Roy Ito


Region: Hamilton Ontario
Generation: Nisei
Born 1922, British Columbia
Died 1999

Bio

Roy Ryoichi Ito was a Nisei writer and historian, the author of We Went to War: The Story Of The Japanese Canadians Who Served During The First And Second World Wars (1984), Stories of My People: A Japanese Canadian Journal (1994), and the Japanese Canadians (1977), an illustrated history for high school students. Born in British Columbia, Ito and his family were forcibly removed to a sugar beet farm in Alberta. He later joined the staff of The New Canadian in Kaslo, BC, and then moved east to Hamilton to begin university studies at McMaster. He served in the Canadian army with the S-20 Intelligence Corps in India and Southeast Asia: some of his personal experiences and those of the people he met during his service made it into his two major books, We Went to War and Stories of My People. A teacher by profession, Ito also wrote a number of social science books for use in schools, including The Japanese Canadians.