Resilient rise of a mistreated community

By Hapa Collaborative

In April 1942, over 2,500 Richmond based Japanese Canadian (Nikkei) residents were removed from their community as they were deemed a threat to national security during World War Two.

Over 22,000 total mainlanders were sent to internment camps located throughout the Interior of British Columbia — many camps on the site of former ghost towns which lacked the supporting infrastructure to house large groups of people.

Others were sent to work on farms scattered across Alberta and Manitoba, their family structures torn apart. The Nikkei were deemed ‘enemy aliens’ despite some generations born in Canada.

The Nikkei Internment Memorial honours Japanese emigrants and their descendants for their resilience, perseverance and community spirit. The project was a very personal one for Hapa Collaborative founding principal Joseph Fry. His maternal grandparents were sent from their home in Japantown on Powell Street in Vancouver to an internment camp in Slocan during the war.

The Canadian government allowed the Japanese Canadian to return to the coast in 1949 only for them to discover their property and possessions had been sold during their internment. Upon their homecoming to the neighbourhood of Steveston in Richmond, the Nikkei resiliently built a new community from the wreckage of their lives.

This public art and contemplative garden space honours the 75th anniversary of the evacuation of the Nikkei community in 2018 and the 70th anniversary of their return in 2019.

The Canadian Government seized the land and property of the Japanese and then sold it to pay for their imprisonment.

A placemat, handwoven from discarded fruit and salmon labels by an interned Japanese Canadian woman was discovered during our extensive research.

It symbolises the quiet defiance of the interned, the way they found small victories in dire circumstances. The placemat became the guiding inspiration for the space.

The Memorial includes two large boulders with a crevasse between them that represents the separation of the Japanese community from their home

Each shape, texture and detail of the subtle landscape concept and artwork tells a story including untold history from the Nikkei themselves.

On the sites ground, a large swath of stones form the pattern from the placemat; large Quebec boulders depict an engraved map of the camp locations; Japanese plum trees (Prunus Mume) are planted in honour the communities’ origins and identity; and the pathways are curved in such a way to represent the leaving and the returning of the enduring Nikkei.

The names of the internment camps are engraved into the boulders. There is also a constellation of markers symbolising the other places, too many to name, where the Japanese were sent.

Our intention is that this contemplative and emotional space will educate future generations, continue the global conversation about overcoming xenophobia, and most importantly, pay tribute to the Nikkei pioneers who suffered racism, intolerance, and injustice.

The design details are certain proof of the unbreakable connection between landscape architecture and storytelling.

Hapa Collaborative is a landscape architecture and urban design practice based in Vancouver.