Diana FRENCH
Casual Country
Ed and Midori Kozuki belong to an elite group in the Cariboo. In 1991, Ed was chosen Citizen of the Year in the Williams Lake area, an award from the Rotary club for outstanding service to the community. The next year he received the Canada 125 medal. Receiving the awards was thrilling, but the Kozukis say life has been good to them and they believe in giving back. And giving back they have, for over 50 years, and they are still doing it.
Along with raising three children, Ed and Midori have been mentors and volunteers at all levels of community work. The list of organizations they have been involved in is impressive - Boy Scouts, Skating Club, Soccer, Music Festival, Lions & Lioness clubs, St. Andrews United Church, Community Living, Canadian Cancer Society, business and trades associations. Being involved means not only volunteering by doing the backroom work at fund raisers like teas, dinners, barbecues, and serving on committees, they also serve on the executives of different organizations. Whatever task is required, Ed and Midori can be counted on to be there helping.
Ed’s parents, Fred and Lily Kozuki, never expected or even wanted to become Cariboo pioneers, but WW2 changed their lives. In 1941, the Kozukis family, Fred, Lily, their three children, Fred’s dad Fred Sr. and younger brother Harry were living in a comfortable home in the well-to-do Mount Pleasant area of Vancouver, where they were the only Japanese Canadian family. Fred ran a successful greengrocers market, Fred Sr. had a thriving landscape business, Harry helped with both. Fred and his dad were naturalized citizens, Lily and Harry were born in BC, but when the Japanese air force attacked Pearl Harbour in December, 1941, the Canadian government, fearing Japan would attack the BC coast, ordered everyone of Japanese descent, citizens or not, to be interned in camps far away from their coastal communities for security reasons.
Fred refused to have his children raised in a camp. Ed was 4. With the help of an old school friend who lived in Williams Lake, the Kozukis received permission to move to the Cariboo. The friend found them a place to live, an abandoned farm on what is now Hodgson Road. At the time they thought their stay would be temporary.
They did not get the traditional warm Cariboo welcome. The community’s hostility was fueled by a truly hateful editorial by the Tribune newspaper’s publisher George Renner. Although the elder Kozukis had a rough time of it, they persevered. Some prominent residents befriended them, they always had food on the table and presents under the Christmas tree. Ed remembers the good times and points out he and his siblings had a better time of it than many others who had their lives disrupted by the war.
When it was time for Ed to go to school, the Kozukis moved closer to town. He attended Parkside Elementary and found school to be an adventure. Feelings were still high among the adults but the students didn’t read the Tribune. Ed made friends, played hockey, and enjoyed school activities.
Once the once the war was over, Williams Lakers got over their hostility and the Kozukis became part of the community. Even Renner mellowed. Fred had a construction company, and he built, and Lily operated, the Lakeside Motel. The children were the motel’s cleaning crew. Ed provided the firewood and did the outside chores. When he was in high school he worked summers for local plumbing, electrical and construction companies. After graduation he went to the University of BC to study engineering.
Midori Matsu came from Summerland, and while her family weren’t evacuated because they didn’t live in the restricted zone, they faced the same discrimination and restrictions during the war years. Her father, Art Matsu, was raised in a wealthy fishing family in Japan, but when a typhoon destroyed their boat and livelihood, he came to Canada to work for his uncle in Summerland. He spent time in Vancouver learning English and studying but returned to Summerland to work for Tom Croil where he supervised 25 acres of orchard for 42 years. Art bought a portion of the Croil orchard and worked on it until his retirement in 1983. The property was passed on to his son Eddie who converted it to a vineyard in 2008. Eddie is retired now and Midori and Ed’s son David manages the vineyard.
After achieving her teaching certificate from UBC in 1957, Midori taught at a small rural school at Abbotsford with three other teachers including the principal. She boarded with a retiree who liked to smoke and play bingo at the local Legion. The school was some distance from the residence, and Midori had to rely on the good will of the school principal for the commute.
“I don’t think that was always convenient for him,” she recalls.
She returned to UBC for summer school, then applied for a teaching position in the Cariboo. She came to Williams Lake to teach a grade 2 class with 35 students at Marie Sharpe School. The students loved her and so did their parents. Midori was 20 at the time, just five feet tall, and she was sometimes mistaken for a student.
It wasn’t long before she met the Kozuki family. Lily was delighted to welcome this nice young Japanese girl to the community. She invited Midori to Sunday dinner. To many Sunday dinners. It wasn’t long before Ed and Midori were dating. They were married in Summerland in 1962.
Ed gave up engineering at UBC and went to work at Burgess Plumbing, Heating, and Electrical in the early 1960s. He was the front man for the company and became its president. He retired in 2016 after 54 “great years.” Midori returned to work in 1986 as a teaching assistant, a job she found very fulfilling. She retired after 17 years.
Ed and Midori raised three children, Janis, born in 1965, Kimberley in 1968, and David in 1971. Kim is a school psychologist in Campbell River, Dave is in Summerland, and Janis is at home. Janis is autistic and when she was diagnosed, Midori was advised that she should have social contact with her peers. She was only two and a half and there was no such thing as playschool, but Midori contacted the private Kindergarten and Janis was placed with the five year olds. Midori and Ed sought every help they could, including travelling to Vancouver every weekend for two years to be with her. It has been a lifetime commitment, but both parents say it was well worth it. Janis is a talented crafter and produces beautiful items, including quilts, which she sells at markets as well as donating craftwork to charities for fund raising and gifts.
Along with their community work, which now includes involvement with the Seniors Activity Centre and Glen Arbor Manor, the Kozukis enjoy travelling around the world, gardening, and landscaping the yard and lakefront. They live in the gracious house by the lake that Fred built. Midori enjoys crafts, calligraphy and reading. Both are longtime downhill skiers, and some years ago Ed took up snowboading, a sport not too popular at the time.
He became very good at it, and now, at 80, he and Kim teach the sport to children and military veterans with disabilities at Mount Washington for the Vancouver Island Society for Snow Sports (VISASS).
