Interviews

1. Relationship with my father

2. Family life in a Japanese Canadian internment camp in Slocan

(b. 1920) Incarcerated during World War II. Active member of the Japanese Canadian community

Relationship with my father

My father started [inaudible -- problem with tape] what was Woodward's at the time, and lived, grew up there until I was almost high-school age, and then we moved up to Powell Street on Main, another rooming house. [Interruption] Well, my father used to take me to the ballgames, 'cause he had no boys. And so, I guess, from the time I was about eight or nine, he'd take me to the ballgame and sit me on a bench and buy me a bag of peanuts, and he'd forget about me. But I soon caught on. [Laughs] And then I started to play softball at school, so always a tomboy.

families

Date: October 21, 2004

Location: Toronto, Canada

Interviewer: Terry Yamada

Contributed by: Sedai, the Japanese Canadian Legacy Project, Japanese Canadian Cultural Center

Interviewee Bio

Pat Sumie Kawashiri was born in Vancouver, British Columbia on August 8 1920. She attended public school as well as the Japanese Language School in Vancouver. Her interest in baseball first developed when her father took her to games of Vancouver’s Asahi baseball team. She married Harry Adachi in 1942. During the internment of the Japanese in British Columbia, Pat and her husband, her parents, and her sister lived in the internment camp at Popoff, where Pat taught grade 1. After the war, the family relocated east to Trenton, Ontario, and eventually to Toronto. Pat worked at various jobs and raised a family of one son and three daughters. She has been an active member of the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, serving on the Board and the Women’s Auxiliary, and of her church. She is the author of two published books, Asahi Legends and The Road to the Pinnacle, chronicling the famed Asahi baseball teams which played in British Columbia during the prewar period and are honored in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. A healthy widow, she continues to be active in the community. (October 21, 2004)