Feature.

Connected to the past

One mans experience living through

and beyond being int erned

By Joel MacKenzie, Staff Writer

akoto Ikuta, a

Japan-born, retired high school chemistry teacher, sees the sun yel- low. In other words, he identifies as a Canadian.

People from Japan see the sun as it is reflected in their national flag, ‘The Setting Sun.’ Mak, as Makoto goes by, explains. “So if you ask them ‘What colour is the sun?’ and they say ‘Red,’ you know they haven’t converted,” he says, laughing.

Most of Mak’s life has been in Canada; he’s only been to Japan 10 times. But, while living in Canada from 1942 to

1947, he did not share the same rights as the average Canadian citizen. Under the suspicion of espionage and sabotage, his family, and over 21,000 people of Japanese descent were deported inland, at least 100 kilometres away

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from the west coast.

In 1941, after Japan’s attack on the American naval base Pearl Harbour, the Canadian federal government became paranoid about the Japanese people living in coastal BC: many of them worked in the fishing industry, in close proxim-

in Canada

ity to the Pacific Ocean coast that BC shares with Japan. In 1942, with Mackenzie King acting as Prime Minister, the government interned

all people of Japanese descent in BC to loca- tions at least 100 miles from the west coast.

The people were given the choice of moving into camps or inland workplaces, both with a daytime curfew. The internment camps reportedly lacked decent living conditions, like adequate heating and food. And the work was mostly hard labour, like

railway construction and farm work. Mak’s father wanted him, his brothers, and his sisters to con- tinue their education, so they moved to Raymond, Alberta to work on a sugar beet farm.

For Mak, the move proved difficult because

In 1942, with Mackenzie King acting as Prime Minister, the government interned all people of Japanese descent in BCto locations at least 100 miles from the west coast.

he had never done any farm work prior to the relocation. As a 13-year- old who was used to schoolwork, the hoeing, weeding, sorting, and processing of sugar beets was a big change. “Rows and rows” of sugar beets “seemed, at the time, endless,” he

remembers, laughing. And the work was “Cold, too. Hands would get really, really cold.”

But in a time when his family was moved and forced to work labour jobs, Mak didn’t become cynical. Rather, he turned to his culture for comfort. “The Japanese have a saying: ‘shikata ga nai, shikata ga nai,’ which means, ‘can’t be helped, can’t be helped.’ In time of war, it can’t be helped.”

This phrase might be the epitome of the calm, collectivist Japanese atti- tude that allows its peo- ple to maintain calamity and dignity during times of tragedy. Rather than

an admission of defeat, the | phrase 4 should