Japanese Canadians being relocated in British Columbia

Citation: Japanese Canadians being relocated in British Columbia, 1942. Photograph. courtesy Library and Archives Canada. C-057250. https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Home/Record?app=fonandcol&IdNumber=3193868&q=C-057250&ecopy=c057250

Since 1942, Canadian authorities have detained, expelled, and Internment Japanese Canadians living in BC at the time. Approximately 21,000 people, more than 90 percent of the Japanese community, suffered from the racist War Measures Act. The Canadian government liquidated all of their properties, such as their homes, farms, and businesses, by selling them off and forcing them to move to Hastings Park in Vancouver. They were ordinary people, civilians like anybody else, and have never been accused of harming Canadian national security and society, or of doing so to this day. However, they had to be subjected to fear and hatred because their country bombed Pearl Harbor and started a war. As can be seen in the photo above, many people were forced to be displaced, which destroyed many families. Their constitutional rights and freedoms were revoked, and democracy was taken away Canadian government.

Bibliography: Jeronimus, Mia. “Suffering and Survival: The Experience of Dutch Women in Japanese Internment Camps in Java, 1941–45.” Human Rights Quarterly 45, no. 4 (November 2023): 695–721. doi:10.1353/hrq.2023.a910492.

Community kitchen at a Japanese Canadian internment camp in Greenwood BC, 1943. National Film Board of Canada / Library and Archives Canada. C-024452. https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Home/Record?app=fonandcol&IdNumber=3193852&q=C-024452&ecopy=c024452

Community life was not so comfortable. The men in the camps were separated from their families and forced to do roadwork and other physical labour. Some were sent to the prisoner (war camps) in Ontario, and about 4,000 Japanese Canadians were sent to work on sugar beet farms in Alberta and Manitoba, however, Albertans did not welcome them. Alberta sugar beet farmers drove the Japanese workers into small shacks, uninsulated grain warehouses, and cages. They only paid them with a very small amount of money for their hard work. “In the wintertime, there was only a wood stove… the bathroom and everything was all outside and there was no bathtub. In the wintertime, my mother had to bring the snow in the house and melt it.” This is a statement from the victim, Lena Hayakawa. They did not receive the human dignity and respect they should get and had to survive in extreme conditions.

James H. Marsh. “Japanese Canadian Internment: Prisoners in their own Country” The Canadian Encyclopedia Editorial. (February, 2012). https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/japanese-internment-banished-and-beyond-tears-feature