Hide Hyodo Shimizu was born in Vancouver, Canada, the oldest of eight children of Japanese immigrants. Her family was among the few Japanese in her neighborhood, and she was the only non-white student in her class. After graduating high school at 16, she studied for a year at the University of British Columbia but left when the tuition fee increased. Instead, she joined a teaching training program at Vancouver Normal School, and in 1926 she became one of the first Nisei – a second-generation Japanese-Canadians, to receive a teacher’s certificate.
Shimizu struggled to find a teaching position because schools did not hire a Canadian Japanese teacher. Eventually, she got accepted to Lord Byng School in Steveston, where a large community of Japanese Canadians resides, assuming she knew Japanese, although she did not. As a first-grade and kindergarten teacher, she became the first Nisei to teach in the British Columbia school system and stayed there for 16 years.
At that time, Shimizu became involved in the community. She worked with the Powell Street United Church and the Japanese Canadian Citizens League (JCCL), which included university graduate Japanese Canadians, who fought for full citizenship, and their right to vote. In 1936, 28 years old Shimizu was the only woman in a delegation committee to the Elections and Franchise Acts Committee in the House of Commons in Ottawa, presenting arguments to support the enfranchisement of Asian immigrants. Though the committee did not end the franchise ban, the delegation’s efforts encouraged other non-White communities to fight for voting rights.
During WW2, the tension against the Japanese Canadians in British Colombia rose.
After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Canadian government seized all Japanese-Canadians’ property and relocated them into detention camps. Japanese Canadians from coastal British Columbia were relocated to Hastings Park in Vancouver. Initially, she taught at Steveston school during the day and drove to Hastings Park in the afternoon to supervise the education of the kids, returning home by the 9 PM curfew. Several months later, she decided to dedicate herself entirely to building the education system at the camps.
Working with the British Columbia Security Commission and her colleague, Teruko Hidaka, she recruited nisei high-school graduates and trained them to be teachers. She created and supervised the curriculum for all ages and formed a school system that operated in all the seven internment camps in British Colombia, allowing approximately 3,000 Japanese Canadian children to earn an education.
As supervisor of education, Shimizu faced many challenges. The British Columbia Security Commission strictly supervised her, and the British Columbia Department of Education initially refused to provide classroom equipment and textbooks. She continued to fight to improve the classrooms’ conditions and raise the teachers’ wages.
When the war ended, Shimizu reunited with her family in Ontario, and in 1948 she moved to Toronto. In the same year, she married Kosaburo Shimizu, a widowed Reverend. Once again, she became involved in various organizations, such as the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, the Nisei Church, and the Momiji Health Care Society. During the 1980s, she became a prominent figure in the redress movement, who demanded compensation from the Canadian government for the seized property and forced migration of Japanese Canadians during the war. Shimizu died at the age of 91.
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