Uprooted Japanese Canadians

Welcome to the JC Legacies Monument Names Database website page.

• People listed by place of origin
• People born post-uprooting
• Everyone (A to Z)

This is the working site of the final draft of the names for the JC Legacy monument wall. Since we are making regular changes to the site as we receive community feedback, please ensure that you refresh any pages you may have visited before by holding the shift key and clicking the reload button in your browser.

The main wall will consist of the names of Japanese Canadians forcibly uprooted from coastal BC to outside the 100 mile protected zone. It also includes people forcibly moved from other designated protected areas.

The list of names of everyone who will appear on the main monument wall can be found on the Everyone (Place of Origin) page. The names are arranged alphabetically by surname followed by English and Japanese forenames.

The names will be listed under the area from which they were uprooted from. A list of the specific communities and the areas they are grouped in is shown in the Place of Origin page.

A supplementary section of the monument will present the names of children born to families on the wall after the uprooting and until the restrictions were lifted on March 31, 1949. This list can be found in the Born Post-uprooting page.

The final list of names will be preserved permanently on a monument legacy wall in alphabetical order arranged in areas of origin from where they were forcibly displaced.

We invite you to review and confirm the details of your family members to assist us in refining and producing as accurate a list as possible.

Please contact us at monument@jclegacies.com by January 15, 2024 with changes/edits to your family members.

Notes

We have tried to include English forenames and Japanese forenames as much as possible, provided they are legal names and not nicknames. The rationale is that in 100 years time when all current descendants have passed away, future descendants researching their family will need to find the names on the wall in historical records and records in the public domain. The convention is to list Surname, English forenames, Japanese forenames.

Due to the complexities of Romanizing Japanese names there will invariably be inconsistencies in the use of some names, ie use of ye in place of e.

There are many cases of identical names; we have included an instance for each unique person. (Some duplicates instances of the same person still exist but will be resolved in the next system update in December.)

There were 219 specific communities identified where Japanese Canadians were living and working before their forced uprooting. These have been divided into 46 places of origins. There is a drop down list in the header of each area that shows which communities the area contains, and there is an index of communities to larger areas.

We invite you to explore the case files from the Custodian of Enemy Property which was one of many sources of data to compile these names and places of origin. They can be found at the Landscapes of Injustice Archive.