When the B.C. security commission ordered the evacuation of 23,000 Japanese-Canadlans, Roy Miki's parents were shipped to the Prairies from Haney in April of 1942. His mother was four months pregnant with him.

"I was 'raised' in an internment setting in Manitoba," says Miki, an SFU English prof, "It was a sugar beet farm. Most people don't realize that the conditions for Japanese-Canadians who went to the Prairies were generally much worse than in B.C. At least in the B.C. interior people could have a sense of communal suffering. But in Manitoba the labour conditions and housing were often horrific and we were kept isolated from one another." His parents wanted him to conform, to study dentistry, law or medicine. These were the favoured professions because a Japanese-Canadian could clearly serve the public while being 'invisible'.

"My parents were really disappointed when I had leanings towards poetry and literature," he says, "Literature was taboo because it was expressive. It might make you stand out. A Nisei artist like Roy Kiyooka, for example, was highly abnormal. You were supposed to blend in."

In studying Canadian writing Miki favoured writers who spoke directly and personally about immediate experiences, who had a sense of Canada being comprised of local diversities, and who were not using conformist traditions.
"One of the reasons I eventually came to the West. Coast was not only my Asian roots out here,' he says, "but because of the attraction of West Coast writing. People like George (Bowering) in the Tish group (at UBC) actually took pride in place."

Haunted by a sense of his lost community, Miki became active at the forefront of the Japanese Redress movement and edited a book by and about B.C. journalist Muriel Kitagawa, This Is My Own: Letters to Wes & Other Writings on Japanese Canadians, 19411948(Talonbooks $29.95 $15.95).

As the editor of Line magazine at SFU for five years, Miki has developed his interest in documentation, the social conditions of writing and writing as a daily activity rather than only 'literature' as a finished product. A mutually inclusive interest' writing has now led to the June release of a book examining unconventional author bp Nichol, Tracing the Paths (Talonbooks $14.95).

"To me the best Canadian writing is writing that is truly 'open' to the world, not dominated by pre-conceived notions," says Miki, "In this way bp Nichol is the quintessential Canadian writer.

"By virtue of his openness he has a 'world' view that encompasses much more than himself. For many years he has been considered a fringe writer but I think as time goes by he'll be seen more and more as representing the important concerns of writing in Canada."

Roy Miki's next project will be the publication of an exhaustive George Bowering bibliography.

[BCBW Summer 1988]