[BCMA] For Immediate Release: 'Stolen Bases' shares the stories of Japanese Canadian families in the Comox Valley

[Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv]

Dear friends and colleagues,

We invite you to join us in sharing the healing power of storytelling in
the exhibition, *Stolen Bases,* at Cumberland Museum & Archives.

*Exhibition*: Stolen Bases
*Location*: Cumberland Museum & Archives, 2680 Dunsmuir Ave, Cumberland
*Opening* *Event*: Monday, March 23, 2026, 6 to 8 pm

Warmest,
Jillian and the Cumberland Museum & Archives Team


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*‘Stolen Bases’ shares the stories of Japanese Canadian families in the
Comox Valley*

On April 15, 1942, over one-third of the students at the elementary and
high school in Cumberland were suddenly absent from class. They would never
return to their desks, as almost 600 Japanese Canadians from the Comox
Valley were forcibly removed and incarcerated.

*Stolen Bases* is a new exhibition opening at Cumberland Museum & Archives
that shares Japanese Canadian stories of building and nurturing home bases
in the Comox Valley, and the intergenerational echoes of being treated as
an enemy at home.

>From the early 1890s, Japanese Canadian families built communities in
Cumberland, Royston, and surrounding townsites, establishing businesses,
operating the Japanese Canadian owned Royston Lumber Company, founding
language schools, and forming baseball teams that dominated local play.

“Baseball was a great social pastime for Japanese Canadians and
non-Japanese Canadians as youth and adults,” says Janet (Ogaki) Sakauye,
whose family was from Cumberland. Baseball diamonds became lively hubs for
community gatherings and competition.

In 1942, these communities were dismantled. Under the War Measures Act,
Japanese Canadians living within 160 kilometres of the Pacific coast were
dispossessed, forcibly relocated, and incarcerated. More than 75 percent of
those incarcerated were Canadian-born or naturalized citizens.

Even in the face of legislated racism and incarceration, baseball remained
an important source of connection. “It kept children busy in the internment
camps when there were no schools for a while,” Sakauye explains. “After
relocation to the east, it also helped ease Japanese Canadians’ acceptance
into cities like Toronto, which originally did not allow them to settle
after the Second World War.”

Despite prejudice, dispossession, and forced displacement, Japanese
Canadian families carefully nurtured community. *Stolen Bases* shares these
stories through film, letters, objects, photographs and contemporary art,
featuring the works of artists Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa, Megan Kiyoko Wray,
Kellen Hatanaka and SD Holman.

As Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa reflects, “a story shared plants seeds of healing
connection.”

Cumberland Museum & Archives invites the community to the opening of *Stolen
Bases* from 6 to 8 p.m. on March 23, 2026. The exhibition will be open
until February 1, 2027.


[image: StolenBases-image-1920x1005.jpg]


[image: image.png]

*CMA **respectfully acknowledges that we are standing on the Unceded
traditional territory of the Pentlatch, E'iksan, Sathloot and Sasitla,
collectively known today as the K’ómoks First Nation, the traditional and
ongoing keepers of this land. *
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