Item AAAB0063 - Kantaro Kadota interview

CALL NUMBER: T0061:0001 SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Kantaro Kadota : head millwright and superintendant of Japanese workers PERIOD COVERED: 1890-1972 RECORDED: Surrey (B.C.), 1972-04-10 SUMMARY: Kantaro Kadota talks about his family background in Japan. His boyhood in Hokkaido. He became a Christian. His desire to learn modern sawmills led him to come to Canada early in the twentieth century. Got a job working for the pulp and sawmill in Swanson Bay, then Englewood. He was a superintendant of Japanese workers. CALL NUMBER: T0061:0002 SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Kantaro Kadota : head millwright and superintendant of Japanese workers RECORDED: Surrey (B.C.), 1972 SUMMARY: [No documentation on T0061:0002.] CALL NUMBER: T0061:0003 SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Kantaro Kadota : head millwright and shipbuilder PERIOD COVERED: 1905-1910 RECORDED: Surrey (B.C.), 1972-05-11 SUMMARY: Kantaro Kadota left Japan in 1905 for Canada to learn about sawmills. In Vancouver he worked for various sawmills. He studied English at the church at night for a year and eight months. After that he got a job with Whalen Pulp and Paper Mills Ltd. of Swanson Bay. He became the head millwright there in 1908. CALL NUMBER: T0061:0004 SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Kantaro Kadota : Japanese-Canadian head millwright and shipbuilder PERIOD COVERED: 1910-1958 RECORDED: Surrey (B.C.), 1972-05-11 SUMMARY: Kantaro Kadota was concerned about the quality of life for Japanese workers. He attempted to reform them by doing away with drinking and gambling. He cleared the professional gamblers out of his mills. During the Second World War he worked in a shipyard. He went back to Japan with an exchange boat in 1943. He stayed there until 1958 when he returned to Canada as a landed immigrant.