Q&A: Michael Kluckner introduces first graphic novel

Historian and author, Michael Kluckner,is releasing anew graphic novel.

Kluckner is known in BC for hisaward-winning books,Vanishing British Columbia and Vanishing Vancouver.

The new novel is called Toshiko and launches todayat the Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre in Burnaby.

The novel follows the story ofToshiko and a local farm boy from B.C.'s interior. The twofall in love as the Second World War rages on and racism towards the Japanese is rampant. They flee from the isolationin theShuswap and head to Vancouver.

Stephen Quinn talked to Kluckneron The Early Edition.

Who isToshiko?

Well, she is a made up character, she is a teenager, a city girl. She is Canadian, born in Vancouverbutis caught up inthe racism of the time. During the war, all Japanese Canadians were forced off of the coast.

The family and the farm are the real part, but I created a character. There was a Calhoun Farm in the Shuswap and there was a group of families up there.

I knew if I could create such a character;a self-confident and smart young woman, that I could create an interesting dynamic between her and some of the locals. Themes of love, social class and racismallowed me to tell a lot more about the Second World War than Imay have been able to do with non-fiction.

Why was this story compelling to you?

I know the Shuswapquite well.I spenta lot of time there when I was young, so I knew about the isolation of the locals.

Because of this isolation,the boy, Cowboy,knows nothing of the outside world. So in a sense he is trapped up there just as Toshiko and her family are trapped up there, just for different reasons.

He was in danger of being drafted at the same time as she was trying to escape to Vancouver, so they are both on the run trying to make a life together.

How realistic was their experience in Vancouver when they arrived?

There were a lot of jobs in wartime Vancouver, but you needed to be registered by a federal agency, the national selective service system.

So he can't get in thereand ends upusinghis skills as a farmer to get a cash job where he works for a dairy farmer.

She gets a job working as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant because there were so few Chinese women at that point because of the Chinese Immigration Act that had banned all immigration into Canada since the early1920s.

They live in a hotel and then a shack with squatters in False Creek, before they get caught and he is conscripted to the army and she gets sent back to the interior.

These are all realistic as to what could have happened based on stories in the newspapers of the time about people beingwhere they shouldn't have been.

Why do a graphic novel?

Well, I used to be a cartoonist back in the 1970s before starting into non-fiction andI thought that this this was the only way to tell this type of rich story.It seemed that a picture is worth a thousand words and alsothat clipped language that you need in a graphic novel is very fashionable at the moment. He was an opportunity to clip it down and tell it in bits and pieces.

All in all it'sa departure (from usual work), but maybe starting a new direction, but we'll know after the book has been out for a while.

(Interview has been condensed for brevity)

To hear the full interview click on the audio labelledMichael Kluckner introduces first graphic novel