#relocation camp

Photographs taken by Yon Shimizu, a Japanese-Canadian who was exiled from the west coast of Canada to Ontario during the second World War, along with hundreds of other Japanese-Canadian men. In 1942, he worked along with several dozen other men as a farm labourer with the Ontario Farm Service Force near Glencoe, equidistant from Sarnia, London and Chatham.  These are photographs he took of the tobacco harvest, and were digitized from a DVD of Yon Shimizu’s scrapbook by the Southwestern Ontario Digital Archive and the University of Windsor’s Leddy Library. All dated 1942 though they definitely show a range of time during that summer, likely in August. Notably, in a number of these pictures the internees are mingling and working alongside white farm labourers and farmers. 

1) “Sheiks.”  Left to right: Tomo, "Killer", Stum, relaxing near the farm house of the tobacco fields they would be harvesting.

2) “Where's The End?” Yon Shimizu, the photographer, becomes the subject, standing in the tobacco fields.

3) In The Tobacco Fields. Left to right: Hama, Ono, Shimizu, Hoita, Tosa, Kuwabara.

4) “In Action!” 

5) Transporting The Tobacco Leaves.

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