| First Person Account by Harry Yonekura My father transferred his fishing license to me when I was 16 years old. Fishing was good in 1941 and by the end of the season, I negotiated and agreed to buy the largest salmon gillnet fishing boat in the Fraser River at that time. 1942 was predicted to an even better and greater fishing season than 1941. Pearl Harbor changed everything. And with the war, the Royal Canadian Navy started impounding all Japanese Canadian fishing vessels. To the fisherman, his boat is second only to his life, and when we witnessed the way the navy was handling the Japanese Canadian fishing boats, we were just shocked. Most of the fishermen lost their incentive to even look after their own boat. Their feeling was “I’ve lost my 50 years’ work.” After the boat seizure comes the evacuation order. Steveston was a tightly-knit fishing community with the Fishermen’s Hospital, Administration Office, Fishermen’s Hall, Gymnasium (martial arts center) and four acres of land with a kindergarten all owned by the fishermen. We all attended Lord Byng Public School, which was half-financed by the Japanese Canadian community, but owned by the Richmond municipality. We attended English school from 9 am to 3 pm and Japanese school from 4 pm to 5 pm. Around February, 1942, we found some fishermen’s families running into financial difficulties due to the fact that we lost our boats and have been unemployed since December 7, 1941. We formed a committee to help these families in hardship by organizing a food pool. We also formed a crew to help families without manpower who needed urgent help in packing for the evacuation. It was during my volunteer service as a baggage crew that I witnessed one incident which changed my belief and thinking towards this awful situation thrust upon our community. A middle-aged lady with a baby on her back and a little boy beside her was on her hands and knees in front of a young, smart-looking RCMP, crying and begging that she be taken away with her husband too. When I witnessed this scene, I started to re-think and re-assess my volunteer service work. What I saw upset me. My volunteer service is not helping the evacuees! I made the most important decision of my life. I became an underground activist and from this day on, I had no choice, no change of mind, but to openly go against the BC Security Commission and protest the breaking up of our families. My new life style as an activist resulted in my being picked up for not having the proper permit to stay in Vancouver, a restricted area. I was thrown into the immigration jail. I could not contact my family, but about the third day my mother and sister were able to visit me with my toothbrush and other necessities. Then in the second week of July, 150 of us were shipped out of Vancouver to Angler POW camp in Ontario. As we entered Angler Prisoner of War Camp, I felt like I was caged in when the guards with machine guns closed the outer and inner barbed wire gates. We were ordered to surrender all civilian belongings except our underwear and supplied with POW outfits. I became POW No. 348. Homecoming ’92 – Where the Heart Is |