Japanese Canadian Internment

Abstract

Mary Kitagawa was seven years old when she was detained in a livestock barn at Vancouver’s Hastings Park. She remembers the stench of the buildings when she dragged her suitcase through the barn door in April, 1942. Mary and her family spent a month at Hastings Park before they were relocated to the BC interior. They were eventually moved to a sugar beet farm in Alberta until well after the war ended. Approximately 8000 other Japanese Canadian women and children were held at Hastings Park before being sent to farms and camps across Canada.