Category: 歴史 Legacy

The Truth of Victoria Oriental Home [1]

Michiko Midge Ayukawa, PhD

◆AJ’s Family and Methodist Church

I deplore that the Oriental Home which is a part of the historical fact of the city of Victoria, BC, Canada hasn’t been spoken about openly by the Japanese or Nikkei people. It was seventy years ago that I first heard someone mention the Victoria Oriental Home. It was whispered and was obviously not meant for little ears. There appeared to be something sinister about it.

One September, I had a new seat-mate, AJ, in Japanese Language School. I sensed right away that she was a bit different. She could barely understand or speak Japanese, but her English was good. We soon became close friends since we were very similar.  Although my comprehension of Japanese was good since my parents and their friends communicated with me in Japanese, I was much more comfortable in English, the language I used with my brothers and neighbourhood friends.

One day she invited a few of us to her birthday party. I was the only one who went. I sensed that she was disappointed, but she put on a brave face. There is very little I can recall about the party except that the birthday cake was the largest and prettiest I had ever seen!

We were separated after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but AJ and I kept in touch periodically throughout our youth and even after our marriages. But, as our lives became hectic we stopped communicating. In the eighties I read a short biography of her mother, published in Japanese. The title is “Chikara To Kihin” (The Strength and Grace) written by Mieko Amano. All the pieces then fell into place. It explained why AJ hardly spoke any Japanese, why others ignored her and shunned her, and why at times she appeared quite brazen. It was because she and her older brother and widowed mother had spent a few years in the Victoria Oriental Home.

According to the author, AJ’s father had been injured badly in a logging accident and was later placed in a mental hospital. Then his brother had tricked her mother out of all their savings. The family was destitute when a member of the Methodist Church in Vancouver (later United Church) helped her mother, older brother and her find a shelter in Victoria. It was the Oriental Home.

Mrs. J learned English by doing housework in a Methodist household and her children were safe. After several years, a Japanese businessman gave her a job since her ability to speak English was a definite asset. Mrs. J was then able to gather both her children and give them a home. What would have happened to the family if the Oriental Home had not given her help when she needed it so badly?

This haven for “Oriental” women and children had been created by Methodist women in 1888 at 100 Cormorant Street (later renumbered 732) as a “Rescue Home for Chinese Girls.” Young Chinese women, mostly young girls, took refuge there. Most of them had been brought to Victoria as prostitutes to service the Chinese bachelors.

According to Methodist records, after 1895, Japanese women and children also became occupants. In 1908, the need for more space necessitated the building of a larger Home on the same site.

By 1907 Chinese women were outnumbered by the Japanese. In the years between 1895 and 1907, 121 Japanese women and girls were registered in the Home. They were often women who had been sent there by Immigration officials when time was required to process their immigration papers. Between the years 1903 and 1915 the Canadian government demanded that picture brides (*1) be married under Canadian law. A total of 697 weddings were held there.

The Church records show that from 1908 to 1942 ninety-two Japanese women sought shelter at the Oriental Home. The majority were Japanese women who were escaping abusive husbands and relatives. A number received help in negotiating better conditions and returned to their husbands; while some returned to Japan, and others became housekeepers in Methodist families until they could re-enter the Japanese immigrant society. Many were converted to Christianity.

The Oriental Home also got involved in the burgeoning Japanese community of Victoria. They began a kindergarten and set up other organizations connected with the United Church; such as CGIT (Canadian Girls in Training), the YWCA, and women’s prayer meetings.

Records show that over the years, the Home cared for many women and their children–a few boys and over 200 girls. Some of these women remarried, others remained single but were later able to support themselves and their children. Widowers who were unable to care for their motherless children also used the facilities of the Home. Their young children were given food and shelter there while the fathers went to work in logging, sawmill, and fishing camps.

*1: Not a few Japanese males emigrated to the U.S. (Hawaii) or Canada chose an unknown female residing in Japan as their wife, by just seeing her photo. After officially registering their marriage in Japan, they invited their “wives” to come to the U.S. or Canada based on the spouse status. This is called “picture marriage,” and their wives are called “picture brides.”

Copyright © 2010-2018 Japanese Canadian Community Organization of Victoria

This article is a revision of the article published with the same title by Japonism Victoria, vol.5 no. 7, 2010.

> The Truth of Victoria Oriental Home [2]

The Truth of Victoria Oriental Home [2]

Michiko Midge Ayukawa, PhD

◆Why Are the Nikkei People Unwilling to Speak About Oriental Home?

In May 1942 when the Japanese were all removed from the west coast, there were eighteen Japanese children being cared for; eleven were under twelve years old. They were sent to the Girls’ Residence in Assiniboia, Saskatchewan. They were all motherless, their fathers had been sent to road camps and these children too had to leave the coastal area. The Oriental Home closed, and the premises were occupied by other groups such as the Elks, the Knights of Columbus.

These facts, however, do not explain why the Victoria Oriental Home was not spoken about openly. Was it because of its beginning as a shelter for Chinese prostitutes, and that later, a few Japanese prostitutes had also been cared for there?

Japanese women had been smuggled into the United States and then brought across the border to the boomtowns in the interior of BC (the Kootenays, Cariboo) and southern Alberta in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  A reporter for the newspaper “Tairiku Nippo” in Vancouver travelled to these sites, talked with the women and wrote a vivid account of these women: “Kanada No Makutsu” (Brothel in Canada) by Shohei Nagata. With the closing of the mines a number of these women sought refuge at the Oriental Home.  There were few survivors since the years and disease had taken their toll.

Tomoko Makabe carried out a thorough study of the lives of a few pioneer picture brides. One story in particular is about a woman who was able to survive two bad marriages, spent some time at the Oriental Home and was then able to run a successful dress-making business.

For a Nisei like me who had often heard quiet whispers about the Oriental Home and had known some people who had been ‘saved” by the Women’s Missionary Society of the United Church of Canada, I deplore the stories that are still rampant about the Oriental Home. The common opinion appears to be that those women who sought shelter there had been prostitutes; thus, a low form of womanhood that brought shame to the Japanese race. However, they were few in number. The majority of the women who sought help there were desperate, and they were brave. To go outside the community was frowned upon but few fellow Japanese could lend a helping hand or were willing to. Those who had the strength to reach out to the Oriental Home are to be admired, not reviled.

The debt that we Japanese Canadians owe to the Women’s Missionary Society of the United Church of Canada can never be repaid. Without their help in setting up secondary school education in the interior camps during World War II, many of us would not have been able to carry on with our education and would have had great difficulty later in regaining our place in Canadian society when we resettled.

Let us all keep an open mind and not leap to conclusions based on whispers and rumours. There are well-researched books available on this part of our history—there were good benevolent people and there were selfish evil ones, many men and women and their children would not have been able to survive and fewer would have if there had not been some benevolent Christian women who saw the need and helped.

The photo, right, shows a grave marker inscribed with “ORIENTAL HOME” at Ross Bay Cemetery in Victoria, BC. The names of the persons buried there are not known so far.

Michiko Midge Ayukawa, PhD (1930 – 2013)

She was born in 1930 in Vancouver, BC as a third child (first daughter) of Japanese parents of first-generation immigrants from Onomich, Hiroshima, Japan. She experienced the interment in 1942 enforced by the Canadian government. In 1955, she married Karl Kaoru Ayukawa and then raised five children. Historian, and the author of a book “Hiroshima Immigrants in Canada 1891-1941”, 2008, UBC Press.

Copyright © 2010-2018 Japanese Canadian Community Organization of Victoria

This article is a revision of the article published with the same title by Japonism Victoria, vol.5 no. 7, 2010.

The Truth of Victoria Oriental Home [1] <