| scope and content | The fonds consists of five series, including photograph prints and albums assembled by Marie Kawamoto (later known as Katsuno) related to Tashme internment camp and to post-second world war relocation of Japanese Canadians, postcards received by Kawamoto from Japanese Canadian friends and students of hers dispersed across Canada during the internment period of 1942-1946, textual material concerning Tashme High School, Tashme Boy Scouts, and Marie Kawamoto's experience at Tashme and after relocation to Japan in 1946, textual material concerning the Japanese Canadian Redress in 1988, and artefactual material including a pair of eyeglasses that belonged to Marie's mother and two pins received by Marie at Tashme internment camp in the 1940s. There are also ten silk handkerchiefs that were sent in letters between family and friends during the internment years of 1943-1945 depicting the areas where they stayed. |
| biography | Marie Katsuno was born Marie Kawamoto, Nov. 8, 1923, in Vancouver, grew up in the flats of East Burnaby close to New Westminster, BC, and lived also in West Vancouver, where she attended high school. In 1942 she was interned at Tashme, BC, where she became a teacher for four years. In 1946, with her father Itokichi Kawamoto and mother Kosho Kawamoto, she was "repatriated" to Japan although a Canadian citizen, living at first in the village at Aikawa from which her father had emigrated, then in Yokohama and later Tokyo. In 1948 she married Peter Katsuno, a former American who was a businessman, with whom she had two children. Later she was employed for several years as a secretary, and a verbatim writer, using shorthand transcription and language skills, for international conferences and committees active during the post-war economic revival in Japan. In 1994 she returned to Canada with her husband, to live again in West Vancouver, BC |