People uprooted from Kamloops (7)

Kamloops, on the site of the original Secwépemc community Tk’emlúps, was established by non-Indigenous settlers in 1811. In 1857 gold was discovered in the vicinity of the nearby Thompson River. In 1886 the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) finished construction, turning Kamloops into a transportation hub. The city was incorporated in 1893, and a second railway was built in 1912.

The Arrow Lakes Lumber Company was the employer of at least one Japanese Canadian, Tadashi Tow Inouye, whose son Kanao was known as the Kamloops Kid. Several families were listed on the 1921 and 1931 censuses, and prior to the Second World War, there were at least eight Japanese Canadian families living in Kamloops: the Abe, Adachi, Iwasaki, Kamachi, Oishi, Nishiyama, Shoyama, and Watanabe families. Many were farmers, sawmill workers and railroad labourers, and Hachiro Miyazawa was a drycleaner. Some Japanese Canadian families were forcibly uprooted to Kamloops during the Second World War, while others were apparently uprooted from Kamloops, or forced to move from designated areas around the city due to restrictions on their activities.