BC Heritage Sites Callout: Salt Spring Island

BC Heritage Sites • December 5, 2024
Central School Class, Salt Spring Island, 1929.

Are you a Japanese Canadian or descendant with family history related to Salt Spring Island? Would you be interested in contributing family histories, stories, or photographs to a signage project related to the Japanese Canadian history of Salt Spring Island? If so, we would like to hear from you.

Our Project

The Japanese Canadian Legacies Society (JCLS) is supporting the Japanese Garden Society of Salt Spring Island (JGS) with a grant to install interpretive panels at Heiwa Garden in the Peace Park in downtown Ganges, and signage on installations in the area around Sharp Road and Norton Road on Salt Spring Island. These panels and signage will reclaim and interpret stories of the significant pre-1942 Japanese Canadian community on Salt Spring Island and the subsequent forced uprooting, incarceration, dispossession, and displacement.

The JGS and the Salt Spring Island Historical Society and Archives are collectively gathering information, documents, artifacts, and personal stories of pre-war Salt Spring Island families who went through the Uprooting through interviews and collaborations to shine a light on this significant and under-represented history of the Island. At the end of the project, the Archives will store the collected words and images as part of their archival collection that JGS will have full access to.

Of particular interest are pre-war Japanese Canadian families and individuals who lived on Salt Spring Island: Ando, Hirano, Inoue, Ito, Iwasaki, Mikado, the three Murakami families, Nakamura, Numajiri, Ohara, Okano, Shimoji, Tasaka, Yamasaki, bachelors Ishizumi, Takebe, and Tottori, and possibly more. The work will focus on finding out more about these families and individuals, and other Japanese Canadian families that settled and worked on Salt Spring Island between 1898 and 1942, and connecting with their descendants and people who knew them to hear their personal accounts.

This project is part of the JCLS BC Heritage Sites program, recognizing communities who made now-forgotten contributions to the building of this province.

Deadline: January 31, 2025
Contact: Christina Marshall, Shelly Sawada
jclegacies@saltspringarchives.com
Subject line: Salt Spring Japanese Canadian Stories – (Your Name)

Young friends gathering, including some Mikado children, 1935.  Location is probably the Mikado property on Norton Road, Salt Spring Island.
This photo was probably taken in the late 1930s. Rose Murakami writes, “The only female I know is my sister, Alice, the very young girl standing behind the young men sitting in the front. Facing the picture, starting at the top left, back row, the person on the end is Peter Murakami, no relation to us. Peter and his father owned most of what is now called Wildwood Crescent. Their home is still on the property. The next person with a hat is Rev. Gordon G. Nakayama, Anglican priest. In front of Peter is Philip Murakami, our cousin through our mothers. Beside Peter is Ken Ito. In the very front row, starting from the left is George Murakami, brother to Philip, next is a Mikado, possibly Doug, next is Luke Murakami, brother of Philip and George. The boy with a cap in the front row is another Mikado. I think his name is Bob. On the very right, second from the end, wearing a white hat and white pants is my uncle, Victor Okano, my mother’s brother.”

Japanese Canadian Legacies are initiatives that honour our elders past and present. We are grateful to be doing this work on the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish peoples.