For Liz Yamanaka, a wonderful life — and one marked with overcoming tremendous adversity — has come full circle at The Maple Residences in Steveston.
Yamanaka sat down with the Richmond News to speak about how it all began, back in 1936, when her mother gave birth to her at the Japanese Fishermen’s Hospital, which was situated on the very site of the residence.
Memories have faded somewhat, but Yamanaka maintains a good sense of humour, especially when asked to spell her name for the newspaper.
“Ya-ma-na-ka. Lots of As,” she chuckled.
She recalls a very different Steveston back then, most notably the Interurban Tram that took her family to school near Brighouse, or Vancouver. She remembers walking the wooded areas around Pheonix Pond.
Today it is busier, but the walks are just as enjoyable.
“I love Steveston. This is my home,” she said.
A “very difficult” moment did mark her life, that being the internment of Japanese residents during World War II. Still, she called Greenwood, in south central B.C. home for 10 years, from 1942 to 1952. And, despite the disruption, “it was quite nice; there were many other Japanese people there.”
Yamanaka lived a typical life in Steveston for her generation. She didn’t finish high school but got some training at a local business college. She married a fisherman in her early twenties and put aside her future career to tend to her two daughters, Yvonne and Donna. As they grew up, she eventually found work in canning fish at the old B.C. Packers factory along the Fraser River.
Her husband, Tak, passed away eight years ago, after over 50 years of marriage. Five years ago, she moved into The Maple.
She grew up with five brothers and four sisters, many of whom were born at the hospital, which was built in 1900 by the Fraser River Fishermen’s Association, a coalition of Japanese fishermen.
The hospital was built to tend to local Japanese people who were largely ignored by white society. Still, they kept the hospital they paid for open to all people, with a fee, when space was available, notes Steveston Historical Society.
It would have cost Yamanaka’s mother about $35 for a midwife at the hospital in 1936.
In 1947, the Army Navy Air Force local acquired the building, which burned down in 1956. However, the hospital’s administration building remains and now sits just behind the Steveston Museum ond Post Office on Moncton Street. It has recently been restored and made open to the public.
Yamanaka still enjoys Steveston, as she did as a young girl and an older teenager.
“Oh, I still go around, you know, up to Super Grocer and around,” she said.
