O-Bon in Chimunesu: A Community Remembered

Joseph Leydon teaches geography at the University of Toronto.

The town of Chemainus (“Chimunesu”) on Vancouver Island was home to
a vibrant Japanese-Canadian community until the Canadian government
ordered the evacuation of its residents to internment camps in 1942.
Although allowed by the government to return to their homes in 1949,
most of the residents set down roots elsewhere. Indeed, few of the
original residents or their families even visited Chemainus until a
reunion was organized in 1991. The reunion, which occurred during O-Bon,
the annual Buddhist festival for the dead, provided the impetus for this
book, which draws upon personal accounts to re-create the pre-settlement
lives of a number of Chemainus residents.

The author’s use of fiction techniques to “create dialogue” and
“flesh out scenes” makes it very difficult to determine where the
reminiscences end and the fiction begins. Much of the dialogue is
unconvincing, and the book is sketchy in its re-creation of the
community’s day-to-day life and of its residents’ interactions with
members of the non-Japanese community (including the Natives). Life in
the internment camps, how it shaped the futures of the residents, and
why so few of them returned to Chemainus after 1949 are also
insufficiently addressed. Lang’s profiles are too underdeveloped to
inspire much empathy on the part of the reader.