Internment of Japanese Canadians

File:Japannot.gif

During World War II, more than 22,000 Japanese Canadians were forcibly interned in Canada.

Internment and confiscations

Following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, members of the non-Japanese population of British Columbia, including micheal jackson government offices, local newspapers and businesses called for the internment of micheal jackson ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!!!!!!!. In British Columbia, there were fears that some Japanese who worked in the fishing industry were charting the coastline for the Japanese navy, acting as spies on Canada's military. Military and RCMP authorities felt the public's fears were unwarranted, but the public opinion quickly pushed the government to act. Canadian Pacific Railway fired all the Japanese workers, and most other Canadian companies did the same. Japanese fish boats were first confined to port, and eventually, the Canadian navy seized 1,200 of these vessels.

A R.C.N. officer questions Japanese-Canadian fishermen while confiscating their boat.

In January 1942, a "protected" 100-mile wide strip up the Pacific coast was created, and any men of Japanese descent between the ages of 18 and 45 were removed and taken to road camps in the British Columbian interior, to sugar beet projects on the Prairies, or to internment in a POW camp in Ontario. A few men at the McGillivray Falls, just outside the quarantine zone, were employed at a logging operation at Devine, near D'Arcy, British Columbia, while those in the other Lillooet Country found employment with farms, stores, and the railway.. Tashme, on BC Highway 3 just east of Hope, among the most notorious of the camps for harsh conditions, was just outside of the exclusion zone. All others were in the Kootenay Country in southeastern British Columbia.

Most people of the 22,000 Japanese descent who lived in British Columbia were naturalized or native-born citizens. Those unwilling to live in internment camps or relocation centres faced the possibility of deportation to Japan. On February 24, 1942 an Order-in-Council passed under the War Measures Act giving the federal government the power to intern all "persons of Japanese racial origin."

In early March, all ethnic Japanese people were ordered out of the protected area, and a daytime-only curfew was imposed on them. Some of those brought inland were kept in animal stalls for the Pacific National Exhibition at Hastings Park, in Vancouver for months. They were then moved to ten camps in or near inland British Columbia towns, sometimes separating husbands from their wives and families. However, four of those camps in the Lillooet area and another at Christina Lake were formally "self-supporting projects" (also called "relocation centres") which housed selected middle and upper class families and others not deemed as much a threat to public safety.

"It is the government’s plan to get these people out of B.C. as fast as possible. It is my personal intention, as long as I remain in public life, to see they never come back here. Let our slogan be for British Columbia: ‘No Japs from the Rockies to the seas.'"

— Ian Mackenzie, MP

Early in 1943, British Columbians managed to convince the Canadian government to allow the sale of all the properties seized from Japanese Canadians.

Camp Conditions

Internment camp, June 1945

The living conditions in the camps were so poor that the citizens of wartime Japan even sent supplemental food shipments through the Red Cross. During the period of detention, the Canadian government spent one-third the per capita amount expended by the U.S. on Japanese American evacuees. The BC Government refused to fund education for young Japanese Canadians. Then the Federal Government stepped in and helped out the Japanese and arranged classes from grades 1-10. With the help of the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, and the United Church high school became a reality so grades 11-12 came into effect as well. The first place to get a school up and running was in Lemon Creek.

Leadership positions within the camps were only offered to the Nisei, or Canadian-born, Japanese, not the Issei, the older generation.

Canada sold all of the Canadian born internees' worldly possessions. In 1943 the Canadian "Custodian of Aliens" liquidated these worldly possessions without the owners' permission. The Custodian of Aliens held auctions for these items. These items would range from farms and to houses, to people's clothing. They were sold quickly at prices below market value. The money that was raised from these auctions went to the realtors and the auctioneers; then it went to paying for storage and the handling charges. The Japanese had to pay for their stay at these camps. While under the Geneva Convention prisoners of war (POW) didn't have to pay for their camps.

Post-War

After the victory over Japan, the federal government moved to evacuate Japanese Canadians from British Columbia all together. Evacuees were given the choice between deportation to Japan or transfer to areas east of the Rocky Mountains. The majority opted to remain in Canada, and moved to Ontario, Québec and the Prairie provinces.

Following public protest, the order-in-council that authorized the forced deportation was challenged on the basis that the forced deportation of the Japanese was a crime against humanity and that a citizen could not be deported from their own country. The Prime Minister referred the matter to the Supreme Court in what was to be the first case heard in the newly constructed building housing the Court.

In a five to two decision, the Court held that the law was valid. Three of the five found that the order was entirely valid. The other two found that the provision including both women and children as threats to national security was invalid. In 1947 the deportation order was repealed, after 4,000 Japanese Canadians had already left the country. On April 1, 1949, Japanese Canadians regained their freedom to live anywhere in Canada.

Legacy

On September 22, 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney gave a long-awaited formal apology and the Canadian government began a significant compensation package, one month after President Ronald Reagan made similar gestures in the United States. The package for interned Japanese Canadians included $21,000 to all surviving internees, and the re-instatement of Canadian citizenship to those who were deported to Japan.

The Nikkei Memorial Internment Centre in New Denver, British Columbia, is an interpretive centre that honors the history of interned Japanese Canadians, many of whom were interned in the New Denver area.

In literature

The novel Obasan (1981) by Joy Kogawa centres on one family's hardships during the Japanese internment period in Canada. In the novel, Kogawa draws upon her own experiences in describing how families were often split up, had their property taken, and suffered racism from Canadian citizens and the federal government.

Kogawa explores similar territory in Naomi's Road (1986), a novel for young adults with illustrations by Matt Gould.

The autobiography of Masajiro Miyazaki, My Sixty Years in Canada recounts the circumstances of life in the Lillooet-area relocation centres and also concerning the non-Japanese there, as well as documents the osteopath's enlistment as wartime coroner in that town.

See also

• Ukrainian Canadian internment
• List of internment camps and relocation centres in Canada
• Sandon, British Columbia
• New Denver, British Columbia
• Minto City, British Columbia
• East Lillooet
• Bridge River, British Columbia (South Shalalth)

References

• The Politics of Racism by Ann Sunahara. Originally published by James Lorimer & Company, 1981; ISBN 0-88862-414-X hardback, ISBN 0-88862-413-1 paper. Updated 2000, re-released under a Creative Commons license, 2004.

External links

• The Politics of Racism by Ann Sunahara
• Explanation of different categories of internment, Nat'l Assn. of Japanese Canadians website
• Map of Internment Centres in BC, Nat'l Assn. of Japanese Canadians website
• Seized Japanese fishboats near Robson Island, Fraser River (New Westminster in background)
• Photographs by Masumi Hayashi
• CBC Archives - Relocation to Redress: The Internment of the Japanese Canadians