People uprooted from Ocean Falls (320)

Ocean Falls, on Cousins Inlet, was established by Pacific Mills (formerly Bella Coola Pulp and Paper) as a company town in 1906. By 1909, there was a sawmill, a school, and a hospital with at least one Japanese Canadian employee. By 1912, the pulp mill began operations and a dam was built. Ocean Falls had one of the largest Japanese Canadian communities in Canada. Japanese Canadians lived in a segregated community on the town’s west end, with approximately sixty families living in cabins and bunkhouses.

Community life centred around the Japanese Language school and a community hall. There were martial arts clubs, a baseball team, women’s and youth associations, and services including barbering, shoe repair, dressmaking, and laundering. In 1937, 200 Japanese Canadian pulp and paper workers joined the local union and created a separate Japanese section. By 1941, all Japanese Canadian employees were members of the union, and racialized wage disparities were eliminated by 1942.

In 1938, a stone monument was erected to commemorate deteriorating graves in the segregated Japanese Canadian section of the cemetery.