1997, 30 minutes, color digital video, Produced by White Pine Pictures, Toronto, Canada Roles: writer, director, narrator, co-editor Episode for Scattering of Seeds national television series First window broadcaster: History Television
Synopsis:
When Japan entered World War II, Irene Tsuyuki was incarcerated with her parents in the government's internment camp of Tashme, in the B.C. interior. After the war she was repatriated to Japan, leaving her own country behind.
Linda Ohama's Watari Dori is a poignant testimony to the strength of character of two very different Canadian women.
The film profiles Irene Tsuyuki, a first-generation Japanese Canadian who was incarcerated at the internment camp of Tashme in the B.C. interior during World War II.
This documentary also traces the role of Winifred Awmack, an extraordinary woman who taught Tsuyuki and many other Japanese students in Tashme over 50 years ago. It was Awmack who gave these Japanese students happy memories that sustained their spirits during the war and long afterwards when some of them left for Japan.
Although Irene and Winifred stayed in touch sporadically over the years, it was not until the making of this film that the two were reunited.
"An evocative anthology of personal stories which tell Canadian tales, not through great men, but through the unsung heroes who, in their own sometimes very small ways, helped to build a great nation." Antonia Zerbisias, The Toronto Star.
Director's Diary:
Growing up in a small southern Alberta farming community isolated me from many things, including exposure to other Canadians of Japanese heritage. Until my teens, my heritage was no different than anyone else's at school. It just happened that my hair and eyes were of different color.
It became my dream to study law when I grew up, which I did. It came as a shock to think of ideas like race, culture, and the politics of being. In fact it was while preparing a political science paper at university that I first learned of the evacuation and internment of Canadians of Japanese descent during World War II. My own family (and I grew up in a very large extended family) never mentioned this experience to me. Not once.
As I traveled and met different people over the years, I heard many untold stories that most Canadians, because of their experience or education, were unaware of. Through my visual artwork and film, I try to tell some of these stories. Our stories.
It was at a 1995 screening of my first documentary, The Last Harvest, at International Women's Day in Victoria that I first met Winifred Awmack. She was in that audience and came to speak to me afterwards. Winifred told me some of her story about teaching high school at Tashme. She had written a book about this and we did an exchange, her book for my video.
For several years we kept in touch. We talked about sharing her experiences and perspective about this part of our history on film. When Peter Raymont of White Pine Pictures approached me to do an episode of "Scattering of Seeds," I mentioned this idea and wish to him. This was the birth of Watari Dori.
The first task was to locate some Tashme High School students who returned to Canada since repatriation and were still living. Some of Winifred's students returned to Canada while others did not. The whole idea of the stories of immigration in the creation of Canada that underlined the "Scattering of Seeds," seemed to take a different twist. Consider someone who was born a Canadian, then through repatriation lost their Canadian birthright, only to return to Canada to reclaim Canadian citizenship in their adult years. With the aid of Winifred's Tashme student list, we found such a story in Irene Tsuyuki.
This is the story of Irene(Kato) Tsuyuki of Surrey, B.C. who was a student of Winifred Awmack's at the Tashme internment camp. She was repatriated by the Canadian government, and fought to return and reclaim her place as a Canadian.
I first spent time with Irene and Winifred separately. Then we arranged for the two women to travel to Tashme(near Hope B.C.) and reunite after 50 years. In the first few seconds of meeting, they said their hellos. But after that, they hugged and the years that had separated them fell away. Stories poured out, laughter rang, and tears were shed. They had come full circle. Both knowing that what they had shared together 50 years ago was a bond that influenced the rest of their lives.
The title, Watari Dori, was also the name of a silkscreen print that was used in the Japanese Canadian Redress Campaign (see unique projects), and before that, it was the name of one of my sailboats in the Quebec/Ontario waters. Other boaters would make fun of the name when it came into anchor, calling it the 'watery dory' instead of watari dori.
Watari Dori is a Japanese phrase that means migrating birds - where year after year, generation after generation, they keep returning to their birthplace because of something deep within, a tie or link to a place of beginning.
