APP
OF THE
DAY
East of the Rockies
It’s hard to imagine what life was like for the 22,000 Japanese Canadians who were ripped from their homes during the Second World War and forced to move to internment camps, but you can get some idea of it when you walk through one of those camps in Slocan, B.C., with 17-year-old Yuki in East of the Rockies. This interactive narrative experience takes place months after Pearl Harbour, when her family was taken from their home and sent to live in a tiny hut in an old silver mining town.
Yuki’s voice guides you through the harsh reality she and her family (and many more Japanese Canadian families like them) faced in the days and years that followed them being banished from their homes. When the war was over, they weren’t allowed to go back to their lives. They were exiled from British Columbia and encouraged to move to Japan or else be dispersed east of the Rocky Mountains.
With her home, her family, and, in many ways, her culture stripped away, Yuki focuses on moving forward with her life, figuring out her identity and where she belongs in this world. As you walk with her, though you get a sense of the greater political climate amidst the war, the narrative centres around her very personal experience.
Belongings that you interact with along the way punctuate that experience—every photograph or drawing is imbued with meaning. Of course, having left so much behind, those belongings are few and far between. As Yuki says, “You don’t realize what you take for granted until it’s gone.”
Though her story might be fictionalized, the lessons it is filled with are very true. Jam3 and the National Film Board of Canada sought the help of Joy Kogawa, an acclaimed author, poet, and real-life survivor of the Slocan internment camp, to write Yuki’s narrative. Their hope is that it will teach a new generation about what happened to Japanese Canadians, and there are already plans to introduce the app into school curriculums.
In the app’s augmented reality mode, you can follow Yuki’s journey right on your desk or kitchen table. History can sometimes feel far away, but when it’s in your home or school, and you can step right into it and feel what someone else felt, it suddenly becomes unforgettable.
Kogawa says that’s important because, “Yesterday and today mirror each other. I hope we can enlarge our hearts today, embrace strangers among us and overcome some of our fears of otherness.”