Rose Murakami
Rose Murakami earned a BSN from UBC, a MSc(A) in nursing education from McGill University and a MS from Boston University focussed on gerontology and rehabilitation in nursing practice. Rose began her career as a clinical practitioner in a Vancouver hospital but most of her career was spent as a full time faculty member in the UBC School of Nursing. She taught in both the BSN and MSN programs and achieved the rank of “Associate Professor”. When asked to be the Director of Nursing of the UBC Health Science Centre Hospital, Rose, not wanting to give up teaching completely, negotiated a joint appointment consisting of 20 percent responsibility in the School and 80 percent in the Hospital.
Rose was born on Salt Spring Island, B.C. when Canada and British Columbia were very racist toward Asians. For example, an 1895 amendment to the BC Provincial Election Act states:”No Chinaman, Japanese or Indian shall have his name placed on the Register of Voters for any Electoral District, or be entitled to vote in any election.” This law was not rescinded for Japanese Canadians until March, 1949. Persons not on the Voter’s List could not enter professions such as: engineering, law, medicine, public health nursing, teaching, pharmacy and the civil service.
Following Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, under the War Measures Act, 23,000 persons of the Japanese race, the majority born in Canada were labelled “enemy aliens” and were forcibly expelled from the “Protected Area”, 100 miles from the BC Coast to the Cascade Mountains. The family became prisoners of the Canadian Government. During the family’s imprisonment, their beloved home and farm were sold without the parents’ consent.
On April 1, 1949, restrictions under the War Measure Act were lifted and freedom of movement was again restored to Japanese Canadians. Forced to pay for their own imprisonment, the family, on September 1954 returned to Salt Spring Island in abject poverty with just enough money to purchase the property on which they still live today and started all over again. They initially tried, unsuccessfully, to purchase the farm that was taken from them. They were not welcomed and experienced many, many acts of extreme racial hatred from individuals and officials of established institutions and still experience some such acts to this day on Salt Spring Island.
Remembering being forced in the 1940’s to live in degrading and dehumanizing conditions such as in Vancouver’s Hastings Park animal barns which reeked of urine and with feces still fresh in the stalls, and in a storage building covered with flies by a pig pen on an Alberta sugar beets farm, Rose and her brother Richard initiated building the first supportive housing on Salt Spring Island by donating land worth 1.4 million dollars. The beautiful 27 unit building which opened on October 4, 2008 provides clean, affordable, secure and safe housing for low income individuals and families.
Rose, as a member of the Salt Spring Island Japanese Garden Society, in 2008, contributed to the development of Heiwa Garden, a garden of peace and reconciliation which honours the memory of Japanese Canadian pioneers who, since the early 1900’s, had contributed to the growth and development of Salt Spring Island.