Fonds consists of correspondence with lawyers, politicians and the Custodian's Office relating to the Kagetsu-Deep Bay Logging claim and a transcript of the claim hearing before the Royal Commission of Mr. Justice Bird into the claims for compensation, 1943-1954.
Fonds also contains films on various subjects including Buddhist ceremonies, the 1936 Olympics in Berlin; Japanese-Canadian visit to Vimy; and Kagetsu logging operations, 1917-1939. Titles include: Vimy pilgrimage; Buddhist ceremonies, Vancouver; American news items and Olympic visit; Kagetsu logging operations at Fanny Bay; Olympic games at Berlin...and Rhine River; Aviation: Royal Air Force pageant; and The King's birthday: trooping the colour. Also included are trailers for the films The early bird and the worm; Algiers; Felix in Hollywood; and Easy street. In addition, fonds includes excerpts from the films Wild puppies: an animal comedy; The night cry; The moose country; The Red Raiders; and We're in the Navy now.
Kagetsu, Eikichi, 1883-1967 : Eikichi Kagetsu was born in Wakayama-ken, Hidaka-gun, Yakawa-mura, Takara, Japan. After completing his schooling at the Yukawa Elementary school, he served with the Japanese Army in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese war.
He immigrated to Canada in 1906, worked at various jobs prior to 1907 and then worked in a lumber camp. In 1907, he bought a tract of forest land and began an independent logging operation northwest of Vancouver. In 1912, a year after his marriage to Toyo Makomoto, his business failed during an economic recession. He returned to laboring in lumber camps.
In 1923 Mr. Kagetsu bought 300 acres of forest at Fanny Bay, Vancouver Island. His logging operation was continually expanded until the outbreak of World War II. Shortly after Canada declared war, Mr. Kagetsu was arrested and imprisoned, like thousands of other Japanese Canadians. His assets were seized in 1942 and held by the Custodian of Enemy Property. By this time he employed about 100 Japanese and Canadian workers. Until the evacuation, Mr. Kagetsu was a central figure in the Vancouver Japanese community. At the end of W.W. II, he resettled in Toronto and started a long and fruitless legal battle to seek equitable payment for his holdings which were sold at devalued prices by the Custodian of Enemy Property.
