B
[cheers]
[bell dings]
Reporter:
long before they ended up in the same long term care home.
You have to go back 80 years and thousands of kilometres away
to their shared dark history as student and teacher
at the same Japanese Canadian internment camp in Kaslo, B.C..
And while some memories have faded with age,
others remain fresh, like Kai's teaching style.
[video plays]
Looks like me.
Reporter:
that stubbornly persist.
Reporter:
to protect her son, Brian Kai.
Brian: Well, I think there were times when my parents
didn't want to talk about it.
And when that happened, they spoke Japanese
since I couldn't understand it.
[engine rumbles]
Reporter:
the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
Reporter:
Amid strong anti-Japanese sentiment, 21,000
Japanese Canadians were ordered from the B.C.
coast further inland.
Kai's family was to be split up.
Carrying a rice cooker and sewing machine,
they left the downtown Vancouver home her father built
with his own two hands, and joined
thousands of others forced into the B.C. interior.
Reporter:
when she was sent to Kaslo.
What was that like to be told
you had to leave New Westminster?
It was not something that we talked about.
And I just think that it was
maybe too painful for them to relive those memories.
Reporter:
Herb Sakaguchi, was shipped off to Slocan, B.C..
Reporter:
their Kitsilano home from under them.
In 1988, Canada compensated internment camp survivors
$21,000, a pittance
compared to today's Vancouver real estate prices.
Who are these people?
Reporter:
long withheld anger, and thwarted dreams,
expressed out loud for the first time.
That's the first time I actually heard her say the word "mad"
to the fact that she had to be moved into internment camps.
Is this Uncle Ray?
That's your brother.
That's me.
That's you?
Reporter:
After long, successful, and happy lives,
they had to rebuild from scratch.
Katie Nicholson,