Ito Imada (April 6, 1891 – October 21, 1987), before marriage Ito Nishida, was a Japanese farmer, cook, and memoirist who lived in western Canada.

Early life

Nishida was born near

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui has b ...

. She married Kaichi Imada, a man from her village who emigrated to

Vancouver Vancouver is a major city in Western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the cit ...

, first by proxy in 1910, and again in Canada in 1911.

Career

In 1911, Imada moved to Canada to be with her husband. She worked in a hotel, then did laundry and cooked in logging camps. She washed and cooked daily meals for more than two dozen people in one camp, often with very limited supplies. She gave birth to her first child and only daughter in a logging camp, with no other woman and no medical help nearby. In 1922, the Imadas bought farmland in the

Fraser Valley The Fraser Valley is a geographical region in southwestern British Columbia, Canada and northwestern Washington State. It starts just west of Hope in a narrow valley encompassing the Fraser River and ends at the Pacific Ocean stretching from th ...

, and she raised hens, fruits, and vegetables. They visited Japan in 1939, to arrange a marriage for their eldest son. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Japanese Canadians are Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Canadians are mostly concentrated in Western Canada, especially in the province of British Columbia, which hosts the largest Japanese community in the country with the majority of them living ...

were evacuated from the West Coast, and the Imadas lost their land and most of their possessions in their forced removal. Meanwhile, her son Tom served in the Canadian and British armies as a translator and interrogator. After her husband died in 1947, Imada tried to recover some of their property; she was the first claimant to testify before the Japanese Property Claims Commission, also known as the Bird Commission."In the Matter of the Claim of Mrs. Ito Imada"
''Japanese Property Claims Commission'' (December 8, 1947). As an older widow with no paper record of the sale, she had difficulty proving the value of the property confiscated by the

Custodian of Enemy Property The Custodian of Enemy Property is an institution that handles property claims created by war. In wartime, civilian property may be left behind or taken by the occupying state. In ancient times, such property was considered war loot, and the le ...

Personal life and legacy

The Imadas had six children. Her husband died in 1947. She died in 1987, at the age of 96, in

Richmond, British Columbia Richmond is a city in the coastal Lower Mainland region of British Columbia, Canada. Mainly a suburban city, it occupies almost the entirety of Lulu Island (excluding Queensborough, New Westminster, Queensborough), between the two estuarine dis ...

. After her death, historian Michiko Midge Ayukawa translated Iwada's unpublished memoirs, covering the period of 1941 to 1971 and handwritten in a personal dialect combining Japanese, English, and some local Hiroshima elements, for her master's thesis in 1990. The original manuscript of Imada's memoir, and Ayukawa's translation, are in the University of British Columbia Library.An Inventory to the Papers and Records in the Japanese Canadian Research Collection
University of British Columbia Library: 18.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Imada, Ito 1891 births 1987 deaths People from Hiroshima Japanese women Japanese-Canadian culture