This Asian Heritage Month, a collaboration between Revelstoke's Japanese Canadian community, museum and artists spotlighted an important but little-discussed culture in the city's history, and particularly on one woman's life that continues to be unravelled.
In an Arts Revelstoke-led project, a tombstone for Jennie Kiohara, a young Japanese Canadian murdered in the city 120 years ago, has been restored after years of thoughtful planning and was rededicated Wednesday, May 14, in collaboration with Revelstoke Museum and Archives.
Rev. Naoki Hirano, a Shin Buddhist temple minister for the Interior, joined the museum's Japanese Canadian-themed Brown Bag History session to perform melodies on the shō, a woodwind instrument used for traditional Japanese court music.
Later that afternoon, he led a ceremony at Kiohara's new tombstone in Mountain View Cemetery and praised the work being done by Revelstoke's Japanese Canadian community to find more answers to their pasts.
"Everyone has a history," Hirano said. "I'm so proud of anyone in the Japanese community who works to preserve our ancestors, no matter how old, or how long ago."
Also commemorating Kiohara on May 14 was Sarah-Jane Spurr, a local artist who spent recent years designing the new tombstone. Spurr recited poems in Kiohara's memory that she wrote on visits to the original grave marker. It was crumbling from more than a century of wear, but thanks to Spurr's work now shines with a white marble base and two matching flower vases that can be rearranged to hold sand for Japanese incense offerings.
She's further commemorated Kiohara by creating a traditional stop-motion animation, in a project titled They Called Her Jennie, that can be viewed at sjspurr.com/they-called-her-jennie. Having based the project off Revelstoke Museum and Archives material on Kiohara's life, Spurr is hopeful that more information continues to surface, with the latest finding being that Kiohara likely lived in Tokyo's Yokohama Bay before moving to Canada.
"It was really eyeopening," she said about connecting with Kiohara's life.
The murder of Kiohara found dead in her Revelstoke home on April 10, 1905, puzzled investigators and those who knew her. Both her killer and details of her former life in Japan remained unclear as the case was soon abandoned.
"It is unfortunate that my duties will not permit me to spend unlimited time on a case such as this because it is only by persistent work that any result is likely to be obtained," Chief Const. W.H. Bullock-Webster concluded in his April 19, 1905, report to B.C.'s deputy attorney general. "A crime of this nature deserves the whole time of one man to unravel it."
Kiohara was known to work locally as a prostitute for white Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) workers and reportedly arrived in Canada at the turn of the century with Shonosuki Fukushima, who she pretended to be married to.
Revelstoke avalanche technician Tomoaki Fujimura, proprietor for CanadianAlps Tours and originally from Osaka, has been a driving force behind uncovering mysteries in B.C.'s Japanese Canadian community, including that of Kiohara since January 2020.
"Those who are buried here have a history," Fujimura reflected, seated before Kiohara's grave after the ceremony on May 14 as it rained. "If someone wants to commemorate (Japanese Canadians), how can I help?"
For the more than 2,000 faces Fujimura said he's worked to uncover in B.C. — most buried at Vancouver's Mountain View Cemetery, and 82 in Revelstoke — the process always starts the same: With a pencil and paper. But with Kiohara's story, he hopes to show people more than just a tragedy.
"The value of someone's life doesn't come out until after someone dies," Fujimura added. "Celebrating before the moment she died, that's kind of important, I think."
Fujimura will also release a documentary, possibly this fall, about the 58 men killed in the horrific Rogers Pass avalanche east of Revelstoke on March 4, 1910. Thirty-two were Japanese Canadians. All their bodies were recovered, delivered to Vancouver, and honoured with burials and Buddhist ceremonies. Even more remarkably, thanks largely to Fujimura's work, all 32 individuals have now been identified, more than a century later.
This was just one among dozens of stories in Revelstoke's Japanese Canadian history that curator Cathy English recounted at the museum's May 14 Brown Bag History.
Japanese immigration to the Revelstoke area began in the 1890s. Among the earliest individuals were Japanese Canadian sawmill workers, stationed at mills in Three Valley Gap, Taft, Comaplix and elsewhere.
Owl Restaurant, owned by Yodo Fujii, was operating on Revelstoke's First Street East by 1904.
Well-known Japanese Canadian families in Revelstoke prior to the Second World War included the Hashimotos and Takahashis, the fathers of whom worked for CPR. Kusumatsu Shiosaki also spent about a decade in town, managing a ranch near Williamson Lake for C.B. Hume.
The Wakitas, running a strawberry farm on Downie Street during the war, were among the first Japanese Canadian families to open local businesses in Revelstoke. In 1947, they bought the Bregolisse Store on Second Street East, and in 1952 opened Wakita's Frozen Food Lockers on Second Street West. By 1959, they'd also opened the Red and White Supermarket next door, where the new Flourish Bakery location launched this May, which served the community until 1994.
The Amano family ran a business manufacturing soybean and miso products, with Amano Foods operating today in Richmond but continuing its Revelstoke legacy by selling soy and miso via Southside Market.
Mike Maruno made a name for himself on the Canadian pitch as a member of the Asahi Japanese Canadian baseball team, which formed in Vancouver in 1912, before coming to grace Revelstoke's team.
The Okumura family on Townley Street was renowned for their lovely flower garden and Fred's judo classes.
In 1958, Japanese ski jumpers competed for the first time at the Tournament of Champions in Revelstoke. Kiyotaka Sakai placed third overall in the A-class events that Saturday, then fifth on the Sunday, while Hiroshi Yoshizawa landed third Sunday. At next year's tournament in town, ski jumper Yasushi Sugiyama requested through an interpreter to sing for the crowd and drew a standing ovation after reciting Elvis's Love Me Tender in flawless English, having spent the day memorizing the words.
Teruo Sakaki, who passed away May 2, lived in Revelstoke during the late 1940s. His father worked at OK Garage, today the site of Signs Ink, then moved the family to Kamloops to open a car dealership. Sakaki and his brothers would take over the business, running a Toyota franchise and later Kamloops' Nissan dealer.
One of B.C.'s darkest chapters clouded the skies in 1941, as the province betrayed its Japanese Canadian population after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Of more than 21,000 Japanese Canadians who were forcibly displaced, some 500 men were banished to seven road work camps between Revelstoke and Sicamous. Many of them were born in B.C. Sent away from their homes without personal possessions, they endured harsh and frigid conditions at Three Valley Gap, Griffin Lake, Solsqua, Yard Creek, Taft and elsewhere until camp doors shuttered several years after the war.
Today, Revelstoke Museum and Archives is working to identify various Japanese Canadians pictured at Revelstoke's cemetery in a 1980s-era photo with Rev. Socho Orai Fujikawa. Anyone with information about any of the individuals pictured is asked to share with the museum at curator@revelstokemuseum.ca.
Beyond Japanese Canadians' history in Revelstoke, Parks Canada shared in May that diplomat Inazo Nitobe was among early visitors to Glacier National Park. Visiting the former Glacier House along the CPR in 1898, Nitobe and his family posed for a photo at the Meeting of the Waters trail, in front of a boulder known today as "Nitobe's Rock."
After his visit, Nitobe published Bushido: The Soul of Japan, which details important traits in Japanese culture. He also befriended Mary Vaux, among the first researchers to study the park's glaciers, and in 1908 hosted American-Canadian naturalist Mary Schäffer Warren when she visited Japan.
History is an important tool that's instrumental to connecting Canadian and Japanese culture, Fujimura continued. While Canada is often touted as multicultural, he said more work must be done to recognize and respect the history and contributions of Japanese Canadians.
Having first arrived in Canada at age 18, landing in Cranbrook, with no friends, family or English language skills, Fujimura today has multiple ski runs on Revelstoke's Mount Mackenzie named in his honour: Ninja Traverse, picked by avalanche forecaster Troy Leahey; Kamikaze, atop the subpeak; and Secret Geisha at subpeak, picked by ski patrol director Joe Lammers. Sometimes, he imagines what kind of mystery he'll leave behind, for the next generations of Japanese Canadians.
"A 100 years later, someone from Japan will come to the ski hill and wonder, 'Who did that name come from?" Fujimura asked.
