Greenwood Video

The Greenwood Nikkei Memorial Garden, which opened on July 20, 2025, is dedicated to the 1,200 Japanese Canadians who were forcibly uprooted from the west coast and sent to Greenwood, beginning on April 26, 1942. Greenwood was the first internment site to open – a new temporary home for the exiled citizens, most of whom were Canadian. The garden is part of Nikkei Legacy Park (formerly Ohairi Park), situated off Highway 3 that runs through Greenwood.

In 1899, at its peak, Greenwood had a population of 3,000, but by 1930 it had dropped to 171 people. In 1942, Mayor W. E. McArthur Sr welcomed the Japanese Canadian exiles, going against government orders by allowing them to own or operate businesses.

The Nikkei Memorial Garden is funded by BC Heritage Sites, a key program of Japanese Canadian Legacies, developed to assist local communities in British Columbia in promoting public awareness of pre-war Japanese Canadian history through interpretive heritage projects at sites of ancestral communities and other places of historical significance including sites of wartime incarceration.

JC Legacies recognizes Chuck Tasaka, who has devoted much of his life to sharing the story of Greenwood including, through the Nikkei Legacy Park and the new Nikkei Memorial Garden.

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.