Description of Historic Place

The Sunny Island is an 84-foot wooden fish packing vessel that lies abandoned in the intertidal zone of Ewan Slough on Westham Island in Delta, British Columbia. The vessel is fully exposed during low tide and mostly submerged at high tide. The vessel is intact for its entire length and is oriented with its bow facing north, 357 degrees true. The vessel is known to have been at this location since at least 1946, at which time it appears in aerial photography.

British Columbia's Heritage Conservation Act automatically protects all heritage wrecks, including the remains of all wrecked vessels and aircraft once two or more years have passed since the date of loss. It is illegal to damage, alter or remove a heritage object from a heritage wreck except under a permit issued by the Archaeology Branch.

Heritage Value

The Sunny Island has historic value for its connection to the Japanese Canadian community in British Columbia and aesthetic value for its unique design and construction method.

The vessel is valued for its association with the salmon and herring dry salt fisheries that were operated by Japanese fishermen and merchants on the west coast of Vancouver Island and the southern Gulf Islands in the years preceding World War II. Sunny Island was associated with the salt fisheries through its successive owners, the first of whom was Mikimatsu Tabata. Following the bankruptcy of Tabata, the vessel was acquired by T. Matsuyama in 1934. Matsuyama had a fleet of boats based on Newcastle Island at Nanaimo that were engaged in the salt fisheries in the Gulf Islands.

The Sunny Island is further significant because it may represent an extant vessel that is linked to Japanese fishermen and the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II. Beginning in 1942, people of Japanese descent were forcibly expelled from the British Columbia coast and incarcerated, while their homes, boats and other possessions were confiscated and sold. The reason for the vessel's abandonment is not known. The Sunny Island was still on the Transport Canada registry books in Matsuyama's name in the 1970s, while the remainder of Matsuyama's fleet is recorded as being confiscated and then resold in 1942. This suggests that the abandonment may have happened before 1942.

The aesthetic value of this vessel relates to its unique blend of traditional Japanese, or 'wasen', and Western design and construction characteristics. The Sunny Island was built by Jirokichi Arimoto in 1929 at Ritherton Bay, in Barkley Sound on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. The vessel represents a hybrid between West Coast style vessels and a traditional Japanese style of construction. It has a traditional bow, but the stern is of a relatively flat bottom design, with hard chines, no distinct keel, and an external rudder. There are no other known vessels built in British Columbia that share these 'wasen' design characteristics.

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the Sunny Island include:

- intact hull, only missing the topmost one or two rows of planks
- external rudder hung with wrought iron pintle and gungeons (the metal fixtures used to attach the rudder) off a post secured to the exterior of the raked transom stern
- features of traditional Japanese construction, including: edge-fastened hull, with nails set into mortises cut into the interior of the hull planks, as well as the exterior of the transom planks; edge-joined bulkhead planks; mortises filled with wooden plugs; relatively sparse frames, with approximately three-foot spacing
- features illustrating the vessel's unique blend of traditional Japanese and West Coast construction, such as: Japanese-style fastening method of planks; externally hung rudder; shape of transom with double chine; conventionally Western-style moulded form in the forward part of the hull