Japanese-Canadian vital events at Sandon
- Greg Nesteroff
- Oct 31
- 5 min read
When a new exhibit on the Japanese-Canadian internment opened in Sandon in July, one of those in attendance was the last person born there during that era.
Jean McKeever (nee Yokoyama) didn’t know much about Sandon, because, as she told the Nelson Star, her parents didn’t talk about it, and her family moved to Rosebery in 1944, when she was just a couple of months old. She still has a summer cabin there.
Sandon was an internment camp for about two years, 1942 to 1944, and a home of sorts to more than 900 people placed there against their will. In that time, there were at least nine births, five marriages, and 14 deaths, which I have enumerated below.
Births
Birth registrations in BC are, unfortunately, not made public until 120 years after the fact. It used to be 100 years, but that was arbitrarily changed in 2003. Birth registrations from 1904 should finally become available this year, but we will have to wait until the 2060s to find out how many births were registered at Sandon during the internment.
We do know the first birth occurred on July 15, 1942, because it was reported as such in the Nelson Daily News and the New Canadian.
Sandy Katsuhide Hayashi, the son of Chu and Kaneko Hayashi, was delivered at the Sandon hospital by Dr. Hiroshi Kuwabara. (The hospital was in part of the Virginia Block that was formerly a general store. It was established despite the fact that when the internment began, the old Miners’ Union hospital on Sunnyside hill still stood and was still full of medical instruments. It was instead converted into an apartment building.)
Sandy was, as you might have guessed, named after Sandon. According to the New Canadian, this “first good Scotch name” was suggested by a Cst. Cowper of the RCMP.
Before the internment, Sandy’s father had worked at the pulp mill in Port Alice. Sandy had a sister, Chiyeko, and several other siblings born later.
According to a case file on the Landscapes of Injustice site, the family also lived at Nakusp, Tashme, and Fort William, Ont. (now part of Thunder Bay).
I don’t know much else about Sandy’s life, but at some point he returned to visit his namesake birthplace and gave the museum a photocopy of his birth certificate and a photo of him a smiling infant with his proud parents. They remain on display. The same photo is also exhibited at the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre in New Denver. Sandy died in Thunder Bay on June 23, 1998. He was survived by his wife Catherine, his stepmother, and several siblings.
Top: A faded display in the Sandon Museum. Above: the same family portrait seen in the Nikkei Interment Memorial Centre in New Denver.
The New Canadian of Dec. 19, 1942 reported on a Sandon baby bumper crop:
• To Rev. and Mrs. D. Katatsu, a son
• To Mr. and Mrs. H. Nakazawa, a son
• To Mr. and Mrs. T. Nishimura, a daughter
I don’t know much about these families, but the birth announcement probably should have said Rev. T. Katatsu, for Toshio Katatsu was a Buddhist priest previously employed at the Steveston temple. According to the Landscapes of Injustice database, he and his wife Shizuko were interned at Lemon Creek and then exiled to Japan in 1946.
The New Canadian also reported the birth at Sandon on Sept. 23, 1943 of a boy to Mr. and Mrs. Masayuki Nakashima.
Unfortunately, at least two people born at Sandon died in infancy. Findagrave.com lists Yukio Ohashi, born Sept. 1, 1942 to Shokichi and Mune Ohashi. He died 13 days later.
According to familysearch.org, Teruo Kondo was born Nov. 13, 1943 to Tohachiro and Ayako Kondo, formerly of Steveston. He died in Sandon on May 8, 1944 and was buried in New Denver.
Terri Vanleusden, nee Yokoyama, was born in Sandon in 1943. She is a sister to Jean McKeever, mentioned at the start as the last baby born in Sandon during the internment.
The chart below summarizes the info above in chronological order.
Marriages
BC marriage registrations are made public 75 years after the fact, so we do now have a full picture of those that occurred in Sandon during the internment, as follows:
I don’t know if Chiyeko and Hatsue Nishimura were related. They weren’t sisters. Takayoshi Yabuki and Hatsue Nishimura were married for 36 years, until Takayoshi’s death in Kamloops in 1980. Hatsue died in 2015, also in Kamloops. Hideo Ui and Masaye (Violet) Kondo were married for 43 years until Hideo’s death in 1987. Violet died in 2010 in Toronto.
Deaths
BC death registrations are made public 20 years after the fact, so we also have a complete list of those for Sandon during the internment.
Kujiro (or Kyujiro) Domai’s life, death, and funeral are detailed on Michael Kluckner’s website, in a note written by his grandson’s wife, Diana Domai. She said though his official cause of death was rheumatic fever, Kyujiro’s daughter always felt he died of a broken heart, having lost everything to the internment.
Unlike the marriage registrations, the death registrations above are not available online, but I looked them up on microfilm. The first three people (Yukio Ohashi, Lute Nakagawa, and Kujiro Domai) were cremated at Sandon. The rest were cremated at New Denver, once a crematorium was built there. (Except, perhaps, Gintero Yamasaki, for whom no location of cremation was listed.)
While it has been suggested that some internees were buried in the Sandon cemetery, none of the above were buried at all. Quite possibly, though, the cemetery was the site of the early cremations.
Adding to the confusion is a concrete slab near the Sandon cemetery that says “July 8, 1942/Ken Sato” and could be mistaken for a grave marker, although as I’ve previously written, it is not. Ken Sato died in Vernon in 2017.
—————————
For more on Sandon, check out my new book at kingofsandon.com