Lesson 2: Citizenship Under Attack

All Canadians share certain equal rights, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or land of origin. These rights are guaranteed in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Unfortunately, Canada was not always so tolerant. There are many times when Canadian society was intolerant towards immigrants and other groups of people. In the passage that follows, you will learn more about one of these instances of prejudice and discrimination, the forcible uprooting and internment (confinement) of over 22 000 Japanese Canadians during World War II.

Japanese Internment

When war was declared against Japan in 1941, the Canadian government decided that people of Japanese descent posed a threat to national security. The government passed laws requiring the removal of all persons of Japanese origin from a 100-mile zone along the coast of British Columbia. First, all Japanese males eighteen years and older, regardless of citizenship, were sent to "road camps" to build highways. Others were sent to the interior of British Columbia, where they built "internment camps" for their families' imprisonment.

Meanwhile, women, children, and the elderly were held in livestock buildings at the Hastings Park exhibition grounds in Vancouver. Once transportation was arranged, they were sent to the internment camps in the interior and were reunited with their families. Here they lived in shacks, without heat, electricity, running water, or indoor toilets.

At the end of the war Japanese Canadians were given the choice of resettling east of the Rocky Mountains, or "returning" to Japan (even though these people had never been to Japan and were Canadian by birth). It wasn't until 1949 that they were allowed to return to coastal B.C. By then, though, their communities were gone and their homes and property had been sold.

It took many years for the government of Canada to recognize the wrong that was done toward its own citizens. On September 22, 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney condemned the internment and offered financial compensation to those who had suffered. To the surviving internees and their families, the apology and promise that such a thing would never happen again was far more significant than the money each family received.

Adapted from: A Path of Leaves, a guided study of the Japanese internment developed by the Nikkei Internment Memorial Society.

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Packing Your Belongings