Internment of Japanese Canadians
From 1942 to 1949, Canada forcibly relocated and incarcerated over 22,000 Japanese Canadians—comprising over 90% of the total Japanese Canadian population—from British Columbia in the name of "national security". The majority were Canadian citizens by birth and were targeted based on their ancestry. This decision followed the events of the Empire of Japan's war in the Pacific against the Western Allies, such as the invasion of Hong Kong, the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and the Fall of Singapore which led to the Canadian declaration of war on Japan during World War II. Similar to the actions taken against Japanese Americans in neighbouring United States, this forced relocation subjected many Japanese Canadians to government-enforced curfews and interrogations, job and property losses, and forced repatriation to Japan.
From shortly after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor until 1949, Japanese Canadians were stripped of their homes and businesses, then sent to internment camps and farms in British Columbia as well as in some other parts of Canada, mostly towards the interior. The internment in Canada included the theft, seizure, and sale of property belonging to this forcefully displaced population, which included fishing boats, motor vehicles, houses, farms, businesses, and personal belongings. Japanese Canadians were forced to use the proceeds of forced sales to pay for their basic needs during the internment.
In August 1944, Prime Minister Mackenzie King announced that Japanese Canadians were to be moved east out of the British Columbia Interior. The official policy stated that Japanese Canadians must move east of the Rocky Mountains or be deported to Japan following the end of the war. By 1947, many Japanese Canadians had been granted exemption to this enforced no-entry zone. Yet it was not until April 1, 1949, that Japanese Canadians were granted freedom of movement and could re-enter the "protected zone" along BC's coast.
On September 22, 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney delivered an apology, and the Canadian government announced a compensation package, one month after President Ronald Reagan made similar gestures in the United States following the internment of Japanese Americans. The package for interned Japanese Canadians included $21,000 to each surviving internee, and the reinstatement of Canadian citizenship to those who were deported to Japan. Following Mulroney's apology, the Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement was established in 1988, along with the Japanese Canadian Redress Foundation, to issue redress payments for internment victims, with the intent of funding education.
Prewar history
Early settlement
The tension between Canadians and Japanese immigrants to Canada existed long before the outbreak of World War II. Starting as early as 1858 with the influx of Asian immigrants during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, beliefs and fears about Asian immigrants began to affect the populace in British Columbia.Canadian sociologist Forrest La Violette reported in the 1940s that these early sentiments had often been "organized around the fear of an assumed low standard of living out of fear of Oriental cultural and racial differences." It was a common prejudiced belief within British Columbia that both Japanese and Chinese immigrants were stealing jobs away from white Canadians. Canadian academic Charles H. Young concluded that many Canadians argued based on this fear that "Oriental labour lowers the standard of living of White groups." It was also argued that Asian immigrants were content with a lower standard of living. The argument was that many Chinese and Japanese immigrants in BC lived in unsanitary conditions and were not inclined to improve their living space, thereby proving their inferiority and their unwillingness to become truly Canadian. Violette refuted this claim by stating that, while Japanese and Chinese immigrants did often have poor living conditions, both of the groups were hindered in their attempt to assimilate due to the difficulty they had in finding steady work at equal wages.
In reference to Japanese Canadians specifically, human geographer Audrey Kobayashi argues that prior to the war, racism "had defined their communities since the first immigrants arrived in the 1870s." Starting in 1877 with Manzo Nagano—a 19-year-old sailor who was the first Japanese person to officially immigrate to Canada, and entering the salmon-exporting business—the Japanese were quick to integrate themselves into Canadian industries. Some European-descended Canadians felt that, while the Chinese were content with being "confined to a few industries", the Japanese were infiltrating all areas of industry and competing with white workers. This sense of unease among white Canadians was worsened by the growing rate of Japanese fishermen in the early 1900s.
Japanese immigrants were also accused of being resistant to assimilation into British Canadian society, because of Japanese-language schools, Buddhist temples, and low intermarriage rates, among other examples. It was asserted that the Japanese had their own manner of living, and that many who had become naturalized in Canada did so to obtain fishing licences rather than out of a desire to become Canadian. These arguments reinforced the idea that the Japanese remained strictly loyal to Japan.
1907 riots
The situation was exacerbated when, in 1907, the United States began prohibiting Japanese immigrants from accessing the mainland US through Hawaii, resulting in a massive influx of Japanese immigrants into British Columbia. Largely as a result, on August 12 that year, a group of Vancouver labourers formed an anti-Asiatic league, known as the Asiatic Exclusion League, with its membership numbering "over five hundred". On September 7, some 5,000 people marched on Vancouver City Hall in support of the League, where they had arranged a meeting with presentations from both local and American speakers. By the time of the meeting, it was estimated that at least 25,000 people had arrived at the City Hall and, following the speakers, the crowd broke out in rioting, marching into Chinatown and Japantown.The rioters stormed through Chinatown first, breaking windows and smashing store fronts. Afterwards, the rioters turned to the Japanese-Canadian neighbourhood. Alerted by the previous rioting, Japanese Canadians in Little Tokyo were able to repel the mob without any serious injury or loss of life. After the riot, the League and other nativist groups used their influence to push the government into an arrangement similar to the United States' Gentlemen's Agreement, limiting the number of passports given to male Japanese immigrants to 400 per year. Women were not counted toward the quota, so "picture brides", women who married by proxy and immigrated to Canada to join their new husbands, became common after 1908. The influx of female immigrants—and soon after, Canadian-born children—shifted the population from a temporary workforce to a permanent presence, and Japanese-Canadian family groups settled throughout British Columbia and southern Alberta.
World War I (1914–18)
was an ally of the United Kingdom and opinions of Japanese Canadians improved slightly. Some Japanese Canadians enlisted in the Canadian Forces. On the home front, many businesses began hiring groups that had been underrepresented in the workforce to help fill the increasing demands of Britain and its allies overseas. Businesses that had previously been opposed to doing so were now more than happy to hire Japanese Canadians as there was "more than enough work for all". However, by the end of the war, soldiers returning home to find their jobs filled by others, including Japanese immigrants, were outraged. While they had been fighting in Europe, the Japanese had established themselves securely in many business and were now, more than ever, perceived as a threat to white workers. "'Patriotism' and 'Exclusion' became the watchwords of the day."Interwar years (1919–39)
In 1919, 3,267 Japanese immigrants held fishing licences and 50% of the total licences issued that year were issued to Japanese fishermen. These numbers were alarming to European-descended Canadian fishermen who felt threatened by the growing number of Japanese competitors.While groups like the Asiatic Exclusion League and the White Canada Association viewed Japanese Canadians as cultural and economic threats, by the 1920s, other groups had begun to come forward to the defence of Japanese Canadians, such as the Japan Society. In contrast to rival groups' memberships consisting of mostly labourers, farmers, and fishermen, the Japan Society was primarily made up of wealthy white businessmen whose goal was to improve relations between the Japanese and Canadians both at home and abroad. The heads of the organization included a "prominent banker of Vancouver" and a "manager of some of the largest lumbering companies in British Columbia". They saw Japanese Canadians as being important partners in helping to open Japanese markets to businesses in British Columbia.
Despite the work of organizations like the Japan Society, many groups still opposed Japanese immigration to Canada, especially in BC's fishing industry during the 1920s and 1930s. Prior to the 1920s, many Japanese labourers were employed as pullers, a job that required them to help the net men row the boats out to fish. The job required no licence, so it was one of the few jobs for first-generation Japanese immigrants who were not Canadian citizens. In 1923, however, the government lifted a ban on the use of motorboats and required that pullers be licensed. This meant that first-generation immigrants, known as Issei, were unable to get jobs in the fishing industry, which resulted in large–scale unemployment among these Issei. Second-generation Japanese Canadians, known as Nisei, and who were born in Canada, began entering the fishing industry at a younger age to compensate for this, but even they were hindered as the increased use of motorboats resulted in less need for pullers and only a small number of fishing licences were issued to Japanese Canadians.
This situation escalated in May 1938, when the Governor General abolished the puller licence entirely despite Japanese-Canadian protests. This resulted in many younger Japanese Canadians being forced from the fishing industry, leaving Japanese-Canadian net men to fend for themselves. Later that year, in August, a change to the borders of fishing districts in the area resulted in the loss of licences for several Japanese-Canadian fishermen, who claimed they had not been informed of the change. While these events did result in reduced competition from Japanese Canadians in the fishing industry, it created further tensions elsewhere.
Japanese Canadians had already been able to establish a secure position in many businesses during World War I, but their numbers had remained relatively small as many had remained in the fishing industry. As Japanese Canadians began to be pushed out of the fishing industry, they increasingly began to work on farms and in small businesses. This outward move into farming and business was viewed as more evidence of the economic threat Japanese Canadians posed towards white Canadians, leading to increased racial tension.
In the years leading up to World War II, approximately 29,000 people of Japanese ancestry lived in British Columbia; 80% of these were Canadian nationals. At the time, they were denied the right to vote and barred by law from various professions. Racial tensions often stemmed from the belief of many Canadians that all Japanese immigrants, both first-generation Issei and second-generation Nisei, remained loyal to Japan alone. In Maclean's Magazine, a professor at the University of British Columbia stated that the "Japanese in B.C. are as loyal to as Japanese anywhere in the world." Other Canadians felt that tensions, in British Columbia specifically, originated from the fact that the Japanese were clustered together almost entirely in and around Vancouver. As a result, as early as 1938, there was talk of encouraging Japanese Canadians to begin moving east of the Rocky Mountains.
The actions of Japan leading up to World War II were also seen as cause for concern. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933, ignored the naval ratio set up by the Washington Naval Conference of 1922, refused to follow the Second London Naval Treaty in 1936, and allied with Germany with the Anti-Comintern Pact. Because many Canadians believed that resident Japanese immigrants would always remain loyal to their home country, the Japanese in British Columbia, even those born and raised in Canada, were often judged for these militant actions taken by their ancestral home.