Hachiro & Joe Miyazawa Interview: Japanese Camp & Mill Workers Union

SPFC_3803_U54_N_5_6_Side_2 Miyazawa.mp3 Recorded August 1964

 

Interviewer [00:00:03] Today is the twenty-fourth of August,1964. I have dear Mr. Miyazawa spelled

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:00:11] M-I-Y-A-Z-A-W-A.

 

Interviewer [00:00:11] And what’s your first name?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:00:11] Hachiro H-A-C-H-I-R-O.

 

Interviewer [00:00:11] And you were president of the Camp and Mill Workers Union

 

Interviewer [00:00:24] between 1923 and 1933?

 

Interviewer [00:00:33] The mill workers were mainly in the timber, and in the lumber mills weren’t they?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:00:43] [unclear]

 

Interviewer [00:00:48] Was this organized strictly as a union or did it come out of an earlier Japanese organization?

 

Interviewer [00:01:00] Before ’23?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:01:02] Yeah. [unclear] first organized meeting.

 

Interviewer [00:01:10] Of the union.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:01:11] Yeah.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:01:13] January first, I remember that date.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:01:19] It was for everybody? They weren’t just millworkers.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:01:25] [unclear] No, No not limited.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:01:26] Not limited to apparently.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:01:29] The people from Swanson Bay, they were on strike over there. And they come out Vancouver and they think better organize labour union, at least at first.

 

Interviewer [00:01:57] When did you affiliate with the Trades and Labour Council, the Vancouver Council?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:01:59] 1927.

 

Interviewer [00:02:00] Not til ’27.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:02:02] 1927.

 

Interviewer [00:02:06] You were well organized all through in between, before that.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:02:10] Yeah.

 

Interviewer [00:02:14] Did you have any sort of agreements with the employers or were you—

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:02:19] I don’t think so. No. Interviewer [00:02:21] A backroom deal sort of Hachiro Miyazawa [00:02:22] Backroom exactly.

Joe Miyazawa [00:02:22] As near as I can get it, talking to Dad about it, they never had any formal agreements or anything, but sort of a normalization to collectively, I suppose, vent their grievances with the company on the hope that something would be done. I guess this is about the way it was presented.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:02:43] At the meetings we start [unclear] anti-Asiatic movement. Mr Bengough was at that time was the secretary, and he was the secretary of the Anti- Asiatic Leagues and oppose but, says every week [unclear] I remember that. [unclear] members of 60,000. Also we Japanese [unclear] can’t get in the union door.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:03:42] Of course they were barred from membership in the Trades and Labour Council I think at that time there was exclusion and so I guess as a result of this, they banded themselves together.

 

Interviewer [00:03:52] What was in relations between you and the White on the job?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:04:09] The government says we’re cheaper, cheaper wages. Companies pay less wages for Japanese. That means the White people say the cheaper workers. We think you see [unclear] the labour union [unclear] affiliate to the Trades and Labour Council. That is the real stuff, organization, unions.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:04:45] Suppose it’s the old story, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. This was, in effect, a vehicle where they would as somewhat at least talking to Dad years about this, that they formed it to soften the campaign put on by the anti-Asiatic group by getting into the labor movement, or at least trying to affiliate even in a very second-class citizen basis.

 

Interviewer [00:05:15] Was there another union at the time that

 

Interviewer [00:05:19] maybe in the same plant?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:05:21] Was there a union [unclear] at that time Dad—

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:05:31] I don’t know exactly but the other union was the O.B.U. at that time. One Big Union movement in Vancouver.

 

Interviewer [00:05:50] Was the One Big Union as anti-Asiatic as the Trades and Labour Council?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:05:51] Was it the same? They were anti-Asiatic too, then, the O.B.U. was?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:05:54] The O.B.U., no.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:05:55] No, they weren’t.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:05:56] They weren’t.

 

Interviewer [00:05:58] Just a moment, let’s get it straight. Were they or were they not?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:06:05] They were not, eh? The O.B.U. was not anti-Asiatic.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:06:07] No, no.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:06:08] But the Labour Council —

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:06:10] They anti. Hachiro Miyazawa [00:06:10] They were. Joe Miyazawa [00:06:10] Yeah they were.

Interviewer [00:06:13] Did the O.B.U. try to organize the Japanese workers?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:06:15] I guess so, but I don’t know, not sure.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:06:21] You weren’t in it?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:06:21] No. [unclear] but the O.B.U. is a little bit more radical peoples movement

 

Interviewer [00:06:43] I think the other union in with you would be the shingle weavers.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:06:47] [unclear]

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:06:56] Let’s see, let’s get onto how this thing get organized. How the union got started.

 

Interviewer [00:07:01] You mentioned the strike.

 

Interviewer [00:07:04] Where was the strike and what was it about?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:07:06] At Swanson Bay Sawmills. Swanson Bay Lumber Mill. Don’t know what the strike was start at first. I don’t know how they—I’m not really sure.

 

Interviewer [00:07:33] Well, then when you joined up with the TLC and the Vancouver Council in ’27, this is one of the things I can’t understand why, when the Vancouver Labour Council was so anti-Asiatic, did they let a wholely Asiatic union into the organization. Did you people apply?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:08:02] Yeah they apply.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:08:02] The Camp and Mill Workers applied.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:08:03] It was in ’24 [unclear].

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:08:13] Well Wally LeFeaux was quite active around that time.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:08:15] Yeah he know pretty well I think.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:08:17] As near as I can gather he was the one that did the negotiating on behalf of to get them in.

 

Interviewer [00:08:24] Because in the minutes it doesn’t seem as if there’s any great opposition to the affiliation.

 

Interviewer [00:08:30] And it’s one of the thing I couldn’t understand. Unidentified [00:08:34] I’ll have to go see Mr. LeFeaux about it too. Joe Miyazawa [00:08:36] Have you talked to Wally LeFeaux?

Unidentified [00:08:36] No, not very much.

 

Interviewer [00:08:42] After you affiliated, how closely did you work with the other unions?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:08:51] [unclear]

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:09:05] Oh, Umezuki, eh? He was the secretary of the group, wasn’t he? They probably set up with a secretary who did most of the work. He’s at present the Japanese editor of The New Canadian which is published in Toronto.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:09:26] I think perhaps on some of these questions, if you set the question out particularly that he would be able to answer them much better than Dad. Thinking back now, you know what I’m talking about. Dad and I haven’t discussed this with you [unclear] in the last while we haven’t talked about it at all. But he would probably know. In fact, even to myself, it seemed a little fuzzy. What real role did they play, if any. I know for a fact that they never entered into negotiations or signed collective agreements, as we know them today. But, they did, as near as I can gather that one of the main purposes was to try and soften the anti-Asiatic fever that was fairly rampant at that time. By affiliating with the Trades and Labour Congress, even on a very loose basis, at least, was better than being left outside, so to speak, with no voice at all. This is about the role they played it appears.

 

Interviewer [00:10:23] There was another big strike. Later, about ’28 ’29.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:10:35] .About that time I think

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:10:35] Oh that’s [unclear]

 

Interviewer [00:10:44] And there again as I remember it the whole Japanese came in support. Did you get enough support in that from the labour council?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:10:58] I don’t know, I guess so. [laughter] Interviewer [00:11:03] You didn’t work very closely with them then I take it. Joe Miyazawa [00:11:12] It wasn’t too close. I doubt very much.

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:11:17] Not too close myself.

 

Interviewer [00:11:20] Were you council delegates at all during these years?

 

Interviewer [00:11:25] Delegate to the Vancouver Labour Council?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:11:28] {unclear] myself, I didn’t do much. Interviewer [00:11:39] In your union and the newspaper— Hachiro Miyazawa [00:11:42] Yes.

Interviewer [00:11:44] There was some question about setting up a co-operative store.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:11:49] Yes.

 

Interviewer [00:11:50] When the Japanese businessmen wouldn’t patronize. How big an operation was this? How successful was it? How long did it last?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:12:01] The Co-op?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:12:01] I don’t know how long. [unclear].

 

Interviewer [00:12:13] Did it run up to the wartime?

 

Interviewer [00:12:14] No, I guess not.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:12:14] Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:12:16] I think it ran right up to the Second World War.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:12:18] Yeah.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:12:21] On one basis or another.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:12:21] Yeah.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:12:23] [00:12:25][Kobaknia?]. [0.0s] It was running up to the wartime. It was a consumer co-op I suppose.

 

Interviewer [00:12:30] How big an operation was it?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:12:31] Big in terms of people, dollars or what?

 

Interviewer [00:12:35] Well, in terms of how important— [unclear]

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:12:41] I don’t think it had— I can recall it’s a store right now thinking back when I was a kid, but in terms of how much business it did and how important it was down there on Powell Street along with the other Japanese businesses, not a large segment.

 

Interviewer [00:13:05] Did it achieve the objective of forcing the other stores to deal?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:13:11] With the paper?

 

Interviewer [00:13:13] With the paper and with the union.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:13:17] The store [unclear].

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:13:20] Yeah they did. But they didn’t come back?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:13:23] The Nisei?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:13:25] They did. They did come back after.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:13:27] Yeah

 

Interviewer [00:13:28] So it did achieve its purpose.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:13:29] To some extent, yeah. Just how far is pretty difficult to gauge I suppose. There’s two Japanese papers at that time and the union paper.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:13:40] Three.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:13:40] Three? Oh yeah, there was the other paper wasn’t there.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:13:44] [unclear]

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:13:47] It was the Minshu, the Continental Times and — Hachiro Miyazawa [00:13:50] Three daily papers with the union papers four. Interviewer [00:14:06] How radical was the union? Did it have political overtones? Hachiro Miyazawa [00:14:21] [unclear].

Interviewer [00:14:21] I don’t think the paper was radical,

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:14:26] I would guess knowing who was involved at the time they were practically all Social Democrats, I suppose, and they were amongst the Japanese community they thought they were rather radical.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:14:43] [unclear]

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:14:52] But Dad didn’t think so.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:15:01] [unclear] That only way we want to make it smooth between White and Japanese. The Japanese and the workers [unclear] We must [be] good friends within the union [unclear].

 

Interviewer [00:15:30] Well, one of the reasons I ask is that when the leader of the Japanese Labour Party, Workers Party, came to Canada, he was feted by the Labour Council, and I assume that he would have been a Social Democrat or left of some sort. I wonder just to what extent, to how closely the millworkers would have been to this position.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:16:00] To the position of the guy coming from Japan?

 

Interviewer [00:16:05] Yeah, the leader of the —

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:16:07] The Labour Party. Can you remember that?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:16:10] [unclear]

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:16:12] [unclear]

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:16:14] Yeah. That’s really [unclear] our union I don’t want any connection own country parties.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:16:29] It’s fairly recent that picture.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:16:34] ’29 yeah.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:16:35] ’29.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:16:35] Yeah Mr. Bengough

 

Interviewer [00:16:34] That’s right he’s—[unclear]

 

Interviewer [00:16:41] You said he was secretary of the Asiatic Exclusion League.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:16:41] Yeah. [unclear].

 

Interviewer [00:16:52] This is what it seems like to me

 

Interviewer [00:16:54] that moment the millworkers got in, there was no talk, really against it.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:17:01] Actually in the sense, in retrospect, it accomplished its major purpose in the least cutting down the organized opposition.

 

Interviewer [00:17:11] But even so, despite this, in 1929, the Canadian Labour Party split over this very issue of giving the vote to the Japanese and the Chinese. Do you remember this?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:17:27] This is in ’24, or was it ’29?

 

Interviewer [00:17:33] I don’t know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It was ’26. It was ’26.

 

Interviewer [00:17:45] It again came to an issue in the ’33 election.

 

Interviewer [00:17:53] What was the feeling in the labour movement at that time? Around ’33? Had it softened a great deal?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:17:59] The attitude towards the Asiatic workers? Began to change—

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:18:05] I don’t think so much. We join the Labour Council, that’s only labour’s voice, not to get any Japanese [unclear]. Anyway, at the Council [unclear].

 

Interviewer [00:18:37] Were you can get your wages up anywhere near the level of the White—

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:18:41] No, I guess not.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:18:45] We join the [unclear] Ocean Falls Paper Union and that time is a couple two Japanese in negotiation [with] company come around to Vancouver and talk to the company [unclear] but the few Japanese got more than other people, the coloured people.

 

Interviewer [00:19:16] This was right in the contract?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:19:22] Hmm hmm. That’s the way before the [unclear] Interviewer [00:19:28] How long did the union last? The Camp and Mill Workers last? Hachiro Miyazawa [00:19:33] To the first world war—

Joe Miyazawa [00:19:39] No, Second World War.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:19:39] Yeah Second World War.

 

Interviewer [00:19:40] You split up the Second World War. And did your members then go into the other unions?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:19:48] I guess not.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:19:53] They had no place to go to really, and so that’s when we came in after in ’40, when we started organizing in ’45. I know when I travelled on organizing in ’45 in the Interior, I ran into all kinds of guys who were buddies of Dad in the ’20s.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:20:11] When did they break up, the community here?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:20:14] It was in ’42.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:20:16] ’42. Springtime

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:20:17] ’42. Spring ’42.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:20:19] What happened between about ’40 and ’42?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:20:22] ’40 and ’42? Really I don’t think it was—when you say the war, I think Dad refers more specifically to after Japan got involved in the war in ’41, because up to this point it was relatively the same. The union stayed in existence in its— Although I think it was starting to get smaller by then, wasn’t it, Dad? Around ’38, ’39? It was pretty small in that it wasn’t that much of a force at all in the community I don’t think.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:20:51] Why did it decline?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:20:54] Why did it get smaller?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:20:56] I don’t know, I don’t know.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:21:02] I suppose in looking back, I would imagine that part of the decline this was because of the general depression that took place all over that, this was just a natural falling off, which took place in any organized groups during that period of time.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:21:17] I don’t know how the decline, the membership.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:21:20] It wasn’t very big at the end of it and then the co-op store was pretty small at this time.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:21:27] Well, how big was it, how big was the union in its heyday? Joe Miyazawa [00:21:30] How big? How many members? [speaks in Japanese] Hachiro Miyazawa [00:21:37] Oh I guess about 1,000.

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:21:38] I don’t know exactly.

 

Interviewer [00:21:41] Around 1,000.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:21:41] Yeah.

 

Interviewer [00:21:42] That’ll be through the ’20s and early ’30s. Hachiro Miyazawa [00:21:48] I don’t think enough [unclear] Hachiro Miyazawa [00:21:49] Before the 1940s pretty small.

Interviewer [00:22:01] Did any of the community take part in the unemployed organizations?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:22:10] The province wide ones?

 

Interviewer [00:22:13] Yeah.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:22:13] I don’t think the Japanese—

 

Interviewer [00:22:15] The Japanese were excluded from the relief camps.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:22:19] I don’t know. Were they, Dad? Did the Japanese go to relief camps

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:22:22] during the relief? During the depression?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:22:25] No.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:22:25] They didn’t go. I guess they were excluded.

 

Interviewer [00:22:30] Were the Japanese allowed relief?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:22:31] Yeah. They got relief didn’t they? Hachiro Miyazawa [00:22:35] Yeah, so they would go to the— Joe Miyazawa [00:22:39] Did [name unclear] go to the camps? Hachiro Miyazawa [00:22:39] I guess not.

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:22:39] I don’t know myself. I don’t hear any people go to the camp.

 

Interviewer [00:22:51] Certainly not involved in any of that then.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:22:55] I don’t think there’s any political overtones too much really from political point of view. I think they gravitated closely with the old CCF types because of the attitudes of the political parties that came up. Of course material that used to show attitudes of the Liberals, particularly even up unto the wartime their general attitude. So naturally, most of the Japanese were pretty close identified with people like Angus MacInnis.

 

Interviewer [00:23:27] Although Angus MacInnis was also one of those who resigned from the Canadian Labour Party over the issue of the enfranchisement, although I think, and I’m not sure why actually. I think because he lost his—

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:23:44] He was married at the time.

 

Interviewer [00:23:50] I think his statement was that it didn’t represent the wishes of his constituents and he could not support it. Or some reason like that.

 

Interviewer [00:23:57] These people would associate with the old CCF on a personal basis rather than on a community—

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:24:06] Yeah, community group basis. Although, the Japanese in the community who were not dyed in the wool socialists at heart even, did support a lot of the CCF people because of the position they took on the question of enfranchisement.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:24:26] I’m sure they gathered quite a bit of money from the Japanese community from those who were not CCF inclined. Isn’t that right, Dad?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:24:35] Yea.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:24:35] Because, now in 1964—

 

Interviewer [00:24:38] Nobody remembers.

 

Interviewer [00:24:38] Nobody remember this. In fact a lot of the young kids if you pardon the expression, coming out of university now I’ve talked to, I’ve run into real diehard Liberals and Conservatives. I always tell that, “Jeez your old man would turn over in his grave if he heard you talking now about the CCF” for example. They sort of brush it off lightly by saying, “Well, this evolution was bound to happen.” Well, it may or may not.

Couldn’t say it won’t.

 

Interviewer [00:25:05] I took an ad from the Liberal campaign ads, “Welcome J.S. Woodsworth”. Grant McNeil, has it framed. [unclear]. People just wouldn’t believe it.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:25:20] [unclear] Yeah, I see it in Grant’s office.

 

Interviewer [00:25:22] I just had a copy of the 1913 Liberal Party program given to me and the last plank [is] a “White B.C.”

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:25:31] I think this is probably more of the motivating factor of this group than anything else, the question of franchise, plus to neutralize by becoming part of the Labour Council the organized anti-Asiatic literature that they were pounding out.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:25:58] [unclear] the white people in the unions is different ideas. We can’t do that in a financial [unclear] a contract wish [unclear]

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:26:15] No they weren’t set up really to deal in bargaining for collective agreements. This is not what they were set up to do. They knew this themselves, because their bargaining rights position was pretty weak anyway.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:26:32] [unclear] more directly during Labour Council

 

Interviewer [00:26:41] It’s more beneficial.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:26:43] Yeah. I think so.

 

Interviewer [00:26:46] Did you have much contact with the other Japanese unions, the Steveston fishermen?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:26:58] They are quite—they are not like us.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:27:01] Fishermen union, association union, their ideas are not like us. They call us for couple of weeks, [unclear] people, groups, join us.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:27:24] They’re a much more high level type of organization in the sense that they were of course the fishermen’s union in Steveston, so-called, was more of a protective association of small employers. This is what fishermen basically are. I find I even have some arguments today as to the status of the fishermen’s union, really, they’re not—.

 

Unidentified [00:27:43] And the barbers.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:27:46] Yeah because, really, they go under the name, but what do they negotiate for? Their price, but really they are small entrepreneurs but banded together for their own mutual interests, rather than workers who are working for an employer. Why the Steveston fishermen’s union was called such the association was pretty far apart because one represented workers in a sense, the others represented—

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:28:14] Some time ago cut the fishermen’s licenses, from 40,000 [unclear]

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:28:21] This is when the government restricted — started to reduce the number of licensees that are of Japanese ancestry.

 

Interviewer [00:28:31] They did that after the First World War.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:28:31] Yeah.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:28:35] The leaders [unclear] the union side is [unclear].

 

Interviewer [00:28:49] You did have some talks about joining together, but nothing came about?

 

Interviewer [00:29:01] Couple of questions I had about employment. You came here as an immigrant yourself didn’t you?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:29:06] Yeah I did.

 

Interviewer [00:29:09] How did you go about finding a job?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:29:14] [unclear].

 

Interviewer [00:29:15] Did you have a job lined up?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:29:44] [unclear] They find a job for us. All the mills have a Japanese foreman or boss. They give us job. So I started work in Hastings too [unclear] the office over there. Hastings Sawmill.

 

Interviewer [00:30:01] It’s been suggested that Japanese immigrants had an economic pressure brought to bear on them, that is they had real difficulty in organizing because they owed money on their way. They had to pay back their way. Is that so? That they were controlled one way or another?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:30:26] I think the sense at that time was, as you said, they had the Japanese bosses, like the Chinese Tyee system in the canneries. Much the same. When the immigrants like Dad came, they stayed in the lodging or the boarding houses, and the guy would parcel the jobs out. His employer, the mill owner, would say, “I need ten guys, and you go out and get ten guys.” Some, I understand, were the boss himself or the foreman himself whatever you want to call him, he got paid by the company for so many men at so much an hour. He would write cheques on his own account to pay off the workers he had under his control.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:31:06] [unclear]

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:31:16] He’s a labour contractor, really. This was prevalent and quite common right up into the Second World War. Hammond Cedar was the same, Fraser Mills was the same way. Always [unclear]. I think after the company decided to get away from this practice they still maintained the Japanese foreman, but jobs being what they were before the Second World War, everybody made sure that payday time

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:31:43] or Christmas time you suitably gave a present to your boss. If you didn’t, you didn’t have any job the next day. As simple as that. It was subtle as hell. I know about one that was out at Hammond Cedar, this guy ran a dairy farm. He never worked a tap on his farm. He got all free labour. Every evening and on the weekends the guys who work for him in the mills.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:32:03] It was the system they offered. Of course, there was no union in any event whether it was a White worker or Japanese workers.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:32:08] [unclear] the people who work under that kind of boss [unclear] they don’t want to join the union. If [unclear], next day no job.

 

Interviewer [00:32:22] Did you get any—when you were part of the union was there any pressure put on you?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:32:28] Pressure from what source?

 

Interviewer [00:32:30] Well from any source.

 

Interviewer [00:32:32] Not formally, was there opposition to your union?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:32:42] I think that the thing that has to be recalled here is that many of the people who were involved in this Camp and Mill Workers Union were not mill workers in fact, themselves. Some of them, in fact Umezuki who was the secretary who was now with the Japanese [unclear]. You would have a bit of an intellectual who wasn’t really a worker in that sense, but didn’t lead the movement because [unclear], and Dad was in much of the same position. He actually became, while he was president of the union he was running a business of his own, although he was still connected with the Camp and Mill Workers. [laughter] This is some needs asking about, “How in the hell did you become— still remain involved with it while you were in fact a small businessman yourself?” But you see they didn’t look at the union in the sense that I look at it today, or like most of the people look at it as a vehicle to improve wages, hours and working conditions. To them, it was a vehicle in which to try and cut down the anti-Asiatic feeling, plus trying to get some equality in the political dominion, in the franchise.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:33:41] It took me a long time to get this through my skull when I talked to him because when I was working for the I.W.A. [unclear]. So I talked about in his time it seemed so rather airy fairy to me. At the time this was the only vehicle they could utilize to try and get some recognition. The worker-employer-union relationship that we know today is altogether—it wasn’t there at all.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:34:10] [unclear]the workers union now White people at the time Japanese people look like today’s union

 

Interviewer [00:34:27] Did the Camp and Mill Workers take part, or call any strikes?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:34:38] I don’t know.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:34:43] [unclear] I don’t think we call that.

 

Interviewer [00:34:47] But they were involved though

 

Interviewer [00:34:48] They were involved in the strike at Alberta Lumber Company.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:34:50] Yes.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:34:51] He can’t recall whether there was some other group that would call the strike and they went along with it.

 

Interviewer [00:34:57] There were, if I recall correctly, several strikes of Japanese workers at this time. Whether they were strikes or a lockout or a spontaneous type of thing you can’t tell. What I wanted to get at was did they fulfill some of the bargaining functions.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:35:17] The strikes the Camp and Mill Workers had were to try and get some improvement weren’t they, Dad?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:35:32] Yeah.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:35:37] I suppose you and I would consider those grievances they had mentioned at this stage, but I guess there was no other method which they could use.

 

Interviewer [00:35:38] The grievances were responsible for 80 percent of [unclear] in those days anyhow.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:35:38] It wasn’t done formally struck for recognition of the union or recognition of agreement, I don’t think. I think the history of labour agreements in the old days in the lumber industry was pretty damn few and far between.

 

Interviewer [00:35:53] [unclear]

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:35:57] [unclear] said all the agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. [laughter].

 

Interviewer [00:36:02] Did the union—you say one of the objects of the union was to get enfranchised and to break out—did the union itself take part in any campaigns?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:36:16] Political campaigns?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:36:17] Well, political not as in party, but enfranchisement campaigns or political campaigns in that sense or equal rights campaigns?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:36:36] [unclear} some people like that

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:36:38] I don’t think it came out openly as —[unclear]

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:36:41] Although they certainly supported financially I know people—but whether they came out in that—

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:36:50] I think the Japanese immigrant philosophy at that time was not of radical mass groups. They were—and while they do it now in Japan—I think at that time, the people are pretty conservative in their approach and attitude and I think, worked more on the basis of cultivating people who they knew would be their friends and working through them on this basis. Or, gather to the people who would support them. Probably [unclear] it would be wrong to think that anybody had paid off along the way, there was never enough money involved at the time or anything.

 

Interviewer [00:37:30] There was no mass movement in any way comparable to the American civil rights?

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:37:39] No, I don’t think so.

 

Unidentified [00:37:41] I heard from one fellow that there was one raid, on eleven men in the Chinese section of town and they carried out a very successful [unclear] and then started with the Japanese section.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:38:03] [unclear]

 

Interviewer [00:38:09] I guess this may be, anyway they got clobbered [laughter]

 

Unidentified [00:38:11] [unclear]

 

Interviewer [00:38:16] When did you come here?

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:38:18] 1907.

 

Interviewer [00:38:18] In 1907.

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:38:20] Were you there when they had [unclear]

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:38:23] That time I work night shift in the mill. The next day that mill was closed down. We stayed home and didn’t come back next night.

 

Interviewer [00:38:35] You closed the mill down to meet them? But they didn’t come? Oh, I see.

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:38:47] [unclear] Chinatown and [unclear]

 

Interviewer [00:38:50] Of course this went on—

 

Hachiro Miyazawa [00:38:51] Some stores [unclear] break everything. 1907 I think October 15, I guess September or August. I don’t remember exactly the date—

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:39:08] I can recall before the Second World War at Halloween, the hoodlums always used to go down to Chinatown and Japanesetown to try to roust a fight as a common—

 

Joe Miyazawa [00:39:19] They used the guise of Halloween I suppose we call them mobs now, they used to go down and raise hell, mostly to break the windows and looting. I know that they used to stay clear of Japanesetown after because all the guys—