Tom Sando was born in 1922 in British Columbia. When his mother died, he was sent to Japan to be raised and educated by his relatives. He returned to Canada at the age of sixteen in 1938, and in 1941 was imprisoned for four years in Canadian concentration camps for being Japanese and protesting the Canadian government<’>s unfair treatment of Japanese Canadians. After the war, Sando began working as a building foundation specialist in Winnipeg, Manitoba and later moved to Edmonton, Alberta where he worked with a large piling company until he retired after almost thirty years.