I was talking to a friend this morning about my upcoming trip to Germany to share my side of our family’s heritage with son #2. We were talking about places where history is “obvious”. Historic battlefields like Gettysburg or Vimy Ridge come to mind, but entire countries do too; in Germany it is impossible to avoid the scars of historical events, and there is no attempt to hide the negatives, since it is considered not only important but vital for current generations to learn what never to do again.

We talked about the fact that North Americans have had a luxury not available to most Europeans: while we’ve certainly experienced the devastating losses of family members fighting wars on foreign soil, for more than a century there has not been a war fought on our home turf, and never anything on the scale of the two World Wars.

That doesn’t mean, however, that people living here survived war unscathed, or that our countries didn’t commit what we now understand were grave errors during wartime.

Nonetheless, there are times when history shows itself unexpectedly.

On an exploratory walk around our temporary neighbourhood today, Ted and I passed this little house and were intrigued.

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In the front yard: a stone wall, and closer to the sidewalk a stone monolith with a Heritage marker.

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Needless to say, I needed to know more, so once we got home, I started a “deep dive” into the history of the house and the family that lived in it.

Google has made deep dives pretty easy for those of us who are interested. While I was distracted down many other rabbit holes related to both the house and the author, any information in italics here is taken directly from Home | Historic Joy Kogawa House.

The childhood home of Canadian author Joy Kogawa stands as a historical reminder of the internment experience of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, and by extension, to the experiences of diverse cultural and ethnic groups within Canadian society.

The house was built between 1912 and 1913 for original owner Robert Mackie, a foreman in the public works department of the City of Vancouver. Mackie lived in the house from 1913 to 1937.

In 1937, the Nakayama family – Gordon and Lois, and their two children, five-year-old Timothy and two-year-old Joy – moved into the house. In the 1930s, Marpole, along with the Powell Street area of downtown Vancouver and the Fairview neighbourhood, was known as an area with a burgeoning Japanese population.

The Nakayama family lived in the house from 1937 until mid-1942 when the Government of Canada, under the War Measures Act, forced nearly 22,000 Canadians of Japanese descent out of their homes. 

The Canadian Government authorized the confiscation of the evacuees’ property. All of this property – including furniture, clothing, cars, and houses – was auctioned off at a fraction of its value and without the consent of the original owners. The proceeds of the sale were used to pay for the cost of their own internment.

The Nakayama family’s home was sold on September 22, 1944. The family was never able to return to their house in Marpole.

History is indeed everywhere, but its characters are rarely one-dimensional.

The story of Joy Kogawa’s family’s experiences is an incredibly sad one, and yet it was sad even before the events of World War II. 

The haunting, lyrical passage that prefaces Joy Kogawa’s novel Obasan, and which is displayed so prominently in front of the house distinguishes between two kinds of silence: “There is a silence that cannot speak. There is a silence that will not speak.” In the novel, it refers to the fact that Japanese Canadians were “silenced”, but in context of the house during Joy’s family’s time there it takes on another disturbing connotation.

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The home was owned by Joy’s father, Gordon Goichi Nakayama, who worked with the Japanese Canadian community as a minister of the Anglican Church of Canada. The website poignantly shares that In talking with many Japanese Canadians, we have come to understand that Gordon Goichi Nakayama betrayed his position of trust and authority through clergy abuse that brought considerable harm to the Japanese Canadian community. While owning and living in the house that now celebrates the work of his daughter, Joy Kogawa, we understand that Gordon Goichi Nakayama was known to have sexually abused many children. Our hearts go out to these children and to their families who spoke out against this abuse but were not heard.

In 2005–2006, Joy lent her support to a community campaign that saved the house from demolition.

A literary landmark, today it goes on to be a unique live/work space and a site of healing and reconciliation, hosting author residencies, literary events, and offering year-round educational tours for school groups and general public.

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In acknowledging the truth of what happened there before and during Joy’s early childhood, the not-for-profit organization that manages the house is committed to working with the community to help the healing process for those individuals and families affected by Nakayama’s actions.

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So our walk today yielded some learning. It also gave me another book to read; I’ve just borrowed Joy Kogawa’s award-winning novel Obasan from our online library.