Marlene Howell’s art show “A Series for Contemplation,” part of The Lost Fleet exhibition, looks at the world of Japanese-Canadian fishermen in British Columbia before the bombing of Pearl Harbour, which launched the United States into the Second World War. This impacted thousands of Japanese-Canadian lives in BC.
“I can’t believe that nearly 1,200 Japanese-Canadians lost their fishing boats at that time,” says Howell, who is Japanese-Canadian herself.
Howell says that the experience of creating the works in the exhibit was emotional for her.
“When I look at all these photographs, I kept thinking every photo has a story,” she says. “They worked hard to save up money to buy a boat, and then it was taken away and took out to the east coast where [there’s] no ocean, so they couldn’t continue fishing; they had to find another job and start all over again.”
Howell says that when she was painting, she was trying to get to know how the people felt at the time of these events.
“I wasn’t there when it happened, but going through all those photographs and reading about some of the families, it was emotional for me,” says Howell. “Each painting I did, I put a lot of feelings into it.”
Howell says that the event launch—which will feature herself, Michael Abe, Jordan Stranger-Ross, and David Suzuki as speakers and is happening on Thursday, January 24—should be informative and helpful for attendees. She says that she, for example, wasn’t always informed about things that happened back then, even though her parents were interned and owned a rooming house in Vancouver that got confiscated.
“I really didn’t know too much, because I wasn’t around at that time,” she says. “I wasn’t born and my parents never discuss what they went through—they wanted to protect their children—and not until later years, through reading lectures, [do] you find out.”
Howell says that she put a lot of work into researching pictures from that era.
“To reflect the Canadian fishing boat, I went through hundreds of old black and white photographs, and I chose a few that I thought will make an impact on the viewers,” she says. “I used those photographs to inspire my painting.”
Somehow, all the photos have connections with Howell, although in many different ways. She says there was a particularly unexpected revelation one day when some friends came over as she was working.
“I have the photographs sitting there, and my friend asks me, ‘Where did you get this picture? That’s my grandfather’s boat!’ I didn’t know that until that time. It’s unreal.”
The Lost Fleet
Until Sunday, March 31
The Maritime Museum of British Columbia
mmbc.bc.ca