Masajiro Miyazaki

Masajiro Miyazaki (1899 to 1984) was a Canadian osteopathic physician born near Hikone in Japan, who moved to Canada with his father in 1913. Japanese Canadians were barred by law from post-secondary medical study in Canada, so after graduating from the University of British Columbia in 1925 he trained at the Kirksville College of Osteopathy and Surgery in Missouri, graduating in 1929, and opened a practice in Vancouver in 1930. After the forced removal of Japanese Canadians from the coast in 1942 he was relocated to the Bridge River area and then to Lillooet, where the provincial police appointed him coroner. The role grew into that of the district doctor, dentist and obstetrician for patients scattered across a wide stretch of the Fraser and Thompson canyons, including those in the Japanese Canadian camp at Taylor Lake. He stayed in Lillooet after the war, campaigned for a local ambulance service and a proper hospital despite resistance from the provincial medical establishment, and was enrolled in the Order of Canada in 1976. His former home and surgery is now the Miyazaki House heritage site.