Born in
Vancouver, British Columbia, Raymond Moriyama suffered burns across his back and all over his arm as a four-year-old and was sometimes teased about his scars. During the eight months he spent bedridden after the accident, he saw an architect coming and going from a nearby construction site "with a blueprint under his arm and a pipe in his mouth." Moriyama decided then and there that he would become an architect. Moriyama described his experiences in internment camps as miserable. During this time, his mother experienced a miscarriage, which Moriyama grieved as the loss of a potential younger brother. He looked for a place for escape and solitude, and decided to build a treehouse outside of camp as a lookout point. He made friends with Canadian farmers who supplied him with lumber and tools to build. Moriyama describes his experience of finding escape as such:In despair, I decided to bathe in the
Slocan River on the other side of a little mountain away from the camp. The water was
glacial, but it was better than hot tears. To see who might be coming, I built an observation platform. Soon I found myself wanting to build my first architectural project, a tree house, without being found out by the
RCMP. I used just an axe as a hammer, an old borrowed saw, six spikes, some nails, a rope, and mostly branches and scraps from the lumberyard. It was hard work building it by myself, and it was a lesson in economy of material and meansThat tree house, when finished, was beautiful. It was my university, my place of solace, a place to think and learn. After the war, his family reunited with his father and they resettled in
Hamilton, Ontario, where he attended Westdale Secondary School and worked in a pottery factory.
Ambidextrous, Moriyama was able to finish his piecework quickly, and his bosses allowed him to use his extra time to study for school. During his years in university, Moriyama ran into his childhood friend Sachi from Vancouver, and the two began dating. They married in 1954, and together had five children, including two sons who also become architects, Ajon and Jason Moriyama. ==Career==