Making a Trator

Only three Canadians have been hung for treason. The first two were Joshua Gwillan Doan and Louis Riel in the 1800s and the last Kanao Inouye in 1947.

The Making of a Traitor is the story of Kanao Inouye.

What would make a man born and raised in British Columbia brutalize his fellow countrymen? Can the discrimination that he, and his fellow Japanese Canadians faced in British Columbia explain it? Discrimination that climaxed with the forcible removal of 22,000 Japanese Canadians from their homes on the B.C. coast to ghost towns and beet farms on the other side of the Rockies.

Could the isolation he faced as a Nisei when he arrived in Japan be the cause? Or, did the extremes of the Bushido Code that were drilled into him by the Japanese Military, turn him into the monster known as “The Kamloops Kid”? This book explores those factors and the effect it had, not only on Kanao Inouye and his victims, but on the innocent Japanese Canadians that suffered during World War II.

Ryburn Goodyear, a retired professor, taught pre-press technology in the Graphic Communication Management program of Toronto Metropolitan University for 30 years. A friend once described him as a "Jack of All Trades" because of his variety of pursuits, including building cottages and landscape painting. His interest in the Battle of Hong Kong and Kanao Inouye in particular, stems from the stories his father told of his 16 year service in the Royal Navy, five of which were during WWII.