people began to, there was in, there were members of that, of the government that got up and said, "Look, what are you doing about these people? These are Canadians, you can't treat them the way you have been treating them," and eventually they had to back down. In fact, these people that said that they, who had signed up, they were determined to send them, but then there was so much problems showing up at the legislative, no, at the parliament building area, MPs were sticking up for some of the Japanese people. They said, "You can't do this. These are Canadian citizens." Like they said, "Go back to the country where you came from." Well, it was. The only country that they came from was Canada. So they said, "You have to rescind these orders," and finally they did rescind those orders of those, of people going back to Japan said, "We will no longer send any back." And then, at that point, you have, have a situation that began to simmer. Eventually that, it just died away. They gave these houses to the people that lived in New Denver. I don't know if they paid anything for --

<End Segment 52> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.