Raymond Moriyama was a 12-year-old schoolboy at Lord Strathcona elementary when his family was unceremoniously uprooted and relocated to an internment camp for families of Japanese-Canadian descent in the B.C. Interior.
An ocean away, William Moriyama -Manitoba born, Montreal raised - found himself in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, one of the countless Canadians who were either killed or captured during Japan's invasion of Hong Kong.
Incredibly, half a century later, the two are fast friends.
The Art of Compassion is a story about survival, but more than that: It is a story about grace and dignity and compassion and coming to terms with life at its most cruel and its most forgiving.
It is an odyssey of sorts, an odyssey of two men whose lives meet at a crossroads, and a quiet testimonial to the healing wounds of time.
History deals with earth-shaking events, momentous upheaval and its effect on millions of human beings. It is rare that history is revealed in simple, human terms, and yet that is what The Art of Compassion has done.
The Art of Compassion is quiet and simple -spiritual almost - about two very different men who have learned to come to terms with their past through their art.
Today, Allister - aging, but still in fine health - writes and paints from his Tsawwassen studio. His novel, A Handful of Rice, is a Canadian classic, the heartfelt and genuine precursor to James Clavell's King Rat.
Moriyama is a Toronto architect. He designed the spacious, evergreen Canadian embassy in Tokyo, with its skylights , rock garden and emphasis on natural lighting.
The Art of Compassion was inspired in part by an exhibition of Allister's paintings, East Weds West, at Victoria's Art Gallery. The paintings, giant canvases marrying East and West, represent a healing from the trauma of four years in a Japanese camp. They were inspired in part by Allister's return to Japan in 1983, 45 years after his incarceration.
When film-makers Penny Joy and Peter C. Campbell learned that Moriyama's design for the Canadian embassy in Tokyo was based on his memories of the treehouse he built as a boy in an internment camp, they introduced the two men.
The Art of Compassion was the result.
"There are a lot of ghosts wandering around here," Allister notes during his return to Japan, "probably as lost as I am".
"...As I watched, there came a flash of knowing. I saw my bitterness, my hostility, my wounds, my broken body being gently covered in layer upon layer of exquisitely coloured and embroidered robes,transforming me into a new being. I felt a new, broader vision. I would paint as I had never painted before... paint a path to peace."
"These tiny footnotes of reconciliation might stir a calming breeze somewhere among the discordant winds of our planet," Allister says. "It was worth a try."
The Art of Compassion is a remarkable odyssey.