Kao in Japanese means 'face', both the physical face and the face of honour. When Japan attached Pearl Harbour in 1941 the Canadian government forcibly removed 22,000 people of Japanese ancestry from the Coast of British Columbia and in winter put them into ill-equipped camps high in the Rocky Mountains. People lost their jobs, property and businesses. Families were split apart and the community was systematically fractured. In 1989 and during the following two years I began photographing survivors from that period. I also recorded many of their stories. My book Face Kao is out of print though I have a few copies available. The entire project was acquired by the National Archives of Canada in 1997.

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