Stan Kirk
@StanKirkStan Kirk grew up in rural Alberta and graduated from the University of Calgary. He now lives in Ashiya City, Japan with his wife Masako and son Takayuki Donald. Presently he teaches English at the Institute for Language and Culture at Konan University in Kobe. Recently Stan has been researching and writing the life histories of Japanese Canadians who were exiled to Japan at the end of World War II.
Updated April 2018
Stories from This Author
Part 3: Exile of the Matsuba Family to Japan
March 23, 2020 • Stan Kirk
Tak was 19 when his family was exiled from Canada to Japan. There were various reasons why his parents chose exile to Japan over dispersal to eastern Canada. One was uncertainty about what would happen if they chose the latter. They were also concerned about the welfare of close relatives in Japan with whom they had lost contact during the war. Another factor was that his father still owned a house in Miomura whereas in Canada he had lost everything. …
Part 2: Life in the Lemon Creek Internment Camp
March 16, 2020 • Stan Kirk
Tak vividly remembers hearing the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. “It was a Sunday and I was with friends out on Powell Street on our way home from playing badminton at the Japanese Language School when we heard the news from a radio in a parked car. It had a very sobering effect on all of us.”1 The order for Japanese Canadians on the west coast to leave their homes and property soon followed. Tak vaguely remembers that …
Part 1: Life in Vancouver before WW2
March 9, 2020 • Stan Kirk
Birth and Family Takeshi (Tak) Matsuba was born on December 5, 1926 in Vancouver to Kamejiro and Jiyo Matsuba. While not sure of the exact place of his birth, he thinks it was probably at home with the assistance of a midwife. As the firstborn child, he had two younger sisters named Masumi (Marie) and Mikiyo (Miki), and two younger brothers named Noboru (Gabby) and Takumi. All were born in Vancouver, except Takumi, who was born in the Lemon Creek …
Part 5: Life and Retirement with Takeshi in Canada
Nov. 22, 2019 • Stan Kirk
As a young man in Onomichi, Kazuko’s husband Takeshi got experience writing for a religious sect called Nanmyo Horen Gekkyou, which helped him become a very skilled writer in Japanese. Soon after moving to Canada his writing talent was discovered by his friend Gordon Kadota who was the founder of the Geppo (a monthly magazine of the Vancouver Japanese Canadian community called The Bulletin in English). For many years Takeshi wrote the Japanese section of the Geppo every month as …
Part 4: Return to Canada and Building a New Life in Vancouver
Nov. 15, 2019 • Stan Kirk
Both Kazuko and Takeshi continued working in Kobe and financially supporting the education of Kazuko’s younger brother and sister till they finished high school. After graduating, Kazuko’s younger brother and sister returned to Canada around 1955. First the younger brother worked for a lumber company and then for Nelson Chocolate in Vancouver. The sister did housework. Eventually, Takeshi lost his job in Kobe. In 1958, Kazuko’s younger brother and sister invited Kazuko and Takeshi to join them in Canada. Takeshi …
Part 3: Exile and Life in Post-War Japan
Nov. 8, 2019 • Stan Kirk
Kazuko was thirteen years old when her family was exiled to Japan. Her parents made the difficult choice of exile to Japan because their kids were still small and her father felt a strong responsibility to take care of his adoptive mother who was still alive and living in Onomichi. His adoptive parents had moved back to Onomichi before the war, had bought a house and ran a small restaurant there. His adoptive father had died during the war, and …
Part 2: Uprooting, Dispossession, and Incarceration
Nov. 1, 2019 • Stan Kirk
Shortly after the beginning of the war with Japan, the Canadian government ordered all Japanese Canadians living within 150 kilometers of the coast to “evacuate.” Kazuko’s family were given only twenty-four hours to leave their home. She remembers her mother telling her to quickly pack her own clothes. The police were at the door waiting for them to leave, so there was no time to waste. It happened so quickly they had no chance to ask friends to take care …
Part 1: Birth and Childhood until the War
Oct. 25, 2019 • Stan Kirk
Kazuko (Katy) Makihara was born into the Fukuhara family on September 26, 1933 in her parents’ home near Vancouver Cannery on Sea Island (now the location of Vancouver International Airport). Her birth was assisted by a Japanese midwife, Ms. Watanabe. She had an older sister, Hisaye, a younger sister, Judy, and a younger brother, Akio. Kazuko’s parents were from Onomichi, Hiroshima. Her father first came to Canada because he was adopted by a childless aunt and uncle who were fishermen …
Part 7: Career and Adult Life in Japan
Jan. 7, 2019 • Stan Kirk
Read Part 6 >> Initial Plan to Return to Canada and Eventual Stay in Japan As mentioned earlier, Mikio’s father expressed regret for his decision to return to Japan and often apologized to his children, saying that it was a mistake. Furthermore, he frequently urged Mikio to move back to Canada and make a new life there. Mikio recalls him saying, “Mikio, Japan is not the country that you are meant to live in. Japan is too cramped for you, …
Part 6: Childhood and Education in Japan after Deportation
Dec. 31, 2018 • Stan Kirk
Read Part 5 >> Return by Train to Father’s Hometown The family stayed for about a week at the home of an uncle in Mitaka City, Tokyo. Then they made the arduous train trip to Mitsuya, the home town of Mikio’s father located near Hikone in Shiga prefecture. The train was extremely overcrowded so the trip was excruciating. Most people were standing packed close together and a few people were lying on the floor, making it very difficult to move. …
