| biography | Chuhei Ikeda was born in Fukuoka Japan in 1888. He left life on the farm with four brothers and two sisters to work on a Railway labour contract. He contracted Typhoid fever and after a long recovery found he could no longer return to hard labour. While getting a haircut one day, he was asked if he would help the old barber out in his shop. He became quite adept at his new skill and changed his career. On a trip back to Japan, he was encouraged to marry so his family arranged a good match with Masuye Miyama, a young school girl from a farming family in the same village. As soon as she graduated in 1918, they were married and left for Canada. Chuhei was the second son of the family so was never to inherit the family farm.
Masuye helped her husband set up the barber shop and bathhouse on Powell Street in Vancouver. The apartment they lived in a few doors away had flush toilets and electricity. They had their first child, Tadatoshi Ikeda on March 17, 1919. Takahashi, the second son died at the age of 7 in 1927. Mitsuo was born in 1921, Teruko (Terry)1926, twins Chieko (Jean) & Emiko in 1930. Emiko was run over by a train on the train tracks at the age of 5. Lastly was Rose Eiko Ikeda whose first name was given to her by the nuns at the hospital. The Ikeda children attended Strathcona School by day and Japanese Language school at night.
Tad quit school at age 12 to help with the family finances working as a pinsetter at Chapman's Bowling Alley. He bowled most of his life and won many trophies in the 1960's. At age 16 (1935), he headed up to Rose Harbour Whaling Station and worked in the Upper Slipper where the whales guts and innards were put into a tank to be made into oil. He hated the job and only lasted 10 months, finding work back in Vancouver in a sawmill. In 1940 he moved to Ocean Falls to work in the pulp mill until 1941, sending money back home to the family. In 1941, he returned to Vancouver to find that his father had a debilitating stroke and was partially paralyzed.
During the Internment, the Ikedas took a train to Kaslo and were trucked to Greenwood, their home for the next 9 years. Tad found work at Sandon and in 1942-43 he was paid 25 cents an hour to fight fires in the summer in Greenwood. He played baseball for the Aces, and later worked at the Boundary Sawmill in Midway, the Boundary Sawmill had a baseball team too. In 1947, he worked in the Phoenix gold mine, north of Greenwood for seven months, then Lewis Creek near Kamloops and Birch Island on the Thompson River. Eventually he worked for Empire Box Sawmill.
When allowed back to the coast, the Ikeda family moved back to Vancouver and eventually bought a home at 2215 Nanaimo Street. Tad got a job at Chapman's bowling alley and played baseball for the JCCA Nisei team in the 50's. In 1953, coached by Tad, the team won the Industrial Union Baseball league championship.
Chuhei passed away in 1956, and at his funeral, Tad met his future wife, Naoe Yamamoto.
Naoe came from a Steveston fishing family and due to her father's early death in 1939, she had to quit school to help support the family by taking care of the younger siblings and the family home while mother worked at the cannery. During the War, the Yamamoto family lost their home in Steveston and their boat. They chose to stay together and opted for the Sugar beet farms in Picture Butte. In 1948, the Yamamotos moved to Kelowna for a year until they could return to the coast in 1949 and rented an old cannery home. Naoe worked at the Richard Hair Salon from 1952-1960.
Tad and Naoe were married on March 20, 1958 and Leslie Emi Ikeda was born in 1960, and Lynda Lee Ikeda in 1962. |