1991 Afterword: The Struggle for Redress

by Roger Daniels

I never met Ken Adachi, but I understand and appreciate his work because we addressed similar problems. It is a privilege to be able to contribute to the reissue of his most important book. It would be nice to be able to say that I am writing as he would have written were he alive, but that is nonsense. He wrote as an insider, I write as an outsider; he was a Canadian, I am an American. But we are of the same generation, both of us were journalists who turned to history, both of us wrote about the fate of the Nikkei in the New World, and both of us concerned ourselves about the larger aspects of the question and asked, in different ways, whether “it” could happen again. What follows, then, is not what he would have written, but is, I believe, consistent with the concerns manifested in his writing. I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Mary Adachi, who sent me materials that her husband had collected and graciously gathered and sent on others that I asked for.

In the half-century since their west coast communities were destroyed by a frightened and vindictive government, the Japanese Canadians have been twice transformed. First came a physical transformation. In the World War II years and after they were deprived of much of their real property and sent into internal exile, stranded in isolated housing centres, placed into sub-standard living arrangements on prairie farms and encountering marginal jobs and housing in eastern cities. Although three-quarters of them were Canadian citizens they were treated as enemy aliens. Their relatively long exile – Japanese Americans could return to their west coast homes in January, 1945; Japanese Canadians were barred from coastal B.C. until April, 1949 – forced many to sink new roots in Eastern Canada. Ontario rather than B.C., Toronto rather than Vancouver, became the focus of Japanese Canadian residence.¹

Second, and more slowly, a transformation of their image evolved, a transformation that changed them from “yellow enemies” to a “model minority.” The second transformation is far from complete: many Canadians still view their Japanese fellow citizens as not quite Canadian, although better than the other minorities whose increased presence in Canada has become more and more troubling to them. The Japanese-Canadian image has benefited from a number of factors:

1. The more liberal immigration policies that brought large numbers of Third World immigrants to Canada. Since World War II some 15,000 Japanese have immigrated to Canada, about 300 a year. Perhaps 10% of these were actually Canadian citizens expatriated to Japan after the war and allowed to return as immigrants. Perhaps 3,000 of the Shin-Issei – that is, “new” Issei or post-war immigrants – did not remain in Canada.
2. The official policy of multiculturalism, which, however inadequately applied, nevertheless set a national standard of tolerance and respect for ethnic differences, a far cry from the narrow Anglo-conformity that had been traditional.
3. A growing awareness on the part of educated Canadians of how badly their government had treated Japanese Canadians.²
4. The increasingly middle-class and “non-threatening” nature of Japanese Canadians. The wider dispersal of the community made it seem less of a “threat.”

A contemporary snapshot, rather than a portrait, of today’s Japanese Canadians follows. The table below shows the geographical rearrangement of the Japanese community.

Source: Audrey Kobayashi, A Demographic Profile of Japanese Canadians and Social Implications for the Future (Ottawa: Department of the Secretary of State, September, 1989), p. 16. This valuable monograph is the source for much of the ensuing data. Census figures are rounded to the nearest five.

Other demographic changes have been almost equally polar. The 1941 population was primarily rural and small town. In 1981 four out of five (80.4%) Japanese Canadians lived in cities of 500,000 or more and only 2% lived on farms. If one counts those of multiple ethnicity – that is, children of one Japanese and one non-Japanese parent – Japanese Canadians are a young population with a median age of 28 years, as opposed to 31 years for all Canadians. But if one counts only persons of single ethnicity, the median age of Japanese Canadians is 40. This difference reflects the increasing amount of exogamous marriage. Of all married Canadian-born Japanese under 37 years of age in 1986, 43.3% of all females and 35.9% of all males were married to non-Japanese. One recent study showed Sansei – third-generation Japanese Canadians – marrying non-Japanese three times out of four.

The latest education, employment and income data indicate clearly the increasingly middle-class status of most Japanese Canadians. Thirty-eight per cent of those 35 to 44 years of age have attended college, 45% of those 25 to 34 years of age have done so, and the next cohort gives every indication of exceeding these percentages. The comparable figure for all Canadians between 15 and 45 is about 20%. Nearly one employed Japanese Canadian in five was in a blue-collar job, a little over a third were in managerial, professional and administrative positions, and just over two-fifths were in the clerical, service and sales sectors. Income data for 1985 show that the average Japanese-Canadian household had an annual income of $50,591 in 1985, 28% higher than the average for all Canadian households.

But mere data cannot describe either the trauma or the struggle that was necessary before these oppressed people – evicted from their homes, deprived of much of their real property, and subjected to the kinds of management and scrutiny that one associates with a police state – could achieve their current place in Canadian society. In political terms that rehabilitation process has been centred on the struggle for redress. Just when that struggle began is difficult to say, but by 1976-77, when Japanese Canadians were celebrating the centennial of the putative first Japanese in Canada, the concept of both a formal apology and some kind of monetary payment was being talked about by community activists. The same was true in the United States, and, just as mutual fear and prejudice in the two nations had reinforced one another in 1941-42, guilty consciences and a heightened sense of individual rights in both countries led, eventually, to meaningful redress.

By the summer of 1982 the major Japanese-Canadian organization, the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC), was talking publicly about redress, noting that there had never been a formal apology from Parliament. Its leaders had attended some of the hearings held in the United States by the Commission on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) and Gordon Kadota, NAJC president, told the Globe and Mail that the $25,000 per capita payment that its American counterpart, the Japanese American Citizens League, was asking for was “as good a figure as any … a starting point.”³ The 1983 report of the American commission, which condemned the wartime actions, and its recommendations, which called for both a congressional apology and payment of $20,000 to each survivor of incarceration, were a further spur, if any were needed, to action by Japanese Canadians. During 1983, discussions and meetings about whether there should be a campaign for redress and, if so, what form it should take, occurred in Japanese-Canadian communities all across Canada.

In January, 1984, the NAJC officially resolved to seek an official apology, compensation, and a review of the War Measures Act, so that “it” could not easily happen again. In March of that year the official government report on visible minorities, Equality Now, formally recommended that:

The Parliament of Canada should officially acknowledge the mistreatment accorded to the Japanese in Canada during and after World War II and the Government of Canada should undertake negotiations to redress these wrongs.

and that:

Justice Canada should review the War Measures Act with a view to proposing the safeguards necessary to prevent a recurrence of the kind of mistreatment suffered by the Japanese in Canada during and after World War II.⁴

When the matter was discussed in Parliament, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau threw cold water on the notion of compensation and argued that it was “more important to be just in our time.” He noted that he had “personally expressed” to Japanese Canadians the regret he felt about the “terrible acts which happened to them” but stated that he was:

not inclined to envisage questions of compensation for acts which have perhaps discoloured our history…. I am not quite sure where we could stop the compensating. I know that we would have to go back a great length of time in history … perhaps beginning with the deportations of the Acadians and going on to the treatment of the Chinese in the late nineteenth century. I do not believe in attempting to rewrite history in this way.⁵

The following month, Brian Mulroney, then leader of the opposition Conservative Party, stated that “if there was a Conservative government I can assure you that we would be compensating Japanese Canadians.”⁶ Two months later, prior to a general election in which he and his party would take power, Mulroney narrowed his commitment somewhat, writing the NAJC that:

As citizens of a nation whose democratic tradition has been built upon the belief in the freedom of the individual and respect for human rights, we have a moral obligation to our compatriots of Japanese origin to make some form of amends for their mistreatment.⁷

Once in power, however, the Conservative support for redress was weak indeed. The Trudeau government had spoken of providing a $5 million fund to promote racial equality. Successive Tory ministers for multiculturalism improved slightly on that “offer” but did not come close to satisfying the demands of most Japanese Canadians. The first, Jack Murta, offered an apology and a $10 million foundation, only $6 million of which was to come from public funds.

As part of its campaign for justice, the NAJC commissioned a chartered accounting firm, Price Waterhouse, to provide an authoritative estimate of the losses suffered by Japanese Canadians after December, 1941. After a year-long study the firm concluded in 1986 that “the Japanese Canadian community suffered a total economic loss after 1941 of not less than $443 million [1986 dollars].” The accountants acknowledged that there were significant areas of economic loss that simply could not be quantified, e.g., losses through disruption of education. The quantifiable losses are shown in the table below.

Source: Economic Losses of Japanese Canadians after 1941 (Winnipeg, 1986). Reproduced courtesy of the National Association of Japanese Canadians.

Although many in the Japanese-Canadian community felt that the accountants’ figures were too low, government officials felt that they were far too high – or even irrelevant. Mulroney’s second minister for multiculturalism, Otto Jelinek, declared: “I said before that report came out and I say it now. It really will have little effect on what the outcome is going to be …. [The settlement] is not going to be anywhere close to $443 million.”⁸ Jelinek made no significant increase to the government’s offer.

The third Tory minister, David Crombie, doubled the existing offer. He proposed underwriting a foundation to study and promote good race relations to the tune of $12 million. He found the NAJC claim for a $25,000 payment to each surviving victim “beyond question,” and insisted that it was impossible for him “to make any recommendation to the government anywhere near” such a figure. One of his aides told the press that “if we were 25 per cent apart, we could work something out, but they want $400 million.” The fourth Tory minister for Multiculturalism, Gerry Weiner, who took office in June, 1988, gave no evidence of holding significantly different views from his predecessors. But then, quite suddenly and without warning, a settlement was reached in which the government came close to meeting the NAJC’s demands: each survivor was to get $21,000.

What caused the sudden change? We will not know for sure until the internal papers of the Mulroney government become available but two factors seem paramount: the achievement of redress in the United States and an impending general election. In the United States the Reagan administration had steadily opposed compensation, although it was willing to make an apology. Its point man on the issue was Daniel Lundgren, a California congressman who had served on the CWRIC. Lundgren argued, as early as 1983, that:

it is inappropriate that present day taxpayers should be held accountable for actions that occurred 40 years ago. Should we pay monetary redress for the abhorrent practice of slavery or the inhumane treatment of Indians 100 years ago?⁹

Although there were clear majorities in favour of redress in both houses of the American Congress, a redress bill was not passed until five years had gone by. Despite the fact that there were enough negative votes to sustain a veto, passage was followed by a White House surrender. It was an election year in the United States, too. Ronald Reagan signed the bill on August 10 and just forty-three days later the reversal by the Mulroney government was announced to Parliament. It had been negotiated between Weiner and Art Miki, president of the NAJC. Leaders of both the Liberal and New Democratic parties immediately announced their support of the government’s position.

The settlements were strikingly similar. Each provided for a formal apology and similar amounts of direct cash payments to individuals: $20,000 in the U.S., $21,000 in Canada, although, given the 1988 exchange rate, the seemingly larger Canadian payment was actually smaller. In each nation there were also provisions for funding a public body to investigate, report on and improve race relations. The Canadian provisions called for $12 million to promote the educational, social and cultural well-being of the Japanese-Canadian community, to be administered by the NAJC, and $24 million to create a Canadian Race Relations Foundation. Other aspects of the Canadian agreement called for granting citizenship to persons of Japanese ancestry who had been expelled from Canada or had their citizenship revoked and for clearing the names of persons of Japanese ancestry who had been convicted under the War Measures Act and other legislation.

In the United States, where authorization and appropriation are separate processes, no redress cheques were sent out until late 1990 and it was expected that payments would drag out for at least three more years, with some survivors, of course, dying uncompensated. In Canada, the agreement called for payment “as expeditiously as possible,” and the government moved with considerable speed. By the end of 1990 the government’s Japanese Canadian Redress Secretariat reported that 18,233 applications had been received – 1,813 of them from outside Canada – and that 17,154 applications had been completed at a cost of some $360 million.¹⁰ Each redress recipient received a cheque, tax free, for $21,000, a brief letter from the minister, and an “Acknowledgement” over the Prime Minister’s signature, whose English text read:

As a people Canadians commit themselves to the creation of a society that ensures equality and justice for all, regardless of race or ethnic origin.

During and after World War II, Canadians of Japanese ancestry, the majority of whom were citizens, suffered unprecedented actions taken by the Government of Canada against their community.

Despite perceived military necessities at the time, the forced removal and internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II and their deportation and expulsion following the war, was unjust. In retrospect, government policies of disenfranchisement, detention, confiscation and sale of private and community property, expulsion, deportation and restriction of movement, which continued after the war, were influenced by discriminatory attitudes. Japanese Canadians who were interned had their property liquidated and the proceeds of sale were used to pay for their own internment.

The acknowledgement of these injustices serves notice to all Canadians that the excesses of the past are condemned and that the principles of justice and equality in Canada are reaffirmed.

Therefore, the Government of Canada, on behalf of all Canadians, does hereby:

1. acknowledge that the treatment of Japanese during and after World War II was unjust and violated principles of human rights as they are understood today;
2. pledge to ensure, to the full extent that its powers allow, that such events will never happen again; and
3. recognize, with great respect, the fortitude and determination of Japanese Canadians who, despite great stress and hardship, retain their commitment and loyalty to Canada and contribute so richly to the development of the Canadian nation.

It was, of course, a famous victory. Ken Adachi, one of its architects both as a scholar and as an activist, indicated the bittersweet feelings that many other Japanese Canadians must have felt in an essay written for the Toronto Star just after the government’s announcement in 1988:

Of course I feel better today, as a Canadian, than I did last week. But it doesn’t assuage my anger. No, not quite. I cannot summon up tears. Our individual and collective experience lies too deep for a facile display of emotions and easy rhetoric.¹¹

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Notes

1. Although there will be no attempt to “compare the scars,” certain differences between the treatment meted out by the Canadian and American governments should be noted. A much larger percentage of Japanese Canadians than Japanese Americans were sent to Japan in the immediate post-war years under allegedly voluntary programs. On the other hand, the Canadian government did not kill any of its incarcerated Japanese; the American government did. B.C. regained a slight numerical superiority in Japanese population over Ontario in 1986. ↩
2. The first edition of this book was an important contributor to that awareness. Contributions since 1976 that treat the World War II experience include: Barry Broadfoot, Years of Sorrow, Years of Shame (Toronto, 1977); Japanese Canadian Centennial Project, A Dream of Riches (1978); Roy Ito, Japanese Canadians (1978); K. Victor Ujimoto and Gordon Hirabayashi, Visible Minorities and Multiculturalism: Asians in Canada (1980); Ann Gomer Sunahara, The Politics of Racism (1981); Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps, North America: Japanese in the United States and Canada during World War II (1981); W. Peter Ward, The Japanese in Canada (1982); Toyo Takata, Nikkei Legacy: The Story of Japanese Canadians from Settlement to Today (1983); Muriel Kitagawa, This Is My Own: Letters to Wes and Other Writings on Japanese Canadians, 1941-1948 (1985); and Patricia E. Roy, J.L. Granatstein, Masako Iino and Hiroko Takamura, Mutual Hostages: Canadians and Japanese during the Second World War (1990). Two scholarly works that explore and analyse the pre-war background are W. Peter Ward, White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy Toward Orientals in British Columbia (1978), and Patricia E. Roy, A White Man’s Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1858-1914 (1989). Almost all Canadian scholars now deplore and condemn what was done to Japanese Canadians in 1941-42. An unfortunate exception is J.L. Granatstein: see his “realist critique” in Norman Hillmer, Bohdan Kordan and Lubomyr Luciuk, eds., On Guard for Thee: War, Ethnicity and the Canadian State, 1939-1945 (1988). An effective rebuttal was made by Howard Palmer in the same volume but apparently without effect, as Granatstein makes similar arguments in Mutual Hostages, cited above. And last, but not at all least, is Joy Kogawa’s haunting novel, Obasan (1981). ↩
3. Kadota quoted from Globe and Mail, July 30, 1982. This clipping came from a collection furnished me by Mary Adachi. For the eventual recommendation of the American commission, see CWRIC, Personal Justice Denied (Washington, 1982); the best account of its work – with some material about Canada – is in Roger Daniels, Sandra C. Taylor and Harry H.L. Kitano, eds., Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress, 2nd ed. (Seattle, 1991). ↩
4. Canada, House of Commons, Equality Now! Participation of Visible Minorities in Canadian Society (Ottawa, March 8, 1984), p. 62. ↩
5. Canada, House of Commons Debates (April 2, 1984), p. 2623. ↩
6. Toronto Globe and Mail, May 16, 1984. ↩
7. Letter, July 3, 1984, as cited in The NAJC Newsletter, #1 (March, 1985), p. 4. ↩
8. As quoted by Arch Mackenzie, “Compensation stalemate ends just as federal election looms,” Toronto Star, September 23, 1988. ↩
9. “Testimony of Congressman Daniel E. Lundgren, 42nd District, California, before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure, July 27, 1983,” 6 pp., mimeographed. ↩
10. Initial “guesstimates” had assumed that only some 12,000 were still alive. Government of Canada, News release, “Historic agreement reached on Japanese Canadian Redress,” September 22, 1988. Information on payments provided by Wilma Gray, the acting unit head. ↩
11. Ken Adachi, “Internment scars run deep,” Toronto Star, September 24, 1988. ↩

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