Description of Historic Place

Duncan, Chemainus and Paldi are three communities located on the east coast of southern Vancouver Island in the Cowichan Valley, between Victoria to the south and Nanaimo to the north. Duncan, with a population of just under 5,000, serves as the service centre of the Cowichan Valley. Chemainus was founded as an unincorporated logging town. Paldi, the smallest of the three communities, is a former sawmilling town east of Duncan.

Heritage Value

The communities of Duncan, Chemainus and Paldi have historic, cultural, social and economic value for being the locations of relatively large Japanese Canadian communities prior to World War II and for representing Japanese Canadian contributions to resource and agricultural industries in B.C. Together, they demonstrate the influence of the logging, fishing, and sawmilling industries in determining where Japanese Canadian immigrants settled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

These communities represent the contributions of the Japanese Canadian workers to the forestry and sawmilling industries, in which they excelled as tree fallers and sawmill workers, collectively gaining a reputation for their skill and knowledge in the forest industry. As elsewhere in B.C., Japanese Canadians in these communities suffered from the anti-Japanese movement beginning in 1902 with exclusion from certain professions which resulted in them becoming skilled workers and innovators in the resource extraction industries. Japanese Canadians workers were also discriminated against by being paid a lower wage than their white counterparts.

While valued together as Cowichan Valley towns, each community has its own particular significance to Japanese Canadian history. Retail stores and several farms in Duncan are valued for forming the core of the small Japanese community there.

Chemainus is important to the Japanese Canadian community because of its Okada settlement on Chemainus Bay, consisting of almost 40 Japanese Canadian families. Economic value is found in the presence of a large and successful fish processing plant built and operated by the Kasho family who owned eight to 10 fishing boats and processed and salted herring and salmon for export to Asia. The 1889 Victoria Lumber and Manufacturing Company, one of the largest on the west coast which employed many Japanese Canadians, was another enterprise that allowed the Japanese Canadian workers to contribute to the local economy.

Social value is found in the Kyoritsu Chemainus Japanese Language School, Japanese Canadian Hall, judo club, Nippons baseball team, Japanese Canadian hall and other cultural institutions related to the Japanese Canadian community in Chemainus. The depiction of Japanese Canadian cultural history in three of the murals throughout the city is a notable feature of the town; they include Shige Yoshida and the Boy Scouts, the Winning Float commemorating Japanese traditional culture, and a portrayal of Japanese Canadian history in Chemainus.

Paldi, a multi-cultural community, has historic value in part for being the location of the 1917 Mayo Lumber Company sawmill which employed many Japanese Canadian workers. Having worked with Japanese Canadian men, mill owner Mayo Singh recruited them specifically for the new Paldi mill. During the height of the local logging industry in the 1920s and '30s, almost 20 Japanese families lived in Paldi and worshipped in the Japanese Temple, while the Japanese School was held in the local Japanese Canadian cultural hall.

The cemeteries with Japanese Canadian burial areas in Chemainus and Duncan have spiritual value as a reminder of the desecration, disuse and tragic interruption of the lives and history of the Japanese Canadians in these communities. The Chemainus Cemetery now contains a monument to the Japanese Canadians who were buried there. Today, these cemeteries are stops on the annual Vancouver Island Obon tour hosted by the B.C. Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Temples Federation.

Like other Japanese Canadians on the B.C. coast, the residents and workers in Duncan, Paldi and Chemainus were incarcerated in internment camps in 1942 during World War II, with properties and businesses sold, buildings dismantled and cemeteries desecrated. Due to these losses, most did not return to the Cowichan area; today these towns carry few physical traces of the early Japanese Canadian communities that existed there.

Character-Defining Elements

Not applicable.