A young woman, Hanako Masutani, a self-described "Gulf Island girl," attends a series of gatherings over three years in Vancouver and is drawn into the narrative of how an upstart group of Japanese immigrants joined forces with Canadian-born third generation Japanese Canadians to re-energize a community still reeling from the aftershock of the forced removal and internment of the 1940s. She encounters the legacy of Jun Hamada, founder of Tonari Gumi, who despite his own failing health, created a space that functioned as a sanctuary for the issei and a site for regeneration and renewal for the entire community.
The memories of a vibrant pre-war community alternate with a gritty present-day tour of the skid road that Powell Street has become. The narrative is richly permeated with the joy of the issei, the first generation elders, on their out-trips from Tonari Gumi, as they filch loaves of bread, rollick through monastery gardens and burst into song after planting cherry trees in Oppenheimer Park. The beauty and dignity of the issei is stunningly captured in a 22-page series of black and white photographs from community photographer, Tamio Wakayama.
This book offers an intimate and lyric telling of events from inside the flux of history and concludes with Hanako immersing herself and her infant daughter in the present day activities and programs of Tonari Gumi.
