Frank Maikawa
@KintarosanFumio Frank Maikawa was born in Vancouver, in the province of British Columbia, Canada near the end of the Great Depression days on Dec. 19, 1932. After being incarcerated during World War II, Frank ended up in Toronto, Ontario where he felt free at last but struggled for a long time to find his identity until Feb. 22 1990 when the Canadian Federal Government sent him a personal Apology ‘form’ letter and acknowledgement. He felt vindicated and felt like a real Canadian for the first time in his life.
After graduating from Ryerson in 1956, his lifetime work was always in the electronics communications engineering field and he has been retired since 1996 enjoying his golden years with his wife, Yoshimi Susan (Suyama) in the Georgian Bay area near the Blue Mountains of Ontario.
Updated February 2013
Stories from This Author
The Evolution of A Canadian 'Enemy Alien' - The Frank Maikawa Story - Part 12 of 12
May 22, 2013 • Frank Maikawa
Read Part 11 >> Below is very much about the overall picture I saw in a nutshell through my experiences, memories, and what I conclude today: Regarding the B.C. Government stealing and taking our dignity/pride away—that was the worst heinous act human beings can do to other human beings in the world especially to their fellow Canadian citizens. They believed that they were a superior race, violated our human rights. And, never mind being called XXXXXX JAPS, the worst racial slur we …
The Evolution of A Canadian 'Enemy Alien' - The Frank Maikawa Story - Part 11 of 12
May 15, 2013 • Frank Maikawa
Read Part 10 >> Arriving in Toronto When we got to Toronto, we finally felt released and free from jail to restart our lives. We felt really unsettled moving from here to there so many times to temporary places during so many years we were relieved and happy to find a permanent home at last. Thank you Ontario! I recall, after 1949 when we were finally allowed to vote, sometime later they lifted the ban as they had no other choice and …
The Evolution of A Canadian 'Enemy Alien' - The Frank Maikawa Story - Part 10 of 12
May 8, 2013 • Frank Maikawa
Read Part 9 >> No Peacetime for JCs: Go to Japan or east of the Rocky Mountains! After the war, I heard my father discussing a letter that came from the government and written in Japanese by the JC head organizers dealing with the Canadian government’s push to either “Repatriate—Go ‘back home’ to Japan or move east of the Rockies out of B.C.” and they were “pushing and encouraging us,” coercing would be a better word, to go to Japan. My father …
The Evolution of A Canadian 'Enemy Alien' - The Frank Maikawa Story - Part 9 of 12
May 1, 2013 • Frank Maikawa
Read Part 8 >> During the early Internment days, as Shig joined the Canadian Army, Dad asked him to check out his house when he got to Vancouver. Shig called back and indicated that the good Rev. broke into the playroom and was using anything useful, furniture and all. Soon after the government auctioned the house off and sent a fraction of the amount it was worth (a drop in the bucket) to Dad to be used for our Internment living—“Very …
The Evolution of A Canadian 'Enemy Alien' - The Frank Maikawa Story - Part 8 of 12
April 24, 2013 • Frank Maikawa
Read Part 7 >> Oshogatsu in Bridge River All our staple food were unavailable to us anymore and all our mothers without recipes were experimenting, trying to make even miso, shoyu, kamaboko, manju, tofu, konnyaku, etc., but they didn’t taste the same anymore. The shoyu was good as the Chinese shoyu tasted like salty molasses. We were just a forgotten bunch of throw-away people. But, somebody didn’t forget us. We heard that a ship came from Japan and the Japanese Red Cross …
The Evolution of A Canadian 'Enemy Alien' - The Frank Maikawa Story - Part 7 of 12
April 17, 2013 • Frank Maikawa
Read Part 6 >> Life in Bridge River When we were sent to Bridge River (an internment camp where you had to support yourself, money-wise) with one RCMP overseeing the camp, I started thinking how badly we were treated so I used to think about studying hard, become a somebody, and then would hunt down those mean government people and give them the same “medicine” they gave us. When I heard later that we were classified as Enemy Aliens and Canada didn’t …
The Evolution of A Canadian 'Enemy Alien' - The Frank Maikawa Story - Part 6 of 12
April 10, 2013 • Frank Maikawa
Read Part 5 >> Keeping B.C. “White Only” Long before the war, there was an ongoing KEEP B.C. WHITE ONLY outcries—such racial hatred especially along the B.C. coast where the Japanese Canadians were concentrated. When I kept hearing this over and over, even at my young age I knew that it just wasn’t right and had a premonition that something terrible would be coming up. I didn’t feel at ease at all. In fact, it was scary! The Caucasians really believed …
The Evolution of A Canadian 'Enemy Alien' - The Frank Maikawa Story - Part 5 of 12
April 3, 2013 • Frank Maikawa
Read Part 4 >> Growing Up Nisei In Pre-WW2 Vancouver I remember playing war games with made in Japan toy wooden knives and rifles. In Vancouver I only had Caucasian playmates so I had to be the sneaky buck-toothed, slant-eye Jap complete with black horn-rimmed glasses all the time like in the comics and got beaten up all the time. We even bought toy buck-toothed wax upper dentures to put over our teeth! One guy brought me a set of glasses to …
The Evolution of A Canadian 'Enemy Alien' - The Frank Maikawa Story - Part 4 of 12
March 27, 2013 • Frank Maikawa
Read Part 3 >> Back to the store… Upstairs at the rear was a huge kitchen area with a row of about three very long dining tables where everybody sat and ate their meals. There was always a cook on duty. On the other side were sofas, chairs, tables, phonograph (that’s a 78 rpm record player and there were some that had to be cranked manually), and a large radio with short wave so that they can listen to broadcasts from Japan …
The Evolution of A Canadian 'Enemy Alien' - The Frank Maikawa Story - Part 3 of 12
March 20, 2013 • Frank Maikawa
Read Part 2 >> Frank Is Born I was a nine-pound baby when I was born and every time Mom went to J-Town she told me that she would go to the ladies’ communal bath place wherever that was and all the ladies would whisk me away from her and marveled at how fat I was and nicknamed me “Kin Taro-san” (“Golden Boy”). She was always blaming me for her stretched out belly so I told her that she shouldn’t have eaten …
