Yon Shimizu


Region: Toronto Ontario
Generation: Nisei
Born 1924, Victoria British Columbia
Died 2016

Bio

Yoshio ‘Yon’ Shimizu was the author of The Exiles: An Archival History of the World War II Japanese Road Camps in British Columbia and Ontario. Born in Victoria, Shimizu was a young man just about to finish high school when the government ordered the removal of all Japanese Canadians from the west coast. Shimizu was sent to the road camp in Schreiber, Ontario, and later moved to Toronto, continuing his studies at the University of Toronto. He became a chemical engineer, retiring in 1985.

In 1993, he published his 600-page tome The Exiles, a definitive history of the road camps that young Japanese Canadian men like himself were forced to work in during the 1940s.