Racism around the globe is getting a lot of attention these days.
Much of it relates to “Islamaphobia” and U.S. political actions that affect immigrants.
But few Canadians consider the racism that was directly aimed at Japanese Canadians nearly 80 years ago that can serve as a warning today.
George Takashima, a retired educator, hospital chaplain and pastor, was a child when the Canadian government in February 1942 forced Japanese people to move away from the British Columbia coast to internment camps further inland.
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It was a direct response to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour during the Second World War but more than half the approximately 23,000 Japanese living in Canada at that time were born here.
Nevertheless, while these Japanese Canadians were interned in camps or forced to live elsewhere in the country, their homes, farms, fishing boats and businesses were sold.
It is a chapter in Canadian history that is inadequately told, said Takashima.
“In this day and age, with Trumpism on the rise, we need to be aware of what can happen not only in the United States but here in Canada, and so we need to make sure that this kind of thing does not repeat itself again.”
In recent years, Takashima has conducted bus tours of internment camp ghost towns in B.C.’s West Kootenays and is sharing stories about the Japanese Canadian wartime and post-war experience.
Not all Japanese Canadians welcome his activities, he said, during an address at the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs.
“Some of the Japanese would say, ‘what’s the purpose of telling your story?’ And the purpose is it’s a history that people need to know. It’s a history that we need to learn from,” Takashima said.
“It’s only in recent years that there have been units of studies developed by groups of teachers across the land in high school, but it’s never been part of the curriculum and this is one of the aims that we wanted to pursue, was to get this story told through the curriculum.”
That story would include the 1942 edict from government, telling Japanese Canadians to take only what they could carry and report for transport to places unknown. Some of those places proved to be hastily established camps near New Denver, Greenwood, Kaslo and the Slocan Valley of B.C.
Takashima said the larger shacks erected in New Denver were about four by eight metres and were shared by two families. In most cases, those two families had never met each other until forced to share a building.
Built of green lumber and initially without running water or electricity, the shacks soon developed cracks, subjecting inhabitants to weather and forcing them to take what steps they could to block the drafts and stay warm.
About 12,000 people went to the camps, and others were sent east of the Rockies into southern Alberta and Manitoba, where many worked in sugar beet fields.
Those who resisted internment were sent to prisoner of war camps in Ontario. History shows racism against Japanese Canadians existed long before the war and extended long afterward.
Caucasians in British Columbia viewed the Japanese as “undesirables” and prevented them from voting and having meaningful citizenship, Takashima said.
Canada was also at war with Germany and Italy during the Second World War, but nothing happened to those citizens at the time.
“Those Germans and Italians living in Canada, and their offspring, were never rounded up. They never lost their property,” said Takashima.
“Why the Japanese? That tells me that it was a kind of racism that really existed more in B.C. and that the federal government was only trying to appease the B.C. government and the politicians there.”
Those who came to southern Alberta also faced racism, as recounted in The Homefront in Alberta, a history of the province during the war years.
The government opposed the placement of Japanese Canadians in the province and demanded they be removed at the end of the war. Those who did come were promised decent housing and standards of living but many ended up living in granaries and chicken coops and restrictions were placed on where they could work, live and move.
History shows the internment addressed no threat to national security. As the Canadian Encyclopedia recounts: “The military threat cited to justify the evacuation of the Japanese never existed outside the overheated imaginations of some British Columbians. Not a single Japanese Canadian was charged with any wrongdoing.”
Takashima said the internment had a profound affect on Japanese Canadian culture and attitudes, including his own.
It fostered a push toward integration and a subversion of Japanese culture. Parents put huge emphasis on education for their children and urged them to excel in all things as a protection against future prejudice.
“It didn’t take long for the young people to get into the mainstream society,” said Takashima.
“They also remembered what their parents had said even before the war ended, forget about your ‘Japaneseness.’, forget about Japanese culture, forget about Japanese language. Forget about anything that is Japanese. You’ve got to … assimilate into the mainstream society.’
“Many of us, including me, did that.
“A bunch of us were known as bananas … Yellow on the outside but white on the inside because we thought like the mainstream society. We integrated very well.”
Now, about 85 percent of Japanese immigrants to Canada from before the war have intermarried, and Takashima speculated that in 25 years, there won’t be any “pure blood” Japanese Canadians.
Some older citizens remain bitter about the internment and treatment at the hands of the government.
“They will not let that bitterness go,” he said, and even now, many won’t discuss what happened to them or their relatives.
In 1988, the Canadian government officially apologized for the wrongs it committed against Japanese Canadians during the war.
“It did provide some closure,” Takashima said. “It meant something to a goodly number of the older Japanese Canadians, those who had lived during the internment era and before that.”
