1914-1945: Introduction / War Years / Interwar Years / World War II / Changing Attitudes

World War II

The government justified the internment program as a security measure, but most scholars agree that the minimal subversive threat, if one existed at all, did not require the removal of such a large population-including orphans and the blind-and the dispossession of their property. Popular and long-standing prejudice against Asian populations, particularly in British Columbia, undoubtedly prompted the policy. The same prejudice seems to have encouraged the formulation of the government's "repatriation" scheme in 1944. Having given internees financial incentives to sign repatriation requests, the government later used such documents to prove their disloyalty and disaffection towards the state. The government attempted to use such proof to take the controversial step of deporting them, even the Canadian-born. Mounting public reaction against the government's plan to deport its own citizenry eventually led the government to adopt a voluntary repatriation

program. About 4,000 Japanese Canadians-over half of them Canadian born-returned to Japan.

For many Japanese Canadians, one third of whom had actually arrived in Canada before 1923, the effects of their wartime treatment were devastating. Their property had been taken away and held in trust by the Custodian of Enemy Alien Property, but, in fact, the Custodian had often sold their property to cover the costs of their lodging within the internment camps. In 1947, the Custodian reported that $11.5 million worth of property had been auctioned by the government and sold for about half its value. In 1988, the Canadian government gave "redress" to the interned by making a token individual cash settlement to 14,000 internees still living. The damage to their families and to their sense of citizenship in their new chosen homeland could never be redressed.

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Changing Attitudes