Canada Hounded Japanese Even After WWII

[SNACanuck]

A sad but interesting part of Canadian history.

 

 

Canada Hounded Japanese Even After WWII

Lynne Kutsukake

Library and Archives Canada

04.09.16 9:01 PM ET

Like their counterparts in the US, Japanese citizens in Canada were forced into internment camps during WWII. But after the war ended, things turned really ugly.

On the cover of Ken Adachi’s The Enemy That Never Was, the first book written about the Japanese Canadians and the wartime internment, is a close-up of a little girl’s face. She is only five or six years old, I would guess, maybe seven at the most. She is leaning forward and biting her lip, her intent gaze focused not on the camera but on something in the distance that we cannot see. I have always been captured by her expression: an ambiguous mix of anxiety and anticipation, uncertainty and curiosity. It’s a child’s face, full of innocence and sweetness, but darker shadows seem to hover around the edges of her mouth, as if the worried look of a much older person has begun to etch its traces onto her young face.

Although I don’t know who the girl is, I will confess I have been haunted by her image for a very long time. In the years leading up to the redress movement, I bought and read The Enemy That Never Was, and the book has been in my possession ever since. Every time I packed my belongings to move, every time I reorganized the books on my shelves, every time I touched this book, I would inevitably look at the cover and stare at the girl.

The full photograph from which the close-up is taken appears later in the book. It shows the girl surrounded by a crowd of Japanese Canadians who are waiting at a train station. Suitcases and boxes sit on the ground in front of them. The girl is leaning forward as far as she can, straining to look down the tracks, one imagines. Wanting to be the first to catch a glimpse of the train.

Without reading the caption, the contents of this picture seem obvious. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, Japanese Canadians were subject to mass uprooting and expulsion just like their Japanese American counterparts. They were forcibly removed from their homes on the Pacific coast and interned in remote detention camps in the rugged mountains of the British Columbia interior. Looking at this photograph you would naturally assume it shows a group of Japanese Canadians on their way to the internment camps in 1942.

But it is not.

For this is a photograph of the second uprooting, which took place after the war in 1946 when nearly 4,000 Japanese Canadians—close to one-fifth of the total population—were “repatriated” or deported to an impoverished and war-devastated Japan.

How did this happen?

In the spring of 1945, at a time when Japanese Americans were being released from the camps and allowed to return to the west coast, Japanese Canadians were facing a very different fate. Racist politicians, who had long been calling for the deportation of all Japanese Canadians, increased pressure for a solution to “the Japanese problem.” Especially in British Columbia, where they were determined to purge their own province of the Japanese presence forever, they must have panicked upon hearing the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in December 1944 which effectively closed the camps and returned the right of freedom of movement to Japanese Americans. Canada and the United States may be two different countries, but they have always watched each other closely.

David Suzuki and two sisters in an internment camp. 1942-1945

And so government officials devised the Canadian version of a “loyalty” questionnaire, otherwise known as the “repatriation” survey, which forced people to choose between only two options: move East of the Rockies and disperse, or go to Japan. Those who agreed to move East immediately and cooperate with the government policy of dispersal would be considered loyal and could stay in Canada. Those who signed an application for repatriation were labeled disloyal and would be deported when the war ended.

The option of returning home to the west coast was not available. In fact, Japanese Canadians would not be allowed within one hundred miles of the Pacific coast until April 1949, four years after the end of the war.

The harsh ultimatum was terrifying, and the camps quickly filled with panic, anger, confusion, and rumor. At the time of the survey, the war was still on, and no one knew when it would end. Some diehards fervently believed that Japan would win. Others feared that racism elsewhere in Canada would be even worse than what they had already encountered. All too often Canadian-born children found themselves torn between wanting to stay and being obligated to accompany parents who, for reasons of old age or poor health or sheer bitterness at having lost everything, wanted to repatriate. For many families who had been split up during the relocation, face to face discussion was impossible.

The survey was conducted with fierce efficiency and officials swept through the camps in only one month, forcing people to decide without adequate time or information and under enormous duress.

As if the prospect of moving to a distant, unknown locale were not intimidating enough, even worse was the insidious policy of dispersal. Japanese Canadians had to accept being scattered across the country. To refuse whatever jobs were offered, as one official notice bluntly stated, “may be regarded at a later date as a lack of co-operation with the Canadian government in carrying out the policy of dispersal.” They were warned never to form a community again as they had in pre-war Vancouver. For all the hardship entailed in living in the camps, at least people had always had each other for support. Moving east would change that. On the other hand, the government offered incentives to make repatriation an attractive and logical choice: free tickets for as many family members as necessary and no limits on the amount of baggage or cargo that could be taken.

Between May and December of 1946, five American transport ships set sail from Vancouver harbor carrying the deportees to Occupied Japan. Over half were Canadian citizens born in Canada, and of this group, one-third were dependent children under the age of sixteen. Could it really be said they were re-patriating if they were going to a country they had never set foot in before? Some spoke good Japanese, others barely a word. Almost all would have endured starvation conditions and painful discrimination as outsiders.

That was seventy years ago, and yet once again in some quarters we hear the ugly, irrational invocation of the word deportation, this time directed at other groups. It was wrong back then to target an entire people on the basis of ethnic identity. It is just as wrong today.

 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/10/canada-hounded-japanese-even-after-wwii.html

[Rounoush]

War is hell.

[khay]

$hitty. But, what Japan did to other countries during the war was million times worse. So, can't blame Canadian government too much here for what they did... given the context. 

 

I blame the Japanese imperialism for all of the suffering caused to the people of East/South-East Asian countries, Americans, as well as their own (e.g., Hiroshima, kamikaze, and the Canadian Japanese). The real pitiful thing here is that Japanese government never fully owned up to what they did, unlike the Germans. And the current regime in power (i.e., Shinzo Abe and his party) inherits political ideology from the imperial Japanese government that started the war (Abe's grand father was a prominent member of the imperial Japanese government). And the scary thing is that recently, they passed a security bill, approving military expansion (http://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-parliament-approves-abe-security-bills-1442596867).

 

I hope for the Japanese people to realize what kind of lunatic they have as their prime minister and hopefully vote this lunatic and his party out of power as soon as possible.

 

[CanadianLoonie]

20 minutes ago, khay said:

$hitty. But, what Japan did to other countries during the war was million times worse. So, can't blame Canadian government too much here for what they did... given the context. 

 

I blame the Japanese imperialism for all of the suffering caused to the people of East/South-East Asian countries, Americans, as well as their own (e.g., Hiroshima, kamikaze, and the Canadian Japanese). The real pitiful thing here is that Japanese government never fully owned up to what they did, unlike the Germans. And the current regime in power (i.e., Shinzo Abe and his party) inherits political ideology from the imperial Japanese government that started the war (Abe's grand father was a prominent member of the imperial Japanese government). And the scary thing is that recently, they passed a security bill, approving military expansion (http://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-parliament-approves-abe-security-bills-1442596867).

 

I hope for the Japanese people to realize what kind of lunatic they have as their prime minister and hopefully vote this lunatic and his party out of power as soon as possible.

 

Sigh...

 

Japanese in Canada and Imperial Japanese Army/Navy personnel on combat operations during the Pacific War were two different groups of people...

[khay]

23 minutes ago, CanadianLoonie said:

Sigh...

 

Japanese in Canada and Imperial Japanese Army/Navy personnel on combat operations during the Pacific War were two different groups of people...

I know. I don't think I said that they are the same people. You misunderstood... or you just read the first sentence of my post, "...what Japan did to other countries during the war was million times worse" and assumed that I was saying that Canadian-Japanese deserved to be mistreated because of what Japanese imperialists did.

 

It's $hitty that Canadian-Japanese had to suffer and obviously, they didn't deserve to be treated that way. And they deserve full apology and should sue/claim for any damages.

 

 

[CanadianLoonie]

1 minute ago, khay said:

I know. I don't think I said that they are the same people. You misunderstood... or you just read the first sentence of my post, "...what Japan did to other countries during the war was million times worse" and assumed that I was saying that Canadian-Japanese deserved to be mistreated because of what Japanese imperialists did.

 

It's $hitty that Canadian-Japanese had to suffer and obviously, they didn't deserve to be treated that way. And they deserve full apology and should sue/claim for any damages.

Clarified.

[SaintPatrick33]

hmm very interesting because I could easily replace the word Japanese in this post with the word Muslim and it would be an accurate reflection of what is still going on in these present times. 

 

I guess because it is a black and white photo that we can say its "history" without being fully cognizant of the reality that these disgusting human violations have only increased since the 1940's into what we have today. Imperialists still control the world so I suppose we really havent learned jack from what we did to these Japanese people have we............

 

 

 

 

[falcon45ca]

2 hours ago, SaintPatrick33 said:

hmm very interesting because I could easily replace the word Japanese in this post with the word Muslim and it would be an accurate reflection of what is still going on in these present times. 

 

I guess because it is a black and white photo that we can say its "history" without being fully cognizant of the reality that these disgusting human violations have only increased since the 1940's into what we have today. Imperialists still control the world so I suppose we really havent learned jack from what we did to these Japanese people have we............

 

 

 

 

The Canadian gov't is forcibly removing Muslims from their homes and placing them into guarded internment camps in isolated areas of the country?  

 

[SaintPatrick33]

14 minutes ago, falcon45ca said:

The Canadian gov't is forcibly removing Muslims from their homes and placing them into guarded internment camps in isolated areas of the country?  

 

 

I think you miss the point. Hatred for a foreign race has always reigned supreme amongst imperialist nations. 

 

By pledging support to the unlawful wars in the Middle East, Canada is continuing the policy of racist ideology and egocentric western views. 

Has Canada as a nation stood up against these types of policies? No. The fact we send military (however small) to an illegal occupation of a foreign nation(s) should ring parallel with this story of Japanese internment. Your tax dollars are going to fund the bombs and bullets we inflict upon innocent people. The fact nobody in the Canadian govt has said $&!# about gauntanmo bay tells you all you need to know about the people in power.  

[falcon45ca]

10 minutes ago, SaintPatrick33 said:

 

I think you miss the point. Hatred for a foreign race has always reigned supreme amongst imperialist nations. 

 

By pledging support to the unlawful wars in the Middle East, Canada is continuing the policy of racist ideology and egocentric western views. 

Has Canada as a nation stood up against these types of policies? No. The fact we send military (however small) to an illegal occupation of a foreign nation(s) should ring parallel with this story of Japanese internment. Your tax dollars are going to fund the bombs and bullets we inflict upon innocent people. The fact nobody in the Canadian govt has said $&!# about gauntanmo bay tells you all you need to know about the people in power.  

Wow, you're all over the map. At first all you had to do was replace the word "Japanese" with the word "Muslim", now you have to create a whole new argument about unlawful wars, Gitmo, & bombing innocent civilians.

 

Canada is not an imperialist nation. Bombing a country is not "parallel" with internment.

 

Canada also put Ukrainians in internment camps during WW 1. It must be because of Canada's hatred toward a foreign race.

[SNACanuck]

There is also a difference between the muslim argument and what happened to the Japanese. I don't remember hearing any stories of citizens of Japanese ancestry in either Canada or the USA doing lone wolf attacks locally during the war. Comparing apple to oranges as far as many are concerned. I see no problem with removing people from Canada if they are convicted a criminal/terrorist offense.

[Scottish⑦Canuck]

Interesting article.

 

It's pretty incredible to think that this was only 70 years ago. A relatively short period of time when you think about it. The world changes quickly. My two favourite countries now are Japan and Germany.

 

 

[Chris]

I think people forget; that for all our Smartphones, iPads, and Technology; as a Species, we're barely even two steps out of the cave.

[riffraff]

Sorry?

[Toews]

This is still a walk in the park compared to the devastation wreaked upon the Native population. 

[Gurn]

If you are ever on Saltspring Island and have time, go and perhaps talk to a fellow named Richard Murrikami (sp). Used run an automotive shop in Ganges- he has managed to buy back the property that was confiscated from his grandparents by the federal government.

 Generational damage.

[cabinessence]

A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian a certain Prime Minister uttered. Would most hyphenated Canadians let a person from a different pre hyphen  country marry into their family? Sometimes, yes, but often not. This is something that I would like to see change. 

[GLASSJAW]

5 hours ago, Scottish⑦Canuck said:

Interesting article.

 

It's pretty incredible to think that this was only 70 years ago. A relatively short period of time when you think about it. The world changes quickly. My two favourite countries now are Japan and Germany.

 

 

japan has transitioned from the white male fear to the white male fantasy in only a few decades. who says japanese efficiency is a myth?

[riffraff]

10 minutes ago, GLASSJAW said:

japan has transitioned from the white male fear to the white male fantasy in only a few decades. who says japanese efficiency is a myth?

[Alflives]

4 hours ago, Chris said:

I think people forget; that for all our Smartphones, iPads, and Technology; as a Species, we're barely even two steps out of the cave.

My spaceship can't be fixed soon enough.