Takeo Nakano immigrated to Canada from Japan in 1920, later marrying and starting a family in his adopted homeland. Takeo's passion was poetry, and he cultivated the exquisite form known as tanka.

Then came the Second World War. In 1942, Takeo Nakano was one of thousands of Japanese men interned in labour camps in the British Columbia interior. Their only "crime" was their Japanese origins. Wrenched from his wife and daughter, placed in a labour camp and then an isolated internment camp in northern Ontario, Takeo wrote of his experiences, feelings and reflections with the sensitivity and perception of a poet.

Within the Barbed Wire Fence is the touching account of the effects of one of Canada's greatest injustices on a single, sensitive soul.