Interview with Kay Mitsui

Kay Mitsui (née Kieko Morita) was born November the 17th, 1932 in Steveston, British Columbia. The interview is about Kay Mitsui and her family’s life in Steveston and Vancouver, BC; Winnipeg and Arnaud, MB; and Toronto, ON. She was raised with her four brothers in a fishing family in Steveston, BC, before her family was relocated to a sugar beet farm in Manitoba during the war. She discusses what life was like in her predominantly Japanese Canadian hometown, and how it compared to life and work in rural Manitoba. She talks about how her siblings went on to work and study in Manitoba and Ontario, how she grew to prefer the Prairies to British Columbia, and her thoughts on how the forced relocation impacted her and her parents’ generations differently. She ended up pursuing secretarial work in large corporations, and had a long career in Toronto, while being heavily involved in volunteering with the Japanese Canadian community.