Conclusion

Born and raised in Canada, I had been unaware of the internment of Japanese Canadians, at least through the Catholic school system. Internment, like residential schools before them, had been an exercise of fear and racism designed to assimilate people into the dominant white culture. Both of these 20th-century systems are too new for Canadians to ignore. I have curated these artefacts to show the unfair treatment Japanese Canadians experienced and to give a glimpse into the uncertainty they faced in having to leave behind their homes, communities, jobs, and families. 

Many photographic artefacts lacked context —images of the family on the platform and the road crew narrow in on faces without emotion. Whether to justify to other Canadians that their compatriots of Japanese origin were physically unharmed or because the subjects chose to remain stoic, as viewers, we need to piece together the story to understand how it affected internees. The confusion of being treated as an enemy despite living peaceably with other Canadians created a wound left raw for decades. Some would have left camps only to find hostility from their neighbours or to find no home at all. As we heard in the CBC interview, businesses were lost, and those who were interned could not regain what they had lost. Freedom for Canadians during the war meant a lifetime of hardship for too many of their Japanese Canadian neighbours. The government never did find evidence of collusion with Japan. 

While surviving internees received reparations, the money could not make up for the inhumanity these innocent Canadians experienced. This exhibit serves as a reminder that racism grows from fear and that we remain vulnerable to turning on each other.