Aya Higashi, the last remaining Kaslo, British Columbia, resident interned there during the Second World War, died last year at 96.
Higashi enjoyed a long teaching career in the former Japanese-Canadian interment camps of Slocan and Kaslo. In a 2012 interview, she proudly declared she never used corporal punishment. “Sometimes former students say ‘We were bad kids, weren’t we?’ I never knew a bad kid. In 33 years of teaching, I never yelled at a kid nor strapped nor shook them. My kids, I hug them.”
Higashi was born Ayako Atagi in Campbell River, British Colu…