The Town That Forgot About Its Japanese Internment Camp

CHATHAM-KENT, ONTARIO—The Eatonville Roadhouse is a two-story stucco building—light blue, the color of a sky veiled with clouds pulled thin. It’s one of the few structures along the stretch of paved road that intersects my parents’ gravel path. Around it, the landscape is flat for miles; farmland unfurls in all directions. Wind turbines churn above soybean fields, rolling the sea of bushy plants.

I spent much of my childhood in this Canadian farming town cuddled up to the shore of Lake Erie. Over the course of almost two decades here, I tried to learn everything I could about the land and the 4,563 people who lived on it. I loved the old fishery, the annual buffalo festival; I liked to think that I held the place inside of me—that I’d learned to smell storms blowing in, heavy and slow, that I could feel the wind change direction.