In an earlier post, I talked about how I had never heard if anyone in my family had been affected by the internment camps in B.C. Well, as I was doing research for my essay I read that there was a “protected area” along the coast and it was from this area that the Japanese community was evacuated from.
What I know of my family history is that my great-grandma was a mail order bride, sent over to Canada in the place of her sister to marry a much older man. Together, her and her husband lived in the Okanagan and my family has lived there ever since.
On my own I could draw the conclusion that it was highly unlikely that any member of my family had been affected by the internment based on geographic location. I asked my mom and she confirmed this for me.
This research essay also gave me insight on how the language and culture tends to be lost along the generations. My grandma speaks limited Japanese and my mom doesn’t speak any. Research showed that older generations pushed culture and language on their children, those children dealt with a dual identity and tended to choose the Canadian identity, thus the next generation experiences that loss of culture. While this is not always the case, it seemed to be the trend, and I can see how it would apply to my family.