Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Henry Shimizu Interview
Narrator: Henry Shimizu
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: July 25 & 26, 2006
Densho ID: denshovh-shenry-01-0007

<Begin Segment 7>

TI: So roughly how large was the Japanese community back then?

HS: The Japanese population, when the Japanese population was removed from Prince Rupert, there was over six hundred people that went on the train. That did not include a lot of the young men and fathers that had been previously shipped out prior to that. So there would be, you have to think that there were close to a thousand Japanese, people of Japanese ancestry living in Prince Rupert. A good portion of them, however, were the fishermen that were on the outskirts, that would be in the villages, Skeena River, Nass River, and Port Essington, so there was quite a few people that were outside Prince Rupert proper, but were a part of that milieu, because they would be always coming into town.

TI: Now, when you think about the population, the Japanese population, you mentioned roughly a thousand were here right when the war broke out. Was that kind of the, the largest population, or was it like in previous years it was actually larger at one point, and then it came down a little bit?

HS: Well, I think it was, it was one of their, it was at that point reaching its height because of all the kids that were being born, and families that were being developed. But it wasn't, it was probably the third largest Japanese population in B.C. The largest was, of course, Vancouver, and then after that was Victoria, and then I think after that would be Prince Rupert. Mind you, there was quite a few Japanese people along the whole of Vancouver Island, and they were involved in fishing, market gardening, and in the timber, wood industry.

TI: So of those, of those three sort of major industries, fishing, the market, agriculture...

HS: Lumber, market gardening...

TI: Gardening and then the lumber, roughly what, what were the sizes? I mean, what was the largest, second largest, third largest?

HS: Oh, I think the fishing probably, well, in Prince Rupert it would be fishing. Vancouver Island, in the Vancouver Island area, it would be lumber, and in the mainland, in Vancouver and the area around that, it would be probably a combination of fishing plus, plus market gardening. Because market gardening, they, there was a lot of Japanese gardeners going on in that lower, what they call lower B.C. They call it lower B.C. area, that would be the area around the airport and it'd be towns like, where now we know as Richmond. In those days it was called Sea Island and Lulu Island, and they had, the soil was good in that area, and they had large, strawberries was a good example. But market gardens of just general vegetables and... they would have, at that point, they were one of the big suppliers of vegetables for the general population.

TI: But in Prince Rupert, the primary industry was fishing.

HS: Was fishing.

TI: So talk about --

HS: And some lumbering, of course. There was big, two big lumber companies up there.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.