Stan Kirk
@StankirkStan Kirk grew up in rural Alberta and graduated from the University of Calgary. He now lives in Ashiya City, Japan with his wife Masako and son Takayuki Donald. Presently he teaches English at the Institute for Language and Culture at Konan University in Kobe. Recently Stan has been researching and writing the life histories of Japanese Canadians who were exiled to Japan at the end of World War II.
Updated April 2018
Stories from This Author
Chapter 5—Reestablishing Their Connection with Basil
March 2, 2025 • Stan Kirk
Read Chapter 4 Why John and May Never Moved Back to Canada It remains a mystery why John and May never returned to Canada when it became possible to do so despite their English skills and diverse range of work skills. May stayed in contact with her mother and sisters and would have known that the conditions in Canada were much better than those in postwar Japan. Unlike May, John did not have family in Canada but his close friend …
Chapter 4—Memories of Their Parents’ Lives in Japan
Feb. 23, 2025 • Stan Kirk
Read Chapter 3 Memories of Their Mother May After being joined by John and the girls in Kyoto, May continued working as a simultaneous interpreter, translator, and typist at various bases. It seems she was exceptionally skillful as a simultaneous interpreter and could switch seamlessly between English and Japanese. Megumi recalls hearing from May that she had won first prize in several simultaneous interpretation contests held at her workplace. She did well financially as long as the bases remained open. …
Chapter 3—The Sisters’ Childhood in Japan After Basil’s Return to Canada
Feb. 16, 2025 • Stan Kirk
Read Chapter 2 Basil’s Return to Canada Perhaps because he was several years older than the girls, Basil struggled the most trying to adjust to life in Japan. The sisters often noticed him reading English books by himself and believe that he was having an especially difficult time fitting into village society. They feel this was exacerbated by the severe treatment he received from both his father and his grandmother as the oldest child. Apparently both of his parents eventually …
Chapter 2—Exile to Japan and Childhood in Shimosato, Wakayama
Feb. 9, 2025 • Stan Kirk
Read Chapter 1 Exile to Japan John and May were among those Japanese Canadians who made the difficult choice of exile to Japan at the end of the war rather than forced dispersal to eastern Canada. Their reasons for doing so and which of them made the final decision are still rather unclear. The eldest daughter Megumi speculates: I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was Father who decided as Mother had been born and raised in Canada. She had siblings …
Chapter 1—Family Background and Pre-Exile Life in Canada
Feb. 2, 2025 • Stan Kirk
Introduction An earlier article on Discover Nikkei titled “A Japanese Canadian Child Exile: The Life History of Basil Izumi” presented the life history of Basil Izumi, a second-generation Japanese Canadian born on April 25, 1937 in Vancouver who, with his family, experienced incarceration in various internment camps during World War II, was exiled to Japan following the war at the age of nine and, at the age of twelve, returned alone to Canada where he lived with relatives. That article …
Chapter 5—Sisters’ Memories of Readjustment to Canada
Jan. 5, 2025 • Stan Kirk
Read Chapter 4 Having spent 10 years in postwar Japan and adjusting to life and the culture there, returning to Canada involved yet another uprooting and to some degree a process of culture shock and readjustment for the family. For the two youngest sisters, Akemi and Noami, there was additionally a linguistic adjustment to be made. Even for the older siblings who had been using English in their work with the occupation forces, the cultural adjustment to life in Canada …
Chapter 4—Return to Canada
Dec. 29, 2024 • Stan Kirk
Read Chapter 3 The return of the various members (except Tadasu) of the Eto family to Canada seems to have been the result of a series of circumstances over a period of years rather than a consciously made decision to return. As in the cases of most other exile families who returned to Canada, it was a process that spanned several years with different family members returning at different times and then working hard and saving money to sponsor others …
Chapter 3—Sisters’ Recollections of Life in Japan
Dec. 22, 2024 • Stan Kirk
Read Chapter 2 Margaret’s Recollections Despite the tensions with relatives, there were some aspects of the Eto family’s life in Iwasaka and Kumamoto city that were, relatively speaking, better than what was reported by many exiles in postwar Japan. For one, the children, even the older ones, did not experience a serious language barrier and they recall actually finding the local Kumamoto dialect amusing and fun to speak. Margaret explains: As for the language barrier, it was minimal since we …
Chapter 2—Exile To Japan
Dec. 15, 2024 • Stan Kirk
Read Chapter 1 Decision to go to Japan Near the end of the war, the Canadian government gave the Japanese Canadians the unpleasant choice between dispersing east of British Columbia or being permanently “repatriated” to Japan. Sunao had no hesitancy in his decision as he had been planning to go back to Japan even before the war. He had been sending funds to Japan and had his older brother there purchase paddy fields for him. He also had ample savings …
Chapter 1—Family Roots, Life in Canada Before Exile
Dec. 8, 2024 • Stan Kirk
Family Roots: Kumamoto, Kyushu Sunao Eto, the Eto family’s father, was born on March 15, 1886, to Michi and Katsuhei Eto in Iwasaka, a rural farm village in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. He was the second son of four brothers. Their father had left them in poverty having drunk away all their property, so it fell upon Sunao, being the second son in the family, to go overseas and earn some money in order to redeem their lost property. He first …
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