Camp Commissary at Tashme camp, east of Hope, British Columbia, 1943.
These internees manned the commissary of the Tashme camp in 1943. The provisions stocked were standard items, revealing little choice in brands. Inmates were expected to pay for their food and lodging, their property having been sold to cover these expenses. Evacuees who had permission to leave the camps in the daytime started logging companies, sawmills, factories, poultry farms, and retail shops, reviving the economy of more than one dying community. The residents of towns like Kaslo and Greenwood, British Columbia, who had originally protested the internment of Orientals in their midst, petitioned Ottawa at war's end to relax the continuing restrictions against Japanese- Canadian residents allowing them to carry on the businesses they had begun.
