$1 million needed to save Kogawa House

The campaign to save the childhood home of novelist and poet Joy Kogawa is entering its final few weeks.

Last November, Vancouver City Council gave a 120-day reprieve on the demolition of the house that featured in Kogawa's 1981 classic novel Obasan.

Arts groups and the author herself had asked for time to raise money to buy the house, so it could be turned into a writers' retreat. A developer wants to take it down to make way for condominiums.

But the modest house on West 64th St. will cost about $1 million to buy and repair, money that has to be raised from book lovers and supporters.

The Land Conservancy of British Columbia is spearheading a fundraising effort with the support of the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, Vancouver arts groups and writers groups such as PEN Canada and the Writers' Union of Canada.

Kogawa's Obasan tells the story of a Japanese Canadian family interned during the Second World War. Kogawa and her family were removed from their Vancouver home in 1942 and interned in the B.C. interior.

Obasan won a Governor General's award and the novel has been studied by a generation of Canadian school children.

"The dream for it, is that these things [the internment] will not happen again and that there are wonderful countries like Canada where reconciliation is possible and where these things are not allowed to be forgotten," said Kogawa, who will speak at Vancouver's Robson Street Chapters on Saturday.

Cultural and arts groups want the house to be spared to remind Canadians of the injustice done to Japanese Canadians.

The proposal is to create a home for writers who have fled oppression in their own countries and sought refuge in Canada. "And where people care enough and writers can come and remember what has happened in their countries as well, I mean, where writers in exile can come, and writers of conscience can tell about what's happened in their lives. So, then the dream would be for it [the house] to be something for everybody, for all Canadians, for all people," Kogawa told CBC Radio.

In Obasan, Kogawa writes eloquently of thefamily life she lived in the house. It is also featured ina children's version of the tale, Naomi's Road.

"All the writing that I have ever done about my childhood or Japanese-Canadians is rooted in that loss of a home and community and life," Kogawa said.

The city has planted a cherry tree grafted from a tree on the Kogawahousepropertyto commemorate the experience of Japanese Canadians.

The stay of execution on the house runs out at the end of March and the issue will be back before Vancouver City Councilunless money can be raised in time.