Bearing the unbearable : the memoir of a Japanese pioneer woman
Date
1990
Authors
Ayukawa, Michiko Midge
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Abstract
This thesis is based on the memoir of a pioneer Japanese woman, Mrs. Imada Ito (April 1891-November 1987), who immigrated to Canada in 1911 as a picture bride. The part of her memoir I have studied here spans the years 1941-1971. This period covers the time when Mrs. Imada and her family were evacuated from their Fraser Valley farm to a self-supporting community in Taylor Lake, the wartime interval lived in evacuation in the cariboo, the years of recovery and reestablishment after the war spent in Kamloops, and her retirement days in Vancouver.
The memoir was originally written the way elderly Japanese Canadians and older Nisei [the second generation, Canadian born) speak today. It is a unique blend of Meiji Japanese, fractured English and a mixture of prefectural dialects. Her script was mainly hiragana (cursive syllabary) but also consisted of katakana (phonetic syllables used for foreign words) often used inappropriately (that is, for a Japanese word), kanji (Chinese ideograms or characters used in the Japanese language) which were often incorrect but were similar in appearance or sound to the correct ones. I have translated it into English and checked its contents against other sources including government files and other documents, contemporary newspapers, interviews with individuals mentioned in the memoir and with others who lived through the events described, other autobiographical accounts, and secondary sources in both English and Japanese languages. My findings, as well as other explanatory materials have gone into the introduction, afterword, critical memoir notes, and appendices in order to enhance the memoir's usefulness to the social historians of Canada's immigrant pioneers.