This wasn’t what I was planning on writing about, but I was looking at the Wikipedia biography of Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki this morning (the reason is not important) and saw that he was born in Vancouver BC, as were his parents. His grandparents had immigrated from Japan at the turn of the 20th century. He was born in 1936.

Why do I write this? Because, I learned something. I learned that the United States was not the only North American country to intern its Japanese Citizens during World War II, and that Suzuki’s parents were forced to sell the store in Vancouver and move to a camp in the British Columbian interior, where his father was put to work in some sort of a labor gang. I also read, and I don’t think this was the case in the United States, that after the war, when the camps were closed, all of the residents were required to move east of the Rockies, Suzuki’s family winding up in Ontario. Eventually, David Suzuki made his way back to the West Coast, teaching at the University of British Columbia for almost forty years, but this was only as an adult.

We often tend to think of Canada as a nicer, friendlier version of the United States, and perhaps this is so today, but 75 years ago, when the Canadians (of course they were a British dominion then) interned their Japanese citizens and, as we have been reading for a while now, took their native Indian children and moved them from their families into assimilationist boarding schools where they were often maltreated and sometimes died, this was clearly not the case.

Just sayin’. One more thing to think about.

By the way, those of you who were interested in the Tilles and Cella families and their extreme influence over both American horse racing and St. Louis philanthropy, let me add a couple of things.

As to Tilles, he was married for a short time and had no children. He had been born and raised in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, not St. Louis, and had moved to St. Louis as an adult with his Adler cousin. His father Louis had a store in Ft. Smith and Tilles himself created another Tilles Park, this one the Louis Tilles Park, located in Ft. Smith.

As to Cella, I said that the house across Delmar from my grandparents’ house was a large house which we called the Cella House, and that I had no idea about its residents. I don’t know who lives there today, but I did Google the house, 7100 Delmar Blvd., University City, MO, and you can see almost 70 photos of it on Zillow or one (or more) of those sites. I suggest you do it. It is one beautiful house – inside and out (warning: you have to like green).

The Cella family is still involved in racing, and they are involved in the museum and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs. The current Louis Cella owns and operates Oaklawn, the track in Hot Springs, Arkansas. My Hot Springs cousins probably know all of that – but they probably don’t know the St. Louis history. (And will they read this post and find out? That I don’t know, but it shows what could happen if you don’t.)

Of course, Hot Springs, back in the day, was one of those gambling meccas, just like Saratoga Springs, and it was also – like Saratoga Springs – a hangout for Italian and Jewish mafiosi. Do you know that Lucky Luciano was not so lucky in Hot Springs? It was there in 1936 (Okay, coincidence, David Suzuki was born in 1936, bring all of the segments of this extraordinary post together) that he was arrested by the authorities and extradited to New York (and eventually back to Italy, where he continued to prosper, but died). By the way, there is a picture of Lucky in the city museum in Saratoga Springs and a reference to his Hot Springs capture.

So, I know this is all a lot to absorb. You have 24 hours before there will be more.