Acknowledgements:
I recognize and acknowledge the Stó:lô First Nation, as well as all Coast Salish Peoples, on whose territories we live, learn, and work.
This project would not have been possible without the help of Val Billesberger from the Mission Community Archives as well as Dr. Scott Sheffield and Robin Anderson from UFV.
Archival Sources:
“Fraser Valley Record,” 1929-1942.
Pacific Cooperative Union minutes, 1932-1945.
Secondary Sources:
Adachi, Ken. The Enemy That Never Was. Toronto: McCelland & Stewart, 1979.
Doré, Anne. “Transnational Communities: Japanese Canadians of the Fraser Valley, 1904-1942,” BC Studies 134 (Summer 2002): 35-70
Gillian Creese, “Exclusion or Solidarity? Vancouver Workers Confront the ‘Oriental Problem’,” BC Studies 80 (Winter 1988).
Hashizume, William. Japanese Community in Mission: A Brief History 1904 – 1942. Self-Published, n.d.
Miki, Roy, and Cassandra Kobayashi. Justice in Our Time – The Japanese Canada Redress Settlement. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991.
Roy, Patricia. The Oriental Question: Consolidating a White Man’s Province, 1914-41. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003.
Young, Charles, Helen Reid, and W. Carrothers. The Japanese Canadians. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1938.
Images:
From The Enemy That Never Was
Fraser Valley farmers joining forces to remove a stump, c. 1920
Labour contractors and their headquarters in Vancouver, c. 1910
Nisei volunteers in the Canadian Army aboard the Aquitania on their arrival in Southampton, England.
From The Japanese Canadians
Japanese Population in British Columbia by Census Divisions
Picking berries on a Japanese farm in the Fraser Valley.
Playmates.
From Mission Community Archive
MCA-0172-002-Emma-Barnett-with-Japanese-Kindergarten-class-1930s
MCA-187-013-Mission-Japanese-Farmers-Association-Parade-Float-1930s
MCA-190-04-003-Ogawa-Farm-Mission-BC-1920-30s
MCA-192-01-004-Japanese-Samurai-at-May-Day-Mission-Fairgrounds-1
MCA-0196-003-Mission-Japanese-Language-School-Downtown-1935
Website and research done by Tyler Cunningham, Winter 2022 at UFV.