The city built this garden in 1967 (Nikka Yuko means "Japan-Canada friendship"). It is a wonderfully serene place where visitors can gain an appreciation for traditional Japanese landscape architecture. When Canada declared war on Japan in 1941, about 22,000 Japanese-Canadians living on the West Coast were placed in internment camps in central British Columbia and Alberta, although in many cases they were Canadian citizens. About 6,000 of these Japanese-Canadians were resettled in Lethbridge, where they chose to stay after the war.