Destination BC’s new feature story: “Japanese Canadian Historic Sites: Journeys of Home”

Photo: Tashme Internment Camp, just outside the 100 mile Exclusion Zone, 10 miles outside Hope, c. 1942 |
Nikkei National Museum 1994-69-4-28

On Aug. 5, 2020, Destination BC released the Feature Story, “Japanese Canadian Historic Sites: Journeys of Home” on their consumer trip-planning website: www.hellobc.com. This article tells the story of Japanese Canadians from the family story of a third-generation Japanese Canadian, Laura Saimoto, whose family together with 22,000 Japanese Canadians, were interned from 1942-49 in Internment Camps in the interior of BC. It outlines easily accessible travel routes and describes where to discover and experience Japanese Canadian Historic sites throughout our beautiful province.

When the Second World War broke out, Japanese Canadians were considered a “security threat” and interned in camps beyond a 100 mile zone from the west coast, stripped of their civil rights and dispossessed of all they owned—their houses, cars, boats, properties, and businesses.

This summer, with racial tensions rising all over the world, travel our backyard as an outdoor classroom to experience where this history happened and ways racism can so profoundly change the course of a community’s history. At the same time, be inspired by how, with amazing strength and resilience, the community rose above adversity to create a “sense of home” for their children.

Japanese Canadian Historic Sites from all parts of BC invite you to visit and learn Japanese Canadian history as an integral part of British Columbia’s history this summer.

Read Japanese Canadian Historic Sites: Journeys of Home on www.hellobc.com.