1. Japanese Internment The War against Japanese Canadians during WWII

2. The Scenario Police are banging doors at all hours of the day or night, ordering the frightened occupants to gather up only what they could carry. Parents and children innocent of any crime are ushered from their homes, herded in a central depot, and freighted out by train to remote camps. A scene from Nazi Germany? No, it was the internment of the Japanese in British Columbia, 1942.

3. Forced Internment Using the War Measures Act, the Canadian government forcefully relocated thousands of Japanese Canadians (identified as “enemy aliens”) during the Second World War.

4. “Spies” The Canadian government during WWII believed that the Japanese, as enemy aliens, were acting as spies and that they would collaborate with the enemy in the event of a Japanese invasion. No Japanese Canadians were convicted of treason during or after the war.

5. What does Internment mean? Internment is the practice of detaining persons considered dangerous during a war, although they may not be enemy nationals/enemy aliens.

6. Pearl Harbour The situation began on December 7 th, 1941, when Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, USA. With news of the attack on the American naval base, years of smouldering fear and resentment (racism) against Japanese Canadians exploded into panic and anger in British Columbia and the rest of Canada.

9. Hong Kong Persecution intensified on December 18th, 1941 when Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong and killed or imprisoned most of the 2,000 Canadian soldiers defending the island.

10. Declaration of War Almost immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbour the Canadian government declared war on Japan. US President FDR declared “this day will live in infamy.”

11. Declaration of Racism Ian MacKenzie, a federal cabinet minister from British Columbia, pushed the Canadian government to take action: "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.'"

12. Anti-Asian Sentiments: No Jobs Within days of the Pearl Harbour attack, Canadian Pacific Railways fired all its Japanese workers, and most other Canadian industries followed suit. Japanese fishermen in British Columbia were ordered to stay in port, and 1,200 fishing boats were seized by the Canadian Navy (Dec 8, 1941).

14. Anti-Asian Sentiments: RCMP In Ottawa, top RCMP and military officials said fears of disloyalty and sabotage by Japanese Canadians were unfounded; there was absolutely no reason so suspect Japanese Canadians of espionage or sabotage.

15. A History of Racism But the war had offered a convenient excuse for British Columbians and other Canadians to act on entrenched anti-Asian sentiments/racial discrimination claiming “ethnic purity” = harkening back to a not so distant past of “White Canada Forever”.

17. A History of Racism ▫The early BC settlers were highly conscious of their British origins and, deeply concerned over the racial origins of the new immigrants, became obsessed with excluding “undesirables.” ▫Laws were passed to keep Japanese Canadians from working in the mines, to prevent them from voting and to prohibit them from working on any project funded by the province.

19. “Enemy Aliens” On December 16,1941, mandatory registration of all persons of Japanese origin (listed as “enemy aliens” – gained a criminal record), regardless of when their citizenship began.

20. “Protected Area” On January 14, 1942, a 100-mile (160 km) wide strip along the coast was designated a "protected area" by the federal government. It was thought that if the Japanese were going to invade, and Japanese Canadian were going to help, it would happen on the west coast of BC.

21. “Protected Area” All male Japanese Canadians between the ages of 18 and 45 were to be removed from the area and taken to road camps in the Kootenay Region of BC. A dusk to dawn curfew was imposed and enforced by police.

22. “Protected Area” On March 4, 1942, all people of Japanese racial origin were told to leave the protected area.

25. Forced Evacuation In February of 1942, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King issued an order requiring the evacuation of all Japanese living within 160 km (100 miles) of the BC coast. This included Steveston in Richmond and Vancouver.

26. “Citizens” Most of the Japanese with either naturalized citizens or born in Canada.

27. Descendants of First Immigrants These were descendants of the first immigrants who sought work in Canada in the late 1800s. From the beginning, these newcomers had been subject to intense discrimination by a largely white Canadian society.

32. Pack for inland BC In March, 1942 (March 16, 1942), Japanese Canadians were told to pack a single suitcase each and taken to holding areas, to wait for trains to take them inland.

33. Holding Areas Vancouver's Hastings Park on the PNE Grounds was one of the holding areas where families waited, sometimes for months, to be relocated.

34. What is was like at Hasting Park "Hundreds of women and children were squeezed into the livestock building," remembered Yukiharu Misuyabu, an interned teenager. "Each family separated from the next by a flimsy piece of cloth hung from the upper deck of double-decked steel bunks. The walls between the rows of steel bunks were only five feet high, their normal use being to tether animals."

37. Relocation of Canadians After months in animal stalls, the Japanese- Canadians were shipped on special, sealed trains to the interior of BC, the Kootenays. Over a nine month period, 23,000 Canadian Japanese were relocated, of which 13,000 were born in Canada.

38. Relocation of Citizens All were Canadian citizens and many had fought for Canada in WWI and some already were on the front lines in WWII (before Pearl Harbour Japanese allowed to enrol in the Canadian army).

39. Property & Families Their property was seized and sold. Their families were broken up. Men were sent to work on labour crews. Women and children were shipped by train to abandoned ghost towns/shantytowns in the BC wilderness.

46. Pressure to Sell In January 1943, the Canadian government succumbed to more pressure from B.C. politicians and authorized the sale of all the properties seized from Japanese Canadians.

47. SOLD! The homes, cars, businesses and personal property left behind were sold for a pittance. The money went to the government not he Japanese Canadians. The lives Japanese Canadians had built in Canada were erased.

50. The “Interment/ Concentration” Camps The Interment Camps were in spectacular settings but the conditions for the evacuees were primitive. They were not “concentration camps” or even surrounded with barbed wire, as were the camps in the US, but conditions were crude and crowded at first, with no electricity or running water.

51. The Internment Camps The RCMP monitored/guarded the camps and internee’s had to get permission to leave them to go into other towns for food via day passes.

52. The Camps There were ten Internment Camps in total. They consisted two prisoner of war camps (POW) and eight interment camps. There were also three road camps.

53. The Internment Camps 1)Kaslo 2)New Denver 3)Tashme (10 km from Hope) 4)Roseberry 5)Slocan City 6)Lemon Creek 7)Sandon 8)Greenwood.

59. Life in an Interment Camp Living in interment camps was a hard life to live. Many families were forced to live in cramped quarters with ten other families sharing one stove. Some camps, such as Slocan City, didn't have the recourse to house the huge amounts of people coming into the camps.

60. The Camps Many Japanese were placed in tents until there were houses available. One would think that moving from a tent to a house would be a step up, but this was not true.

61. The Houses Most houses consisted of panel board with no insulation, rickety walls and maybe a stove. During the harsh, cold winters many Japanese put lanterns under their beds to try and keep warm.

64. Hideo Kukubo – Life during WWII "I was in that camp for four years. When it got cold the temperature went down to as much as 60 below. The buildings stood on flat land beside a lake. We lived in huts with no insulation. Even if we had the stove burning the inside of the windows would all be frosted up and white, really white. I had to lie in bed with everything on that I had... at one time there were 720 people there, all men, and a lot of them were old men."

68. Petitions In the years that followed the Japanese Internees were able to make the camps feel more like home. They petitioned the Royal Commission for better housing and more stoves. After the Japanese petitioned and protested the Government allowed a few changes.

69. A Semblance of “Normalcy” Families were able to grow vegetable gardens, dig basements, and create extra rooms. Japanese internees continued on with life, putting on festivals and musical events.

70. Education... finally 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.

71. Education... finally 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.

77. Persecution Continued after WWII After the end of the war (VE Day: May 8, 1945; VJ Day: August 15, 1945), this persecution continued. The Canadian government refused to allow the Japanese Canadians to return to their former homes.

78. Persecution: Removal The Canadian government forced Japanese Canadians to choose between deportation to war-ravaged Japan or dispersal east of the Rocky Mountains/out of BC.

79. Persecution: Removal The federal government decided to remove all Japanese Canadians from British Columbia. PM King stated it was desirable that Japanese Canadians were dispersed across Canada.

80. Disperse of go to Japan Applications for “voluntary repatriation” (become a citizen of your homeland again) to Japan were sought by the Canadian Government. ▫“Repatriation” for many means exile to a country they have never seen before.

81. A “Choice” to show Loyalty Those who do not go to Japan has to move east of the Rockies to prove their loyalty to Canada.

82. Forced to Choose Most chose the latter, moving to Ontario, Québec, and the Prairie provinces. ▫The choice was to work in road camps as slaves or go to the beet camps and be with their families. ▫Working in the beet camps/farms was the choice taken by the majority Japanese Canadians.

83. Protest Public protest would eventually stop the deportations, but not before 4,000 Japanese Canadians left the country.

84. Freedom? On 1 April 1949, Japanese Canadians regained their freedom to live anywhere in Canada. Many stayed where they were relocated, others moved back to coastal BC.

85. Our Shameful History The movement of 23,000 Japanese Canadians during the war was the largest mass exodus in Canadian history. Japanese Canadians were being punished for a crime they didn't commit.

86. Our Shameful History Canada's only defence for it's actions was that Japanese people were not white (racism) and they "could" be Japanese spies. Innocent Japanese Canadians were stripped of their rights, issued special clothing, humiliated, thrown behind barb wire fences, and were forced to do manual labour.

87. An Apology Forty-three years after the end of the war (Sept. 22, 1988), Prime Minister Brian Mulroney acknowledged the wartime wrongs and announced compensation packages including of $21,000 for each individual directly wronged including each internee’s. In total 300 million dollars were paid out.

88. Compensation The package included: ▫Payment of $21,000 to all surviving evacuees. ▫A clearing of all criminal records related to violations of the War Measures Act. ▫A re-instatement of citizenship to the "repatriated" Japanese. ▫A $12 million community fund. ▫A $24 million contribution to the establishment of a Canadian Race Relations Foundation.

90. Apology to Japanese Canadians- September 22, 1988 (CBC News) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxVZtQULI MQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxVZtQULI MQ 4 minutes, 30 seconds

91. BC Finally Apologizes On May 7, 2012, the Government of British Columbia formally apologized to Japanese Canadians who were interned during WWII.

92. Lessons to Learn Ten internment camps and 70 years later, Canada is still paying for what it did to fellow Japanese Canadians. Despite their ethnicity, they were still Canadian citizens, but Canada chose not to recognize them as equals just because of the war.

93. Lessons to Learn Many believed that the internment camps were manifested out of many British Columbian's hatred for the Japanese. Lets hope that we and generations to come can learn from our mistakes, our ignorance, and realize that just because something comes in a different colour or a different shape doesn't mean it is bad, or that it is wrong – it is far from that; it is equal!

95. David Suzuki Several victims of the Japanese Canadian internment of World War II are still alive today. ▫One of these people is world renowned scientist and environmentalist David Suzuki.

97. David Suzuki Suzuki has several thoughts on the internment, which you can find first hand from his book, “David Suzuki: The Autobiography,” and a radio interview with the CBC. ▫He describes how he gets over his own hateful feelings and learns from his experience.

98. David Suzuki David Suzuki was only 6 years old when his family was forced to move to an Internment Camp. His grandparents had emigrated from Japan many years prior because of extreme poverty, so he was a third-generation Canadian who was not fluent in Japanese.

99. David Suzuki Suzuki’s family was first sent to a ghost town, Slocan City, and his father, like most other men was separated and for a year was sent to and lived in a road camp building the Trans-Canada Highway.

100. A class at Pine Creek Crescent School in the Slocan City internment camps. At the top-left beside the teacher is David Suzuki.

101. Japanese Canadian National Museum The Nikki Centre #120-6688 Southoaks Crescent Burnaby, BC Canada V5E 4M7 Hours: 11am- 5pm, Tues - Sat (closed Sun, Mon & statutory holidays) Phone: 604.777.7000