Collections

The LOI digital archive collections are the culmination of a four-year intensive research period conducted by project members. It includes a diverse array of materials from archival and government records to oral histories as well as land title records and transcribed directories. This archive boasts a total of HTML documents, including archival and newspapers files, and interviews (see Statistics).

We have extracted a number of collections of particular interest and for which we have done additional work from their archival home and present them here as self-titled collections. The archival "home" for each of these special collections is provided in the collection's landing page: Custodian Case Files, Protest Letters, Fishing Boat Ledger, Fishing Vessel Request Letters, and in the Miscellaneous collection Suspicious Persons Report, Steveston history, Haney history, Mission history. The remaining files selected from archival institutions appear in the Archival Collections area of this site. You can see the landing page for any collection by clicking on the collection name in the boxes below.

The easiest way to navigate this gigantic archive is to use the search. Most of the collections below have a search button below that allows visitors to perform targeted searches within that set of records. A search across the entire archive is available from the home page. Search, however, has some limitations. If a word or phrase, for example, has not been transcribed or recorded in the collection content or metadata, the search won’t return any results. Visitors may then wish to browse the collections. Each collection has its own description and instructions on browsing and navigating the structure that can be viewed by clicking the browse buttons below.

Custodian Case Files

The custodian case files are a series of records created by the Office of the Custodian of Enemy Property documenting individual and corporate Japanese-Canadian property holdings including real estate and chattels

BrowseSearchOral Histories

The oral histories collections includes 95 interviews of Japanese Canadians as well as the perspectives and memories of bystanders and witnesses.

BrowseSearchProtest Letters

This collection consists of letters sent by Japanese Canadians to the federal government protesting the forced sale of their property without their consent.

BrowseSearchLegal Cases

The legal case records are decisions rendered by judges from the Supreme Court of BC, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in litigation involving Japanese Canadians.

BrowseLand Titles

The land titles collection contains legal descriptions for real estate properties and represents the genesis of research for the Landscapes of Injustice project.

BrowseSearchLand Lots

The land lots collection is a dataset of locations identified by the team as either a Japanese Canadian-owned property or a neighbouring property chosen by LOI researchers for comparison.

BrowseFishing Boat Ledger

Each record in this collection contains detailed information about a vessel that the federal government confiscated during the dispossession.

BrowseSearchFishing Vessel Request Letters

The fishing vessel request letters are citizen enquiries from across Canada and the United States to the provincial and federal governments asking to purchase a confiscated Japanese Canadian-owned fishing vessel.

BrowseSearchDirectories

The directories are people and street indexes published in BC from select years between 1930 and 1949.

BrowseArchival Collections

Archival Collections compilation is a collection of government and community records, from 23 institutions across BC, Canada, and the United Kingdom, that the digital archival team has described but not transcribed verbatim

BrowseSearchMiscellaneous

The miscellaneous collections are a set of documents that were developed in the early days of the project that are now available for general interest.

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