Every Place Has a Story

Joy Kogawa’s House

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Because May is Asian Heritage Month it seems fitting to run a story about Joy Kogawa. The following is an excerpt from the Legendary Women chapter in Sensational Vancouver.

Joy Kogawa. Photo courtesy Gordon Kogawa
Joy Kogawa. Photo courtesy Gordon Kogawa

Joy Kogawa’s childhood house is a modest wood-framed bungalow in South Vancouver. There’s really nothing architecturally significant about it except that it’s one of the few original houses that remain in the neighbourhood. What makes the house of great historical importance and worth preserving is its social history.

The house which was built in 1912 figures prominently in Joy’s classic novel Obasan, written in 1981 and named one of the most important books in Canadian history .

The house is a physical reminder of the time when 22,000 Japanese-Canadians—fishermen, miners, merchants, and foresters—were wrenched from their homes and interned during the Second World War.

Joy’s family were sent to an internment camp in Slocan, B.C. The house, which they’d owned since 1937, was auctioned off at a bargain price by the government’s Custodian of Enemy Alien Property.

The Kogawa house is an important monument to that period of history. As Joy says: “This little house is just a tiny, tiny echo of something much more unthinkable.”

1450 West 64th avenue
Joy Kogawa House, ca.1940

Obasan tells the story of the Japanese internment through the eyes of six-year-old Naomi Nakane, who, in 1942, had her family ripped apart by the war.

“To me the house was very sumptuous because we had rugs and soft couches and running water and electricity,” she told me. “All these things that make a child’s life rich.”

The family moved to Alberta after the war and Joy went on to study at the University of Alberta. She was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1986.

In 2003, Joy was visiting Vancouver and driving up Oak Street when she remembered the house. She was stunned to find that it was for sale for over $500,000.

“ I had dreamed so much of being able to buy it back one day,” she said, “There were all these new houses, so I thought it was probably gone, and then I saw it and there were for sale signs in the front.” The asking price, she says, was impossible.

Joy Kogawa house in 2014
Joy Kogawa house in 2014

When it looked like the new owner was set to demolish the house, a group of writers and heritage die-hards formed the Joy Kogawa Homestead Committee to save the house from demolition. Currently, the house is on the City of Vancouver’s Heritage Register with a B status and has a writers-in-residence program. The plan is to make it a historical literary landmark, and ideally it will be designated at some point to preserve it for the future.

“The house is doing very good work,” says Joy. “It’s there, it’s survived, it remains as a place where a story has been told and it’s part of our heritage. I think it’s important for it to be kept, so many things get lost.”

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.

Places that Matter

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At 7:30 pm on Tuesday June 26, the Vancouver Heritage Foundation is presenting a Places that Matter plaque to the Joy Kogawa House. The house at 1450 West 64th Avenue is one of 125 places chosen to celebrate Vancouver’s 125th anniversary and represent people, places and events that have shaped the city and that matter to Vancouverites. Everyone is welcome to attend.

For more about Joy Kogawa and Kogawa house see Sensational Vancouver’s legendary women chapter

While huge numbers of perfectly solid old houses have been torn down all over Vancouver, replaced by monster houses or parking lots or subsidized government housing, those that remain form an important part of the city’s early history. More importantly, these houses provide a context for the social history of Vancouver and reveal secrets that would otherwise be forgotten or hidden forever.

 

1450 West 64th Street
Joy Kogawa House – 1912

Joy Kogawa’s childhood house is a perfect example. The 1912 house is a modest wood-framed bungalow in South Vancouver, one of the few original houses that remain in the neighborhood. While there’s really nothing architecturally significant about it, what makes it of great historical importance and worth preserving is the house’s social history.

The house figures prominently in Joy’s classic novel Obasan, considered one of the 100 most important Canadian books ever written. The house is a physical reminder of the time when 22,000 Japanese-Canadians—fishermen, miners, merchants, and foresters—were wrenched from their homes and interned at places like Slocan, BC, during the Second World War. It was a shocking period in Canada’s history, and Joy’s house is an important monument to that time.

Obasan tells the story of the Japanese internment through the eyes of Naomi Nakane, 6, who had her family ripped apart by the war. In reality, Joy Nakayama, born in 1935 and her family had their house confiscated by the Canadian Government and sold without their permission, in 1942.

“The house, if I must remember it today, was large and beautiful,” she writes in Obasan. “I looked it up once in the November 1941 inch-thick Vancouver telephone directory. “I wrote to the people who lived there and asked if they would ever consider selling the house, but they never replied.”

1450 West 64th Avenue
Joy Kogawa House c1940

Joy goes on to write that the house she remembered had a hedge and rose bushes, flowers and cactus plants that lined the sidewalk. The backyard had a sand box, an apple tree and a swing where she would dangle by her knees.

In 2003 Joy drove past the old house while on a trip to Vancouver. She was stunned to find that it was for sale. “But the asking price was out of sight, over $500,000 dollars,” she told a Vancouver Sun reporter. “Still it was amazing that the house was still there, when all around it, the old houses were gone and replaced with new ones.”

When it looked like the new owner was set on tearing down the house a group formed the Joy Kogawa Homestead Committee, and together with the Land Conservancy, saved the house from demolition.

Today the house is a writers-in-residence site and a literary landmark.

For more information: Places that matter and Joy Kogawa House

© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.