Bird Of Passage (Japanese Canadian)

Oh, bird of passage. Your journeys take you far borne on the winds and far across the seas. When do you come home today? Another day. A new start. No different from any other. Work piled up at the office. Most evenings, by the time I get home, the kids are in bed. Tonight, I promised to take them skating. Don't see enough of them. When I was their age, I didn't see much of my father, either. He'd be away from home for months at a time during the fishing seasons. I live in Montreal now. I mean, it's our home. Montreal, 3,000 mi away from Vancouver, where I was born. How did I get here? Why did I leave Vancouver? Well, it was more than just A TRAIN RIDE. IT STARTED WHEN PAPA FIRST CAME TO CANADA TO make his fortune. And like all the other Japanese, he settled in BC. Saving for the day to go back to Japan. A bird of passage nestled along the coast. Like the other Japanese, he stayed and raised a family. It's 1937. A Japanese prince visits Vancouver. What a day for mama and papa. Banzai, long life. We'll go back home to Japan soon, they said. But where was our home? We waved two flags that day. I can still remember the prince's visit. I was about Gail's age, and like her, just starting grade two. She's the only Japanese Canadian at her school. The school I went to was mostly Japanese. English was the language of instruction, but at home and in the town, the way of life was almost completely Japanese. We waved two flags that day. And then something happened. One flag was to mean internment camps. Ghost towns. Evacuation. Everyone was moved away for security reasons. Barbed wires. Guards. Pearl Harbor, 1941. War. They said we were Japanese. They said we were enemies. Once a always a But I was born in Canada. Now, I'm a chemical engineer. If the war hadn't come, who knows? Even started my own business. Lately, my brothers have joined me. We're all in it together. We work hard. We take a deep pride in what we do. It's a young company and a new kind of business, plastics. Chemical coating. Big companies, big jobs. We can handle them. My father was a fisherman. But his boat was confiscated with the rest of the Japanese fishing fleet. My mother's store was also seized. And when all the properties were sold by the custodian, we got almost no money for them. Instead of what I'm doing now, I might have been a fisherman. Out on the open seas. Feel the wind on my face. Hear the seagulls. But just like that, my family lost its livelihood. Unable to relax. Unable to join in the fun with the rest of the crowd. Unable to enjoy your We worked hard for everything we've got today. We had to start from nothing. But that's not the important thing. It's the feeling of security. It's having a family together. Lydia's family was separated during the evacuation. She was sent to a ghost town with her mother, her father to an internment camp. She was five at that time. But when you get older, you forget. You've got to get out and do things. Places to go, people to see, a job to look into. Now, if you're qualified, you can get the job. Someone's going to need you. It doesn't matter if you're a Japanese Canadian. Sometimes it helps. They remember you. I can even take pride in it. But that wasn't always the case. I thought, get an education. No one can take that away. But when I first graduated from college, I still couldn't get the jobs I wanted. I still couldn't meet the people. It was hard to take pride in what you were when you met discrimination or indifference wherever you went. A two-room shack on the cold prairies. Because we were Japanese, we were hated and feared. We became aliens in our own land. My family was sent to Alberta. During the war, they called me Japanese. Now, in Quebec, because I don't speak French, they call me English. If you ask me, I'm Canadian. Well, okay, Japanese Canadian. After the war, the government said, "Go back to Japan or stay east of the Rockies." Go back? But I was born in Canada. It's my only home. Japan to me was a mirage, an imagined island. Maybe in a few years, when the kids are a little older, it might be nice if we all went for a visit together. Someday, I'd sort of like to walk down a street surrounded by 90 million Japanese. I don't know. I just want to know what it feels like. Canadian food's all right. But sometimes Lydia cooks a Japanese meal. I guess it's part of our taste, our heritage. But we're different from our parents. Japan was always close to them. They were always going to go back. In the end, because Canada is our home, they stayed, too. And for all of us, the bird of passage found a home. The journey's ended. Your search is over. No more the winds from far across the seas. Now, you can rest at ease. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm.