About this map
This map represents the research team’s best efforts at specifying the locations from which, according to the primary source documents, Japanese Canadians were uprooted. Many of these places are towns and villages that are still inhabited, and are in the same location, and therefore easy to pinpoint. Others are more complicated. Many places where fishing, canning, mining, and other activities were undertaken no longer exist. Some settlements have disappeared (Paldi); some have changed their boundaries and centres (Saanich, originally one district, has since split into four pieces, while many people living in Saanich have mailing addresses that locate them in Victoria); and some locations are completely mysterious (such as Service, which never seems to have been a place at all, and may actually have been a reference to a Post Office routing mechanism). In some cases, the same place may be referred to by different names—was Steveston Highway a different “place” from Steveston?—but because the team cannot be entirely sure that the distinction was not real for contemporary residents and record-keepers, these places have been preserved on the map by placing two points right next to each other.
Despite these enigmas and conundrums, the research team believes that the map as a whole provides a good representation of the geographic distribution of the Japanese Canadian communities from which people were uprooted. The communities are more varied and numerous than anyone might expect. In addition to the well-known and well-documented communities in Vancouver and the lower mainland, there were Japanese Canadians living and working all over Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, all the way up the north coast to Haida Gwaii, and into the interior of the province.