By Tracy Chen

Kei Yano recalls her parents' stories about living in internment camps

Kei Yano and her son, Kenji Ferguson

Kei's mother was born in Canada, and her father came to Canada in his late teens. Her parents met and got married on Vancouver Island, where they had three children.

During the onset of WWII, Japanese Canadians were forced to live in internment camps. "The government thought all Japanese were spies westward of the Island," she says. At the camp, her mother became pregnant with her son, Mitzu. Because she was pregnant, she got more rations. "They were basically disposed of and forced to stay in stables," she says. Due to the poor air quality in stables, many people became sick and developed asthma and nasal problems.

After WWII, her family moved to the east to Chatham, Ontario. Everything was taken away, except what they could carry. Afterwards the family moved to Toronto.

Yano grew up never learning Japanese. "The family was big, so we couldn't afford Japanese lessons," she says. One way of preserving traditional was cooking customary dishes and eating rice with their meals.

Yano currently resides in Toronto with her children, Kenji and Yomiko. Last summer, they went to Japan. To keep tradition, her children grew up taking Japanese and judo lessons.

There is a good reason why she's lived in Toronto all of her life. "Being diverse, it's very comfortable here. When you go somewhere else, it isn't you really, " she says.

Hideo Takahashi's story

Hideo with writer Tracy Chen

Hideo Takahasi recalls WWII in his wheelchair at Mon Sheong, a nursing home for seniors. He is animated as he recalls standing up for his culture in a time he felt heavy prosecution for being Japanese.

Takahasi's parents came from Japan. As a child, he grew up in Britannia, a copper mining town in British Columbia. He was anxious about his first day at school. "I was worried because I didn't speak English, but I realized no one did either. It was a lot of fun," he says.

When copper became devalued, they closed the camp. His family moved to Vancouver. There he graduated from high school, where he studied French, Chemistry and Psychology. After university, he took a job with the Japanese Consulate. To become an ambassador, he eventually became fluent in English and Japanese. He studied Japanese international law at the Geneva Convention.

When Pearl Harbour was bombed, the Canadians labelled the Japanese as "enemy aliens". The government passed an Order in Council authorizing the removal the "enemy aliens" within a 100-mile radius of the BC coast to internment camps.

"You do as I say or we'll kill you," says Takahasi about the orders he faced from the guards at the internment camps. His internment camp had about 800 people and also included people of German descent.

It took a while before he found out WWII was over. "We didn't know the war was over because we didn't get newspapers," Takahasi says. After four years he was released to Toronto, Ontario. He took a job at a mushroom farm at Port Credit, Ontario.

He is 78, and now calls Toronto home.