Anvil Theatre & Vancouver Independent Music Centre presents

Goodbye, Strawberry Hill

Saturday, May 2, 2026 | 7:30pm

A concert celebrating the launch of Sharon Minemoto’s new album, Goodbye, Strawberry Hill (Cellar Music). This album tells her family’s stories, joyful and sad, from WWII to present day.

Following the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941, the Canadian government interned people of Japanese ancestry due to fears of espionage, widespread anti-Japanese racism, and pressure from British Columbian politicians. Japanese Canadians were stripped of their civil rights and nearly 22,000 people were forced to leave their homes, many of whom were moved to internment camps. In 1942, Sharon Minemoto’s mother’s family’s 10-acre strawberry farm in Strawberry Hill, (Surrey-Delta) was confiscated by the government and her family then interned in Slocan, BC.

Even after the end of the war, Japanese Canadians were forbidden to return to the West Coast. They were given two choices: move east of the Rockies or “Repatriate” to Japan. Sharon’s maternal grandparents made the difficult choice to take four of their six Canadian-born children by boat to Japan. As Canadians, they would face years of hardship and discrimination in Japan before choosing to return to Canada.

Sharon’s father’s mother took her children to meet their grandmother in Japan when the war broke out. Without a home, income or father, the family was stranded near Hiroshima when the US atomic bomb was dropped. With his family stuck in Japan, her grandfather was interned in a camp in Moose Jaw, where he died.

With the support of the Japanese Canadian Legacies Society, Sharon composed nine works for her quartet, each inspired by and reflecting her family’s experience during WWII. These works would become the album Goodbye, Strawberry Hill.