Yesterday, I went with JL to the Powell Street Festival which is an annual celebration of Japanese-Canadian art, culture and heritage (and as a matter of fact, the largest such celebration in Canada) . The festival was held at Oppenheimer Park, where its vicinity (i.e. Powell Street area from Gore Avenue to Jackson Avenue) used to be a thriving Japantown neighbourhood until the internment in 1941 when Japanese Canadians were forcibly evicted from their homes and had their properties confiscated, many of whom eventually settled east of the Rockies or back in Japan and never returned to BC after the World War II.
(Side note: It wasn’t until 1988 that the Japanese Canadian Community received a formal apology from the Canadian government for the injustices suffered during the internment. I guess it’s better late than never, and I hope that Singapore would one day be able to face up to and acknowledge the injustices suffered by detainees of Operation Spectrum or other politically motivated arrests.)
From a high of 95% prior to 1941, there are now less than half (44% as of 2001) of Japanese Canadians living in BC. The few remnants of the formerly Japanese-predominant community are the Vancouver Buddhist Church, Vancouver Japanese Language School and the Japanese Hall (of which the latter was the only property returned to the Japanese after the internment), and with the Powell Street area in need of revitalisation, I can’t help but wonder how different this area could have been had the internment not occurred (and for that matter, the Steveston village which had a vibrant Japanese community pre-World War II as well). The Powell Street area could have become the biggest Japantown in North America since it already had a pretty substantial number of Japanese prior to the internment. On the other hand, given its relative lack of good accessibility, it could also have turned out to be an area not unlike Vancouver’s Chinatown, which is currently more vibrant than Japantown but nonetheless still in need of revitalisation. In any case, I guess it’s pointless speculating what might have been as it’s just a pity that the history of injustices cannot be rewritten.
wandering smurf 