ArchaeoCafé - Episode 2-27 - Searching for Japanese labour camps in western Canada: An interview with Leanne Riding and Art Carson

ArchaeoCafé

In this episode we talk with Leanne Riding and Art Carson about Japanese internment and labour camps in Canada during World War II and their project to find, map, and document these camps in western Canada.

Episode notes are available on the ArchaeoCafé website.
http://archaeocafe.kvasirpublishing.com/archaeocafe-podcast-ep-227-riding-carson

About Leanne Riding

Leanne has a degree in History from the University of British Columbia. She has previously held positions as Heritage Committee Member of the National Association of Japanese Canadians, Archival Assistant at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, and co-chaired the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop Society. She is the winner of the 2006 Hunter Campbell Lewis Memorial Book Prize. Her current research explores the development of B.C.'s transportation system and Japanese Canadian internment and forced labour camps during World War II. Since 2012, Leanne has run the "Yellowhead - Blue River Japanese Road Camps Research Project".

Web:
https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=vwIi9VwAAAAJ
https://www.coroflot.com/shamurokku/stream

About Art Carson

Art is a wilderness guide and historian based in Valemount, British Columbia, Canada.

Web:
https://www.carsons.ca/mtnmania.htm
https://www.therockymountaingoat.com/2017/09/art-of-hiking/

Some useful terminology and links

Yellowhead-Blue River Highway Project
A former project of the Surveys and Engineering Branch of the federal Department of Mines and Resources which ran from 1942 to 1944 and employed Japanese-Canadian men (mostly Japanese nationals) whether physically fit or not, originally living in West Coast of B.C. It was part of the forced removal and dispossession of Japanese Canadians by the Federal Government during World War II. The area spans from the interior of B.C. into the province of Alberta.
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/driving-and-transportation/driving/japanese-internment-signs/yellowhead_blue_river_road_camp.pdf

Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre
A museum that preserves and interprets one of ten Canadian concentration camps where more than 27,000 Japanese Canadians were incarcerated by the Canadian government during and after World War II.
https://newdenver.ca/nikkei/

Work Camps on the Yellowhead Route: Japanese Canadian internees and the building of a highway
by Margaret Tessman
ARTiculate, 2017, Spring/Summer, page 6.
http://www.wkartscouncil.com/articulate/Articulate%20Summer%202017%20web.pdf

Selected reading

Issei road: Japanese Canadian labour camps of northeastern B.C. [blog]
by Leanne Riding
https://yellowheadroadcamps.wordpress.com/

Finding 19 lost Japanese labour camps: Testing the limits of Google Earth
by Leanne Riding
The Rocky Mountain Goat. 24 April 2017
https://www.therockymountaingoat.com/2017/04/nineteen-lost-japanese-labour-camps-testing-the-limits-of-google-earth/

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