Tomekichi Homma, Canadian: 3
Despite massive catches, salmon fishers struggled to make a living. Homma realized Japanese Canadians needed to organize to hold their own.
When Homma stepped ashore in 1883, canned salmon was already the province’s second-largest export after lumber.[1] From a halting start in 1867, salmon canning became an annual industry by 1871 with the export of three hundred cases from Annieville, on the south bank of the Fraser near New Westminster. Alexander Ewen, a salmon fisher and plant manager from Scotland, pioneered the use of gillnets on the river to increase harvests to the level necessary to make canning viable. In 1881 there were eight canneries on the river. By 1889 the number had grown to sixteen.
In 1891, British investors funded Henry Bell-Irving to combine ownership of eleven canneries into Anglo-British Columbia Packing Co., the largest sockeye canning company in the world. The creation of ABC Packing triggered a round of consolidation that resulted in five companies controlling the Fraser’s annual pack of canned salmon.[2]
Despite the industry’s staggering profits, experts who had witnessed the depletion of Atlantic salmon runs and runs on the Columbia River warned of similar results in BC without conservation. The steady increase in the number of canneries was matched by a similar increase in boats, reducing catch per boat and raising canners’ costs. In 1888, Ottawa’s Department of Marine and Fisheries decided to tackle both issues by limiting the number of fishing licences the next year to 450, later revised to 500.
Of that number, more than 100 went to “independent” fishermen, all Caucasian, who fished a longer season by selling to both canners and local fish wholesalers, who shipped to eastern fresh fish markets opened by the CPR. Only ten licences went to Japanese fishers, all at English and Co.’s Steveston cannery. The remainder were fished by Indigenous fishers.
No one was satisfied. In the political uproar that followed, white fishers were able to use their political leverage to remove the limit for their category of “bona fide fishermen, being British subjects and actual residents of the province.” A Royal Commission in 1892 recommended an increase in licences of all types, a reform partially implemented that year. The number of cannery licences rose to 417 from 350, and those for individual fishermen to 270 from 150.
The largest increase in cannery licences went to the Japanese, who had been a negligible share of the fleet a few years earlier. The number of Japanese fishers on the Fraser was estimated at 50 in 1891, rose to 108 in 1892 and to 235 in 1893. There were as many Japanese as Indigenous fishers by 1895, and the number of Japanese gillnetters was equal to all Indigenous and white fishers combined by 1900.[3]
By 1892, if Japanese fishers like Homma wanted to escape the restrictions of a cannery boat, subject to the whims of canners and contractors, the only course was to seek naturalization as a British subject, which would make it possible to obtain an independent licence that promised a longer season and larger income. The first ten such licences were issued that year. (Homma obtained his licence the following spring.) This further inflamed white fishers, who saw the new-found independence of Japanese fishers as a threat, not an opportunity to co-operate. Many believed the naturalization certification papers of Japanese fishers were fraudulent.[4]
The increase in individual licences allowed the canners to create a new category of contract fishermen. These were men, both white and Japanese, who were guaranteed that their catch would be purchased, but at a fixed price per fish set by the canner. This arrangement outraged both independent white fishers, who saw the contract boats as a tool to depress prices, and Indigenous fishers, overwhelmingly fishing cannery boats, whose numbers were declining and incomes stagnating. To protect their incomes, fishermen needed to bargain a higher fixed price.
The struggle over licensing was only one of the clouds hanging over the 1893 season—a “Big Year” on the Fraser’s four-year cycle of salmon returns, which produced a bonanza run every fourth year. Bell-Irving’s six Fraser River canneries accounted for 70 percent of the Fraser’s production. He immediately set to work to reduce his cost of fish. The larger runs and a bigger fleet would give canners a chance to cut prices, limit purchases or even refuse to take catches altogether from contract fishers if their processing capacity was overwhelmed.
Suddenly aware of the threat of price cuts bearing down on them, the white fishers formed the Fraser River Fishermen’s Protective and Benevolent Association to bargain an increase in price, a reduction in cannery licences and an end to licensing Japanese. Elimination of the Japanese was the first and most emphatic demand. Early in July, a newly formed Canners’ Association set the price for sockeye at six cents a fish, a dramatic cut from the ten cents paid for several years. The same day, a mass meeting of fishermen, including white, Indian and Japanese representatives, agreed to refuse any contract below ten cents a fish. The stage was set for a strike that began July 14. Given almost no fish were running, it was more a protest than an act of economic warfare.[5]
The canners immediately sought and obtained the support of the Japanese consul, who promised to “furnish 130 fishermen at short notice—three days—and 200 more if required.”[6] (It’s not known if this pledge was fulfilled.) Bell-Irving then offered a fifty-dollar reward to anyone providing information about acts of violence, intimidation or conspiracy by fishermen “in any combination or conspiracy to raise the rate of wages.” This was followed by an intensive campaign by Indian agents, cannery owners and even a priest to convince the more than 2,200 Indigenous fishers to set their nets and break the strike. Although newspaper reporters had no trouble finding strike supporters among Indigenous leaders, it was clear on Sunday night, July 23, when the gun fired to open the week’s fishery, that many Indigenous fishers had set their nets. The strike collapsed.
The fishermen had been badly divided in the face of the canners’ solid front. On one hand, the white fisher’s association had not thought to seek a raise (to three dollars per day) for the Indigenous fishers on cannery boats until the strike was under way and the Indigenous fleet ready to break ranks. On the other hand, they had demanded that licences be denied to the Japanese, had denied union membership to the Japanese, refused to support the formation of a Japanese fishermen’s union and yet claimed the Japanese supported union price demands. Although most Indigenous fishers supported the strike, as did several hundred Japanese, the outcome was never in doubt.
This was the chaotic and divided industry in which Homma began his career as an independent fisher. Although fishermen of all races drew lessons from the debacle, the racial divisions fanned by the canners would have profound consequences for both Homma and the Japanese Canadian community as a whole.[7]
The 1893 season was an unqualified victory for the canners. The price they paid for fish rose steadily during the height of the summer, but crashed when the main run finally materialized on August 20. At that point the canners imposed boat limits and reduced prices, leaving fishermen with incomes equivalent to what they had earned in previous years despite the huge catches. So it went, year after year. In 1897, the next Big Year, Indigenous fishers refused to set their nets for less than twenty-five cents per fish. Japanese fishers also stopped work but said they would consider fifteen cents.
White fishers, apparently unable to support any proposal by the Japanese, demanded fifteen cents as an opening price but admitted they would take a ten-cent minimum. The three groups met separately, then agreed collectively to seek a season-long price of fifteen cents. How this was communicated to the canners is unclear. The canners then offered ten cents, and the threatened strike collapsed before it began. When the big run arrived, prices were cut as low as two cents a fish, and the glutted canneries eventually refused fish altogether, resulting in what some estimated was the destruction of up to 100,000 fish a day as canneries refused to purchase surplus catches.[8]
The 1897 salmon season proved a financial disaster for the Japanese fishermen. For Homma, it marked a personal and political turning point. A typhus epidemic had swept the Steveston area in 1896. Japanese Methodist missionaries in the community, who turned their building into a makeshift clinic, were quickly overwhelmed. This underlined the need for a hospital, and the missionaries turned to the fishermen for help. Homma became a driving force behind the response, believing that construction of a hospital open to all would bridge the racial divides in the industry.
A meeting called in July 1897 to discuss the matter drew the Japanese consul, Tatsugoro Nosse; Goro Kaburagi, a Vancouver clergyman and newspaper editor; and about two hundred fishermen. Nosse told the meeting of the relentless attacks he was confronting from anti-Japanese interests determined to restrict immigration and naturalization. A hospital project would prove the value of the Japanese immigrants, he said, but the modest clinic launched by the missionaries was already $400 in debt. A new building was expected to cost $2,500 and annual operations would run as high as $1,500. Only the fishermen could generate the necessary funds. It was agreed the labour contractors would collect fifty cents per fisherman as a starting point.[9]
Four days later, more than 500 Japanese fishermen gathered at the Steveston Opera House to discuss the impending salmon season. A price increase was now more critical than ever: “Fishing in the Fraser was poor in recent years; money for operation of the hospital was to be raised [and] this would be achieved only by putting up the fish price.” With 1,700 fishermen ready to go fishing, the Japanese made up one third of the total fleet. According to the history of the Japanese fishermen’s association, the fishers concluded that “Japanese must show some solidarity in this industry.” The meeting heard an appeal from a Tsy’msyen chief from Lax Kw’alaams, whose salmon fishers were always in the forefront of the fight for better prices—a telling example of one effort to reach across racial divisions that bedevilled the fishermen.[10]
Then Homma took the floor. He presented a bargaining strategy that started with consultations with the white and Indigenous fishers. The meeting unanimously agreed to seek 12.5 cents a fish. The next day Homma was elected to a six-person Japanese Canadian bargaining committee, five members of which were labour bosses. Homma’s personal authority, however, was indisputable.
“He was not like the other men at the cannery,” a contemporary recalled years later. “He stood out as being different, a quiet man who often kept to himself. But when he spoke, people listened.”[11]
Once again, Indigenous and Japanese fishers met at the Opera House to seek a united position, but once again their efforts tumbled into confusion, division and rancour. In the face of a massive run, the triumphant canners ultimately cut the price to two cents a fish.[12]
By 1900, the Fraser’s shoreline at Steveston was crowded with thirteen canneries, quiet during the off-season but roaring to life by late spring as the salmon runs began their annual build-up. Hundreds of gillnetters and dugout canoes lined the beaches and cannery floats. The town boasted the 900-seat Opera House, shops, gambling joints, bars and several churches along its wooden boardwalks. Each fall, cannery docks were lined with square-riggers waiting to take the canned pack to markets in England and Australia. The local newspaper grandly declared Steveston to be Salmonopolis. This summer boom town was the heart of the Japanese Canadian community in British Columbia.[13]
Despite the growing wealth of the industry, Tomekichi Homma and his fellow fishermen saw their economic clout withering even as the number of Japanese fishermen steadily increased. Most white fishermen were adamant they would never participate in a united fight with Japanese for better prices, nor for a fair licensing regime. Their goal was to control the fishery as a monopoly for white fishers through a licensing system that excluded Japanese, Chinese and Indigenous fishers, a goal they pursued by electing Members of Parliament committed to their demands. To Homma it was obvious that achieving the right to vote was vital to protect the Japanese foothold in the salmon industry. After the fiasco of 1897, it was also obvious they would need their own organization to have any chance of success.
Next in Tomekichi Homma, Canadian: Homma and his colleagues realize a new legal ruling may open the door to allow Japanese Canadians the right to vote.
[1] Meggs, Salmon, 19–29.
[2] Ralston, “The 1900 Strike,” 12–20, 23; Meggs, Salmon, 19–47.
[3] Ralston, “The 1900 Strike,” 48
[4] Ralston, “The 1900 Strike,” 29–36. According to court documents, Homma was naturalized on April 4, 1893.
[5] For a detailed account of salmon price bargaining in the 1890s, see Ralston, “The 1900 Strike,” 40–68.
[6] Meggs, Salmon, 41.
[7] Ralston, “The 1900 Strike,” 60, gives a racial breakdown of the fleet citing the Daily News Advertiser, July 18, 1893, 8. Also Meggs, Salmon, 38–42.
[8] Ralston, “The 1900 Strike,” 65–67.
[9] Teiji Kobayashi, 35 Years of History of the Steveston Fishermen's Benevolent Society (Steveston: Steveston Fishermen’s Society, 1935) 32.
[10] Kobayashi, 35 Years of History, 29 – 35.
[11] Tomi Okino in “Recollections,” memories of Homma curated by Tenney Homma, his granddaughter.
[12] Kobayashi, 35 Years of History, 35.
[13] Duncan Stacy and Susan Stacy, Salmonopolis: The Steveston Story (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 1994), 14.