1. The Internment of Japanese Canadians

2. Because British Columbia faced the Pacific Ocean, it drew many of its non- British newcomers from Asia, including Japan. Although the first known Japanese person to emigrate to Canada, Manzo Nagano, settled in the province in 1877, Japanese immigrants did not begin arriving in appreciable numbers until 1900. By 1914, however, only 10,000 Japanese had settled in the whole of Canada, by far the largest number in British Columbia.

3. Japan limited the number of males who could emigrate to this country to 400 a year, thereby becoming the only nation to specifically control the movement of its people to Canada. As a consequence, for several years thereafter most of the immigrants from Japan were women who had come to join their husbands. In 1928, Canada and Japan revised the gentlemen’s agreement of 1907 to restrict Japanese immigration to Canada to 150 persons annually, a quota that was rarely met.

4. Asiatic Exclusion League Formed in San Francisco, California, in 1905 by white labour leaders and workers, this anti-Oriental movement soon moved north into all of the American States along the West Coast and, eventually, the area around Vancouver, B.C. This racist group wanted all Asians removed from North America out of the fear that Chinese and Japanese immigrants, a source of cheap labour, were taking jobs away from Whites. The league was the main instigator behind the Anti-Asian Vancouver Riots in 1907.

5. A Royal Canadian Navy officer questions Japanese- Canadian fishermen while confiscating their boat.

6. In 1907 a white mob rampaged through the Chinese and Japanese sections of Vancouver to protest the presence of Asian workers who threatened their livelihood. They lobbied the federal government to stop immigration from Asia. Asians were denied the vote; were excluded from most professions, the civil service and teaching; and were paid much less than their white counterparts.

8. After being rejected in BC, approximately 200 volunteers travel to Alberta to join the army and go to Europe. In 1917, surviving veterans are promised the right to vote. Remaining WWI veterans finally receive the right to vote in 1931 and become the only Japanese Canadians to be enfranchised.

9. Powell Street Powell Street was the largest Japanese Canadian community in Canada before the mass uprooting in 1942. Institutions such as the Japanese newspaper, Japanese language school, and churches were well established.

10. Japanese Canadian Jewelry Store in the Vancouver pre-war community. An example of one type of business later lost in the mass uprooting. Photo: UBC

11. In Spring 1941, before Pearl Harbor and Canada's declaration of war with Japan, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police finger-printed and registered all Japanese Canadians over the age of 16. They were required to carry identification cards until 1949. Official Registration Cards (1940-1941)

12. To Be Posted in a Conspicuous Place End of Order In Council Notice Notice To All Persons of Japanese Racial Origin (Feb. 26, 1942) The Order in Council PC 1486, passed on February 23, 1942 authorized the removal of all "persons of Japanese racial origin" and gave the RCMP the power to search without warrant, enforce a dusk-to- dawn curfew, and to confiscate cars, cameras, radios, and firearms.

13. Hastings Park Detention Centre For Japanese Canadians from outlying areas the first stop on the road to exile was Hastings Park. Women and children were assigned to the livestock building. Men were housed in the Forum. Conditions were barbaric - privacy was non-existent; latrines were open gutters; the food horrible. Outbreaks of diarrhea added to the misery. Many were confined there for months without knowing where they would be sent or what had become of their husbands, families and relatives.

14. Arriving in Tashme (March 1942) Trains and trucks were used to forcibly remove the 22,000 Japanese Canadians from the 100 mile "protected area" of the west coast of British Columbia in the spring, summer and fall of 1942. The family camps were located in mining ghost towns or were created on leased farmland or ranchland in the interior of British Columbia.

16. The war caused a large labour shortage for farmers, especially sugar beet farmers. The Security Commission Council organized sugar beet projects to combat the labour shortage. This gave the Japanese males a choice. 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 was the choice taken by the majority of Japanese married men.

17. A group of men working to build the Yellowhead highway

18. Yukiharu Misuyabu and his family went to Lemon Creek, where 2,000 Japanese lived in shacks. "The walls of our shack were one layer of thin wooden board covered with two-ply paper sandwiching a flimsy layer of tar. There was no ceiling below the roof. In the winter, moisture condensed on the inside of the cold walls and turned to ice."

19. Canadian-born children Yukiko and Sakon (Don) Sato were exiled to Japan. Dan was born in Slocan 2 years earlier. He remained in Japan until 1960. Before the deportation orders were cancelled in Jan. 1947, 4,000 Japanese Canadians had already been "repatriated".

20. Forty-three years after the end of the war, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney acknowledged the wartime wrongs and announced compensation packages including of $21,000 for each individual directly wronged.