Following the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December, 1941, the Canadian government interned people of Japanese ancestry due to fears of espionage, widespread anti-Japanese racism, and pressure from British Columbian politicians. Japanese Canadians were stripped of their civil rights and nearly 22,000 people were forced to leave their homes, many of whom were moved to internment camps. In 1942, my mother’s family’s 10-acre strawberry farm in Strawberry Hill, (Surrey-Delta) was confiscated by the government. Her family was then interned in Slocan, BC.

Post WWII Japanese Canadians were still forbidden to live on the West Coast. Two choices were given: either move east of the Rocky Mountains or “repatriate” to Japan, even those who were Canadian-born as my mother and her siblings were. My grandparents made the difficult choice to take four of their six children by boat to Japan. Before returning to Canada, they would face years of hardship and additional discrimination in Japan because they were Canadian.

My dad’s mother took her children to meet their grandmother in Japan before Canada implemented the War Measures Act. In their absence, my grandfather was interned in a camp in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan where he died. My grandmother and her children had no home, job, or father to return to in Canada. They were stranded near Hiroshima and were present for the US’s atomic bomb attack. The music on this album tells my family’s stories, both joyful and sad, from WWII to present day.