This is my story, Harriet (Haruye),

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I was born in Port Hammond, BC on April 6, 1938  to Yoshi and Toshio Iwase.   They came from Yokohama / Tokyo to his parents’s  Ai and Iwazo's 11 acres farm land in Port Hammond BC, which was purchased in the 1920’s (today this area is called Maple Ridge).

After months and months of plowing, digging, burning stumps / bushes  and planting many, many fruit trees, the grandparents returned to Odawara /Tokyo,  Japan, then mom / dad  (Toshio and Yoshi) took over the farming of the land in Canada.  Mom found this life extremely trying as she came from a rather privileged background.   In Haney / Port  Hammond, she joined in the fujinkai and committees of Japanese through the Japanese Language School and the Japanese Buddhist Church. 

 

Mother comes from Kanagawa prefecture, she was college educated and came from a family of educators.  Her father, uncles, aunts and cousins were school teachers and she grew up on their  massive land in Yamada, just  outside of  Yokohama.  Her parents were land barons.  In time, her brother, Sensei Kagawa sold some of this real estate to the Government of Japan and that became part of the freeway from Tokyo to Hokkaido. 

 

From 1926 to 1942, my mom and dad had eight children, seven girls Akemi, Yoko, Shunko, Kazuyo, Haruye, Yoriko, Aiko  and one boy, Michitsugu, their only son who died  in 1936 at an age of seven years. He was a  healthy young boy, but one day coming home from school he sights crab apples dangling  over a fence, runs to it and started eating, eating and eating as many crab apples as he could and then pockets as many as he could carry.

 

Yoko shouts “Michi, mom said  come straight home, come on!“ he responds “I know, I know !“  Michi returns home and has respiratory deficits in a matter of minutes.  Profuse perspiration, respiratory wheezing,  shortness of breath, listlessness and lethargy ensued.   Right  before their eyes he goes into anaphylatic shock from toxicity of  pectin in the crab apples, so, so sad for the entire family.   "Our mother was never the same!" said Yoko.  "Imagine us  playing with him on Friday and on Tuesday he comes  home in a box!“   Mother and dad procreated again and again and three girls were born on the years of 1938, 1939 and 1942.  They were Haruye, Yoriko and Aiko (Yes!  Three more girls). 

 

Then in 1942, they were  forcibly removed from their precious and beloved 11 acres of farm land of Port Hammond to the internment  towns in the Slocan valley.   First to Hasting Park in Vancouver, then to the tent city of Popoff, then Bay Farm and in 1946, relocated to  New Denver.   ​

 

In October, 1943, father dies in an unspeakable Sunday fishing accident.  The entire  Bay Farm, Slocan, Popoff  communities organized search teams of 16 - 40 year old healthy Japanese Canadian men and went to search for him.  Dad and his partner, Mr. Mori, sadly got separated in that darkness,  Mr. Mori made it out at 0500 hrs, the next morning.   My mother sat on her knees in the middle of the kitchen floor on a zabuton all night, waiting, waiting, and waiting!   The  next day, the team eventually found dad’s lifeless body, lying in the cold waters of a running creek.  Mother was told he suffered a broken neck, likely from an unwitnessed fall. Mother was inconsolable!   

 

Now, mother at 40 years old becomes a young  widow with seven daughters ranging from 1 to 17 years old, she desperately wanted to return to Japan,  and my 17 yrs old sister, Yoko opposed this move.  This led to many verbal altercations and a big wedge ensued.   Father’s parents were not  aware of their son, Toshio’s death til over a year later,  amid the delayed and censored  postal delivery  to Japan (1943—1944).  War hysteria  and paranoid thoughts prevailed throughout the Canadian government.  One day in 1945, Akemi, 18 years and Kazuyo  9 years  were packed, ready to depart  for Japan, Yoko adamantly insisted that the family should remain intact.   In the end, we remained in Canada and we were perhaps one of the last to leave Bay Farm,  we were then trucked  into New Denver in October 1946.  Now,  Marge and Yoko were packed to train to Ontario as soon as we settled in New Denver, however on arrival that evening, the elders  of New Denver visited us and  Yoko  was requested  to teach school and Marge worked as a  receptionist for the local family doctor.    With this sudden change of plans, we stayed in New Denver til 1952.

 

We enjoyed our  New Denver Orchard's Japanese wooden bath house,  a meeting place after school,  behind our house we had a chicken coup and had outdoor toilets.   In the Kootenays, winters were so cold.  We lived in a non insulated, tar papered shack, with number 65 painted on the front door’s window.  Ice formed under the kitchen sink and we had to sleep with each other just to keep warm during the cold nights.  We played outdoors every day as houses were essentially meant for existence only.  The houses had beds, a table, bench seating, a wooden sink, a wood burning stove, with opened ceilings, kerosene lamps and candles initially, 2x4 walls, and curtains divided our rooms.  In time, mother as per my older sisters’ suggestion acquired a radio, gramophone and a piano.  As kids, we knew no better, we were quite naive and enjoyed our youth.  We played marbles for keeps, jacks, kick the can, run sheep run , mama goto, rummy, bounced a lacrosse ball, swimming  in the lake,  we shared a bike, Monopoly, Chinese Checkers, hop scotch, skipping rope, soft ball, made stilts and more.  ​

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I later attended  Kitsilano high school, graduated in 1956, attended VGH school of  nursing  and  graduated in 1960 as a Registered Nurse.   In time I joined Canadian Pacific Airlines as a flight attendant and flew to Tokyo and Hong Kong.  I was able to meet my grandmother Ai Iwase, my aunts, uncles and cousins from Tokyo, Yamada, Odawara & Yokohama.  I was the first grand child  to meet  obachan.  It was very emotional, weeping elation indeed !  Bachan and I  slept together  that night.

 

For me, life is  good today.