In 1927, The Province praised Englewood as “the last word in modern mill construction.” Four years earlier, Frederick Wood and Edward English had combined their assets, including nearly 60,000 acres of timber land in the Nimpkish Valley, to form Wood & English Ltd., and made preparations for a sawmill and base camp on the northwest corner of Beaver Cove located between Port McNeill and Telegraph Cove on Northern Vancouver Island.

Meanwhile, Kantaro Kadota was looking for work because the Swanson Bay sawmill, where he had been Millwright for almost fifteen years, was closing. In a timely turn of events Mr. Roach, Chief of Sawmill Operations for Wood & English Ltd., approached him with a job offer: to design and build a steam boiler plant, and to act as Head Millwright of a Japanese crew of his choice.  Kantaro reflected that an offer like this was incredibly rare for a Japanese Canadian, and that his success was in part due to the support of his community back in Tottori Prefecture, Japan. After learning aspects of the sawmill, fishing, and boat building trades in Japan, he had immigrated to Canada in 1905 and become a citizen in 1909. He studied and worked at various mills along the west coast, while supporting a growing family. His wife, Shigeno, had been a teacher before immigrating and was the first woman from her village to move abroad.

Still, the Wood & English job offer didn’t make for a smooth start. Kantaro remembers that on his second visit to Englewood, “a white man came up and asked me what business I had there. I told him I was there to talk to Mr. Roach and then was told that he had the full authority there and that he would permit absolutely no Japanese.”

Kantaro was forced to leave and write an explanation to Mr. Roach, who, appalled by the incident, coordinated a meeting for Kantaro and himself with Mr. English to authorize and coordinate the terms for the hiring of Japanese Canadians.

A town soon sprang up and became known as “Englewood” after the company owners. Perched on the hill overlooking the company office, store, smokestacks, log dump, and railway tracks, were the bunkhouse, married quarters, cookhouse, bathhouse, mess-hall, and gardens of the Japanese Canadians. Their accommodations were separated from the white workers by a valley. While the census records from the time are sparse, photographs and firsthand accounts suggest that there were around two hundred Japanese Canadian men working at the sawmill during its peak, plus approximately fifteen families. In 1928, the school had nineteen students, the majority of whom were Japanese Canadian.

Isao (Vic) Kadonaga, whose earliest memories were of Englewood, imagined that residents “must have felt cut off from the outside world.” Despite being advertised as a mill town with “modern conveniences such as hot and cold running water”, life in remote areas was not for everyone. Yet the accounts of the Englewood community are consistently ones of resilience, roots, and intimate connections.

Not only was the deep-water port trading directly with countries such as Japan, Australia, and the USA, but in a time of limited roads, Englewood became a major stop on the water “highway” connecting communities along the coast. The union steamships and the Columbia Coast Mission hospital ship regularly provided news and supplies.

In Vancouver, the Tairiku Nippo (1908-1941) and The New Canadian (1938-2001) newspapers began regularly highlighting Englewood’s vibrant socials, including picnics, lectures, language classes, music, fundraisers, and children’s activities. Sports such as badminton (also called bird), softball, and baseball were enthusiastically organized “by both issei and nisei” men (first and second generation Japanese Canadian) through the Englewood Young Men’s Association (EYMC). They regularly hosted visitors from Alert Bay, Sointula, and Port McNeill, and attended those same communities in return. Sointula’s annual badminton and table tennis tournament was a big hit, praised by Englewood competitors for its “friendliness and good sportsmanship.”

To play a proper game of “yakyu” (baseball), a flat field was essential, something that was in short supply in the hilly, forested area of Englewood. The baseball diamond project was a communal labour of love. Initiated by Kantaro and supported by the company, the diamond was cleared and used by all in Beaver Cove. It not only encouraged fun after a hard day’s work, but as Kantaro hoped, provided an alternative to the usual gambling and drink associated with logging camps, and a break in generational and racial divides.

The Japanese Canadians formed a softball league with three teams: the Royals, Wahoos, and Alemites. The leagues’ competition for the “silver cup,” did get a mention in The Tairiku Nippo newspaper in 1939, but the name of the winning team was not included.

We know more about the Englewood Beavers baseball team thanks to the research of Isao (Vic) Kadonaga. The Beavers started to make their mark with uniforms, a manager by the name of Setsubun Kimura, and “a number of Asahi cast-offs” —the renowned Japanese Canadian Vancouver baseball team.

On the 1929 Labour Day weekend, the Beavers traveled to Port Alice for a game. Japanese players were few due to a labour dispute that resulted in around sixty members of the Japanese Camp and Mill Workers Union (JCMWU) leaving the Port Alice pulp mill. The remaining Japanese Canadian workers were too preoccupied with the dispute for a baseball game. The Beavers Left fielder, Hiko Hamada, remembered that despite it all, the team was still welcomed by the “hakujin” (white) community’s team. Third baseman, S. Kitamura, hit the first over-the-fence home run that the Port Alice ballpark had ever seen!

Despite efforts to engage through a shared love of sports, anti-Asian racism dictated many aspects of Japanese Canadian’s lives, including the hierarchy of workers, segregation, and being denied the right to vote, even though the majority were naturalized or Canadian-born citizens. The JCMWU, which was also active in Englewood between 1927-1930, was founded to counteract racist policies. In the 1930s, Englewood workers of Japanese descent were paid approximately 25¢ an hour, while those of European descent made 40¢. The Japanese Canadian women took in washing for extra income.

It is safe to assume that the 1942 “labor shortage” and closure of the Englewood mill were the result of the forced removal of all Japanese Canadians, whether immigrants or Canadian-born, from within 100 miles of the coast after the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbour. Without due process and with no evidence of any threat, the Canadian government detained nearly 22,000 Japanese Canadians, including the 262 residents of and around Northern Vancouver Island. These citizens were only permitted to return to the coast after 1949, and by then, their confiscated homes, belongings, boats, and businesses had been sold without their permission, and many people had been deported to Japan or exiled to the Eastern provinces.

The trees have since taken back the land where the Englewood bunkhouses once stood, and there are many things we don’t know and may never know about the community. Hiko Hamada left his baseball uniform behind, and like him, we are left to wonder what happened to it. The silence on many of the details of everyday life before the war speaks to the jarring, long-term effects of the dispossession of a people, but it cannot erase the fact that Japanese Canadians played an essential role for decades in the industry, craftmanship, labour rights, and life of tightknit coastal communities like Englewood.