Grace Eiko Thomson: Oct. 15, 1933 - July 11, 2024
Grace Eiko Thomson was eight years old when the federal government came for her Vancouver family, ordering them to leave their home of 12 years and move to an abandoned mine site 100 kilometres west of Lillooet, B.C. Decades of simmering racism against Asian-Canadians had finally found an excuse for action in the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Ms. Thomson and her family — the youngest barely a month old when they had to move in 1942 — were among 22,000 Japanese-Canadians forced into internment camps three months after the bombing under the guise of protecting Canada from supposed Japanese turncoats. The internment would forever change the lives of Ms. Thomson and her family. Still a child, she had to become the go-between in all communications between the government and her parents, who weren’t fluent in English. Her father, who used to wear a suit and spats to work as a fish buyer, would be relegated to menial jobs from that point on. “I really feel that, of everything that happened, I am v...