Chapter Ten: Scapegoats and Victims

Our boats were to be examined, searched
For hidden guns, for maps, for treachery ….
I heard, but could not understand. Obeyed,
But as a blind man.
– Dorothy Livesay, Call My People Home

The Japanese were inclined to follow lines of least resistance since their cultural norms emphasized duty and obligation as well as the values of conformity and obedience. The status of immigrant Issei was similar to the roles and positions they had left in Meiji Japan, so that the status their superiors held in Japan was now transferred to the white officialdom, and subsequent patterns of deference or humility were matters of course. Commitment to abstract or absolute ideals was lacking, a factor which explains why many of them blindly followed government officials with little criticism. The lack of aggressive behaviour and high dependency was part of the enryo (restraint) or gaman (forbearance) syndrome which explains much of Japanese behaviour. Not to conform was really unthinkable, for it meant cutting oneself off from the emotional security of identification. Hito ni meiwaku wo kakete wa ikenai (“one must not make a nuisance of oneself to other people”) was often quoted as a cardinal principle of morality.¹ Disruptive behaviour was censured, discipline and obedience were mandatory so that self-control, resignation and gratitude were highly desirable. Issei felt that suffering and hard work were necessary ingredients of character-building. Thus the Japanese individual had certain personality traits: fear of power, insecurity, obedience, cliquishness and inability to make forceful, independent decisions.

Few Issei or Nisei leaders exhibited charismatic, dynamic or “heroic” qualities. The model for leadership in the structured, interdependent Japanese community was the man who could co-operate with various organizations, who possessed knowledge of how and when to act and yet avoided the spotlight.² Special gifts of individual talent were secondary to conciliatory abilities. Japanese groups always followed moderate, conservative policies; radical organizations, either of left or right, did not flourish. The Japanese personality, in short, was dependent as opposed to independent; group co-operative rather than self-reliant; conformist rather than innovative. As a consequence, not one charismatic leader, either Nisei or Issei, emerged out of the evacuation crisis, although there were industrious, dependable people, capable of great sacrifice. The Japanese, for the most part, worked out of committees and cliques that proliferated. Rebellion, such as there was, was rarely individual but took the form of group action, more often than not organized against some other Japanese group or individuals.

Many Japanese did not expect any sort of a “break” in Canada, so that the announcement of an evacuation, after the initial shock, was not surprising. Others applied the rationalization of shikata-ga-nai (“it can’t be helped”) in the belief that the fate of a man was tied to forces beyond his control. Nisei tended to espouse a common point of view: they wished to prove that they were “Canadian” by co-operating fully with the authorities. Indeed, the demand that Japanese should show their “loyalty” to Canada by accepting evacuation and by co-operating with the authorities, and the conclusion that non-acceptance demonstrated “disloyalty,” was perhaps the crudest device utilized not only by the proponents of evacuation but by Mackenzie King and his Cabinet. This coercive argument placed a special and unnecessary burden on the evacuees and turned aside most militant protests.

Nisei had, on the whole, been denied the acceptance necessary for well-being and full personality development by both their Issei parents and white society. Society was again rejecting them, and many reacted with passive withdrawal and intense anger which was masochistically concealed and passively expressed. Then, too, a naive denial of reality – “It can’t happen here; it can’t happen to me” – was not uncommon in times of acute stress. Jews at Treblinka or Buchenwald felt this way; so, too, did the Japanese feel that the notice to evacuate, the trains carrying them to camps and life itself in the camps were not “real,” was not, in fact, “happening.”

Finally, there were no models of resistance or of rebellion which they could follow. White friends, the church and sympathetic groups all inevitably counselled co-operation. Thus with no one to turn to, with their community and family structure and institutions disintegrating; with no political and economic power; with cultural norms and values emphasizing conformity and non-aggressive behaviour; with a lack of feasible alternatives, and facing the might and power of the government and its agencies, the Japanese were easy victims.

The February 26, 1942, announcement of total evacuation came as a tremendous shock to the resident Japanese who, despite the ominous portents, had not quite believed that such a drastic policy would be implemented. After Pearl Harbor and during the eleven weeks preceding the announcement, the war crisis had permeated almost every aspect of the daily lives of the 21,000 Japanese on the west coast. There was anxiety, fear, confusion. But although it was widely recognized, from the outset, that war with Japan would mean serious restrictions on the freedom of Japanese nationals, most Nisei persisted in the naive belief throughout December, January and February that their Canadian citizenship would protect them from similar treatment. When it became obvious that the government was making no distinction, for all practical purposes, between alien Japanese and Canadian citizens of Japanese descent, and that everyone would “forthwith” be cleared from their homes, the Japanese community was hit as it had never been hit in its history because, in effect, every person of Japanese origin had been branded as untrustworthy, if not disloyal and traitorous.

There obviously was no one characteristic response to the war crisis. Some of the Issei, for example, cherished a sentimental and nostalgic attachment to the Japan of their youth and many were emotionally inclined to hope for a Japanese victory or at least a stalemate. There were, indeed, some among them who thought that Japan’s entry into the war heralded the time when the “white man would be crushed.” The Issei could scarcely be expected to have a deep-rooted loyalty to a country which had consistently made them unwelcome. Yet there were few of them who could be proven, on the basis of any demonstrated evidence, to be “dangerous” or “subversive” in any meaningful sense of the term or who could be classed as potential leaders of fifth column activity. Among the Nisei there were to be many individuals whose faith in democracy was severely shaken and whose loyalties were, at least temporarily, uncertain. And there were many, as in practically all other racial groups, to whom the concept of national loyalty was almost meaningless – people who seldom thought at all deeply about the larger issues involved in the war and who approached practically all problems and decisions strictly from the standpoint of personal or family welfare and responsibilities. Some of the more thoughtful and articulate Nisei, like the leaders of the JCCL and the editorial staff of The New Canadian, immediately chose to regard the war crisis as an “acid test” of Canadian democracy, of their loyalty to Canada and of their future status in the country.³

Community leaders were emphatic that all should show calmness and self-control, to “co-operate to the fullest measure with any established authority and to uphold the law even more circumspectly than we have in the past.”⁴ People were cautioned specifically to avoid congregating on street corners or in public places, using the Japanese language, and verbal or physical retaliation in response to insults. Although this was difficult advice to accept, the Japanese co-operated with every line of action that the federal government took in the early months of the war with Japan.

Although the suppression of the three Japanese-language newspapers immediately truncated the major source of news and the normal mode of communication among Issei, it was accepted as inevitable. The closure of the language schools was greeted with much rejoicing by the young students, though many of them ruefully found that translating the daily newspapers for their parents was a difficult task. Others who could not do so could only say: “I feel sorry for my pa. He just sits there and stares at us after supper while we pore over the Province like we never did before.”⁵

Fishermen were the hardest hit of all. The few who were out on the seas, in the wintry doldrums of the fishing season, were immediately ordered by the Canadian Navy to head for one of the nearest of 13 official fishing ports on the coast. There they were searched for weapons and maps and their boats immobilized along with others already tied to moorings. Then, their boats strung by tow ropes to a naval corvette, these fishermen and other groups gathered from the northern ports were forced to sail on a 15-day journey from Prince Rupert to New Westminster through patches of heavy weather, fog and ice floes. To the two long lines of 60 boats which left Prince Rupert were added boats collected from other ports along the coast of the mainland and Vancouver Island. Along the way, the two lines parted several times and some boats, buffeted by the heavy seas, were severely damaged.

Boats from the inner coast were already tied up in a boom at New Westminster, their carburetors removed to render them immobile, a few of them hastily taken off grids before their seams were tight. Some 980 boats were to remain idle for six weeks, swinging at anchor and, in many cases, damaged and lying waterlogged on the banks of the Fraser and awash at high tide, their engines sludged with silt. Equipment and gear were stolen despite an armed naval patrol. And most of the fishermen, though they had fully co-operated with the navy, were embittered by what they felt was “incredibly inept” handling and unskilled seamanship on the part of naval officers, especially by those in charge of the long flotilla down the coast.

Commander James McCulloch of Esquimalt, however, said that the navy was “proud” of its work in rounding up the fleet and in accounting for every boat within 48 hours of Pearl Harbor.⁶ The House of Commons was informed that the entire operation “was conducted in true Canadian navy style … without any indignities to the Japanese who were brought in.”⁷ Meanwhile, many of the boats impounded in New Westminster had to be towed to shipyards to repair damage to hulls and engines and others to be lifted from the mud by snag-pullers. The discrepancy between navy “pride” and reality was made apparent when the Cabinet later had to authorize a special fund of $80,000 for vessels damaged or sunk during impounding.

The removal of these fishermen from the industry was at once a major cause of unemployment in the community and also presented the possibility of serious damage to the production of the fisheries during the 1942 season. At no time during or after the seizure, however, were the Japanese informed of their future as fishermen or of the disposition of their vessels. Their indignation at the navy’s handling of the seizure and their frustration at seeing their prized possessions rotting at anchor were compounded when they heard that an order-in-council (P.C. 251, Jan. 13, 1942) directed that the boats be put back in operation with non-Japanese crews; and that another order (P.C. 288, issued on the same day) authorized a committee to dispose of “some 1,100 boats and their equipment having a value of between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000.” In this case, the federal government at least acted swiftly and set out a clear-cut policy, one which was designed to put the boats back in operation before total deterioration set in and to maintain their value in the national food production. Although it was assumed by non-Japanese that fair prices were generally paid for the boats, in contrast to prices paid for other property, the liquidation was strictly enforced and the fishermen had no voice in the matter.

Stripped of their property and independence, occupationally maladjusted and their citizenship rights infringed, the fishermen could only feel bitterly resentful of their treatment, especially since they suffered not only loss of income, but their loss from damage or theft was disallowed by the government and prices received for their property was less than the appraised value. And since the decision to dispossess them was made some seven weeks before mass evacuation was announced, it seemed more than apparent to them that powerful economic interests had manipulated their removal, as in no other industry had there been quite such a long and bitter hostility against the Japanese.

Thus the arbitrary disposal of property quickly became an outstanding issue. In the matter of the fishing boats, the Japanese learned that Canadians were willing to sacrifice, at least temporarily, the important business of maintaining production just for the sake of removing them from the industry, and to allow the war crisis to be exploited by vested interests – all in the cause of “national security.” But did “national security” entail the enforced selling of vessels and equipment, the acquisition for which they had lived frugally and worked strenuously all their lives? Home owners, businessmen and farmers were to learn the same lesson as the fishermen when in 1943 the Custodian of Alien Property, who had been entrusted with their property became, in effect, a broker in the enforced liquidation of their assets.

Combined with this concern over property was an anxiety over the lack of any assurance that arrangements would be made for the welfare of their families. When total evacuation was announced, it was quite clear that the removal would continue to involve the separation of families, that women and children would be separated from heads of families and male adults and left to fend for themselves. In contrast, the U.S. Wartime Civil Control Administration, which was formed on March 14, 1942, to facilitate the evacuation of the American Japanese, took as one of its principles that

evacuation would not split family units or communities where this could be avoided …. The basic principle of maintaining communities was adopted to maintain a natural community and economic balance and to preserve desirable institutions by moving each family with its relatives and friends.⁸

By the time that resistance to property liquidation was organized, the evacuation was a fait accompli. Yet the government policy of splitting up families could still be resisted. Opposition to this policy was beginning to transform some members of a traditionally law-abiding, co-operative minority into factions which protested and rebelled against the government agencies which were pressing to dispossess, evacuate and incarcerate them. Protests were also directed against persons of their own racial group who seemed to be collaborating with the policy-makers.

The Japanese were living in what they termed a state of “suspended animation.”⁹ Unemployment had increased as firings continued and businesses ground to a standstill. Japanese welfare groups were finding their resources heavily taxed by growing numbers, especially of fishermen, seeking assistance and relief. The widely reported activities and speeches of anti-Japanese pressure groups and politicians were taken as convincing evidence by the Japanese that unrest was being stirred up against them more by racial prejudice than by “national security.” Community leadership was in the process of disintegration: in time of emergency, the Canadian Japanese Association, the largest and most prestigious of the Issei groups, was contracting its activities by reducing its staff to a bare minimum.

Tension was at a high pitch. The dominant moods of uncertainty and apprehension rivalled those of the queasy times of the 1907 riot. Even the University of British Columbia did not seem immune from racist propaganda. Early in January, 1942, the university dismissed 60 Nisei involved in its military training programme in anticipation of public criticism and “untoward incidents.” President L.S. Klinck was quoted as saying that the Nisei were ordered to hand in their uniforms “for their own protection as well as ours …. Feeling runs high down in the business sections and Japanese in uniform would be an unfortunate sight.”¹⁰ The university’s action set up a pattern of rejection in which decisions of Canadian universities reflected, rather than led, the prejudices of communities in which they functioned. Shortly after Klinck’s statement, the Dean of Women called a meeting of Nisei girls and explained that the university would not assist them to remain in Vancouver and continue their education.

The Japanese were well aware of the antipathy that existed in communities and provinces outside British Columbia, a factor that partly prevented many from voluntarily removing themselves from the coast. Until March, 1942, only 579 had left the coast, mainly going to the interior of the province. When the policy of “partial” evacuation of Japanese nationals was announced, officials in other provinces howled in protest. Said Mayor MacEachern of Saskatoon: “The Japanese residents should be put into concentration camps …. It would be foolish to move them into prairie cities. We have no room.”¹¹ Such statements came from virtually every point to which the Japanese could have migrated, the protests especially vehement in the interior towns of the province where vigilantes were reported ready to ward off possible arrivals.

British Columbia’s propagandists had done their work only too well, for other provinces wanted no part of the Japanese. If they were of the kind so vividly described for decades, then the Japanese would commit acts of sabotage on installations located in their areas, if not reduce the standard of living as they were purported to be so adept in doing. When a group of 90 Japanese nationals, who were veterans of British Columbian forests, readied themselves to go “voluntarily” to lumber camps and sawmills in the northern Ontario town of Chapleau, their departure was delayed and finally cancelled because of protests from such groups as the Port Arthur Trades and Labour Council. A CBC newscast quoted Gordon Fraser, Conservative MP for Peterborough West, as telling the Commons that Ontario wanted no Japanese evacuees and that they should be placed in work camps “under close supervision.” It was disclosed in Ottawa that the Ontario arrangements had collapsed because of strong protests from Premier Mitchell Hepburn, who was already worrying about the possibility of Nazi and fascist sympathizers sweeping in from the U.S. and “laying waste our land.”¹²

Most Japanese had taken the decision of “partial” evacuation in a reasonable spirit, pending further details of the orders, especially those having to do with the welfare of families. And most Japanese accepted the fact that certain restrictions and interferences with civil rights had to be assumed “as willingly and cheerfully as possible.” The fact that the policy of “partial” evacuation had drawn a distinction between aliens and citizens, thus putting a premium upon citizenship “as something distinctly worth having” was appreciated. The JCCL sent a telegram to Mackenzie King, stating that the government had dealt “fairly and impartially” with the difficult question and declaring that it was prepared to assist in carrying out whatever measures were deemed necessary.¹³ In the meantime, incredibly enough, the Issei took part in the second Victory Loan Drive and raised, in three weeks, $313,700 from 1,584 subscribers. It was possibly the safest investment they could have made, notwithstanding the irony: “Buy Victory Bonds to free the oppressed.”

As the first group of 100 Japanese nationals disembarked at Rainbow and Lucerne on February 24 from two CNR coaches to spend the night shivering in railway cars on sidings, and as another group was leaving Vancouver for road-building labour at Geikie, Alberta, ten miles west of Jasper, separation of families had become a fact. About two-thirds of the 1,700 men eventually involved in the evacuation of aliens were married and had an average of two to three children. They were required to assign $20 per month for the support of wives and children out of earnings of 25¢ an hour, but none of them knew what ultimately would happen to their families. Two days later, with the announcement of total evacuation, they knew well enough:

Why not come right out and tell us to quit? That would be easier to take; after all, the war is a war, and I am quite ready to realize that these measures are necessary. But why not be honest about it. This squeezing us out isn’t – isn’t British!¹⁴

said one Nisei as the news flashed across the community. Indeed, it was those Nisei who took pride in being steeped in the traditions of “British justice” and “fair play” who felt an acute sense of betrayal. The Issei, broadly speaking, were taking the view that “it can’t be helped. It’s war time. It’s probably what’s taking place in Japan.”

But the shock of the news was not completely digested until the dusk-to-dawn curfew was implemented on February 28. Its imposition had been announced two days earlier along with orders for the confiscation of cars, cameras and radios, all under an amendment to the Defence of Canada regulations. Under this order,

any police officer of the RCMP … is authorized to search without warrant the premises of any place occupied by any person of the Japanese race … and to seize any article found on such premises.¹⁵

The curfew edict was just as succinct:

Every person of the Japanese race while within the protected area … shall hereafter be at his usual place of residence each day before sunset and shall remain therein until sunrise on the following day. And no such person shall go out of his usual place of residence aforesaid upon the streets or otherwise during the hours between sunset and sunrise.¹⁶

Nisei felt that when the sun went down, it took with it “the light of freedom,” making a criminal out of anyone who ventured out of his home. On the first night in Vancouver, 12 offenders – including two milkmen out on their rounds – were caught by police and later given suspended sentences and warnings. Two days later, 66-year-old Sotaro Seki was arrested a block away from his Powell St. home and sentenced to six months in jail with hard labour. Prohibition also came back when, at the request of the Security Commission, the province’s Liquor Control Board imposed a complete ban on the sale of liquor and beer to all Japanese.

No Nisei thought that bottling up every Japanese at night would effectively stop anyone from committing sabotage if he were clearly intent on it, or that the possession of cars and radios would prejudice “national security.” The New Canadian summed up their feelings:

No reasonable individual can deny that there are grounds enough here for several thousand people, whose only crime is their race, to feel bitter and betrayed. There is ample sorry evidence to suggest that they are being harried and hounded, less for reasons of national safety and defence, than for fear, for hate, and for selfish gain. There have been all too few sincere public declarations by unbiased citizens that these drastic impositions are necessary as war-time emergency measures, rather than simply an easy and attractive means of giving vent to a smouldering racial prejudice.¹⁷

As the only extant outlet for opinion among the Japanese, The New Canadian was, indeed, exercising the freedom of the press in some of its remarkably trenchant editorials on the abuses of the day. It seemed that expression of opinion through its pages was the only freedom that was not being abrogated.

On April 21, however, the Security Commission took over control of the Nisei newspaper for a period of three months, turning it into a “medium for official announcements” which would “present … only the truth” about its programme.¹⁸

Confiscation of the various restricted articles took effect a few days after announcement of total evacuation. Owners were assured that the articles were to be handed over for safekeeping only and could be repossessed once they had settled elsewhere. Indeed, Order-in-Council P.C. 1665, March 4, provided “a protective measure only” for property as well as “control and management,” though what the latter phrase meant the Custodian never offered to explain. In any case, the Japanese had no forewarning that the unhappy experience which arose in regard to the fishing boats would be repeated. All motor vehicles, including automobiles, trucks, motorcycles and trailers, were to be impounded at Hastings Park; and radios and cameras surrendered elsewhere. Early on March 9, then, Yoshimatsu Sumi, a gardener and a naturalized citizen resident in Canada since 1906, led a procession of vehicles, the first of some 1,500 from the lower mainland, on his 1937 Harley-Davidson motorcycle to the impounding enclosure at Hastings Park. Joining the throng of RCMP officers and press and movie news cameramen were a clutch of used-car dealers. In other areas of the coast, convoys of cars, guided by provincial police, were a common sight that week.

In the early summer of 1942, while evacuation was still going on, the office of the Custodian decided to sell the motor vehicles, just as it was later decided to auction off chattels such as household goods, radios and cameras. The “car deal,” though the value involved was relatively small, was the second time that property was quickly disposed of without consent of the owners; it presaged the complete breach of faith in the later sale of farms and city businesses.

On the same day as the cars were impounded, Col. C.H. Hill of the RCMP ordered the removal of Japanese nationals to road camps in the Jasper area to be speeded up. They were to report immediately and were subject to internment for failure to comply. And as the March 14 movement of 100 people from Tofino and Clayoquot on the west coast of Vancouver Island began the exodus of some 2,500 by train and steamer from northern coastal areas and Vancouver Island, bound for the assembly centre of Hastings Park, the small, ordered world of the Japanese was swiftly crumbling.

Chaotic conditions marked the handling of evacuation orders for those early evacuees from the remote areas. In some cases, less than 24 hours were given for evacuees to leave their homes as RCMP officers knocked on doors at all hours of the day or night. People had to move with the barest of necessities and with no time at all to make arrangements for the care of property and household goods. A Hyde Creek resident was given only two hours to vacate his home; another evacuee, from Qualicum Beach, was ordered at 9 a.m. to depart on a train leaving for Vancouver at 11:30 a.m. And as the tempo of events quickened, the Japanese yielded to anxieties and fears and rumours over what the next stages in the removal would portend.

On December 7, 1941, there were 23,149 persons in Canada having common ancestry with the enemy that launched the Pearl Harbor attack.¹⁹ A small minority, they represented less than one-fifth of one percent of the total Canadian population and 2.7% of the population in the province of their heaviest concentration. A total of 22,096 lived in British Columbia, the majority residing along the coastal region west of the Cascade range, designated as a “protected area.” As some 20,881 were forcibly uprooted and evacuated from their homes by the end of October, 1942, only about 1,215 persons who lived east of the Cascades were allowed to remain relatively unscathed, as were 1,053 persons of Japanese origin scattered across Canada.

The most significant fact about the Japanese population in British Columbia was that by far the largest segment of three major groupings, 13,309, were Canadian citizens by virtue of birth and that 2,930 were immigrants born in Japan who had, in effect, cast their lot with Canada by becoming naturalized citizens. And most of the 5,564 who were Japanese nationals had resided in Canada for 25 to 40 years. Of the latter, 2,006 were women.

When war broke out between their native land and their adopted country, the majority of the immigrant Issei were passing well into middle age and, by years of hard work and frugal living, had acquired a stake in the land or in business and wanted nothing more than to live the rest of their lives in comfort and in peace. In striking contrast to their parents and elders, the Nisei were predominantly an adolescent and young adult group; and, as most of the Issei had married and settled down to family responsibilities comparatively late in life, the age gap between them and their Canadian-born children was uncommonly pronounced. Nearly half of the Nisei were below the age of 19, since the peak years of the child-bearing period for Issei had been between 1925-30. The Nisei, with few exceptions, were essentially “Canadian” in speech, dress and manner; few had been to Japan and they had been or were being educated in the public- and high-school systems of British Columbia; although most of the Nisei were bilingual, their fluency in the Japanese language was minimal. Along with their parents, the Nisei had been subjected to many forms of discrimination, but their belief in democratic principles was, by and large, firm enough.

These, then, were the people who were subject to increasingly severe restrictions from the outbreak of war until their forced mass migration and detention in government-operated camps. The only exceptions granted permits by the Minister of Justice to remain on the coast were a few institutionalized mental cases and 94 persons who were partners in mixed marriages and about 100 children who were their offspring. As the official Report of the Removal of Japanese From Protected Areas noted in the midst of its compilation of errors of fact and faulty conclusions, “the Department of Justice worked swiftly in recognition of their plight …. The fact of their racial origin was to be disregarded and they were to be recognized as Canadians in the full sense of the word.”²⁰ Intermarriage, then, was the magic elixir that converted security risks into bona fide Canadians.

Whatever had been the quality of Issei leadership in the community before the war, it was to fall apart dismally. Arguments over leadership came to a boil almost immediately, most often centering around Etsuji Morii, the so-called “gambling king” of Vancouver’s Little Tokyo, with whom the RCMP soon formed a curiously close relationship. The frontiers of the old Issei order had been rudely rolled back; a society, in which much of the outward modes of behaviour were controlled and channelled, lay in ruins. In place of the community structure emerged the new authority of the federal government and its agency, the British Columbia Security Commission. This larger authority – impersonal and limitless in power – was something to be feared, like some angry, intractable deity; the Japanese, on the whole, stilled their fears through subservience, directing the hate which accompanied those fears towards individuals and groups who were quickly transformed into convenient scapegoats.

Certainly it was not the age for acts of heroism within the domestic shores of the country. And whatever their immigrant parents had been, the Nisei was not a generation with an appetite for the heroic. If, in the rationalized tyranny of its relocation camps, the Canadian government had – under the flag of freedom – stoked the crematory fires of the gas ovens and mass slaughter, Issei and Nisei – like the Jews – would have allowed themselves to be herded to their doom. An appetite for the heroic needed to be whipped up by certain inspiring symbols of luminous self-sacrifice, altruistic if naive idealism, or even rampant egotism. In the long run, most of the Japanese proved to be as highly compliant as the Canadian public was disinterested in their fate. Indeed, the Canadian government ingenuously worked on the traditional Japanese subservience to authority in order to gain the desired co-operation. In a closed society of limited opportunity and range of choice, the Japanese were too poor to have had influential and powerful friends in white society. And given no models of resistance or rebellion – for white friends counselled absolute co-operation – and no possibilities of flight or deliverance, the Japanese did not offer much meaningful resistance to the basic concept of evacuation. The church’s counsel was to forget the misery of the present for the mirage of the eternal city, ordinary justice for an empty, promised land. What resistance the Japanese did offer was to the ways and means; such rebellion that did emerge was based on the protection of old values such as property and the family.

Confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible situation, a real rebellion might have been born, demanding order in the midst of chaos, unity in the heart of the ephemeral. Still, there were limits of endurance, a feeling that somewhere and somehow, one was right, and that there was a borderline, an insistence on a kind of right not to be oppressed beyond the limit that one could tolerate. In the pre-war years, much of the Japanese protest had been directed towards gaining what they did not have; now the aim was to defend what they did, in fact, possess. What developed was part tragedy, part comedy. There were severe tactical errors, including errors of simple charity, on the part of the government agency which seemed to lack even an intelligent, premeditated malice. It was the season, too, for obscurantist thinkers and actors on the extreme and moderate flanks.

Resistance by individuals and by one of the factions was manifested in the dance of evasion rather than the catharsis of physical violence. What conflict there was between the Japanese and the government was that of an unequal contest of wills; what emerged almost immediately after the announcement of total evacuation was an intense, internecine conflict within the community itself. It was not one that was simply a cleavage between some of the ardent advocates of co-operation with the Canadian government and the disillusioned and discontented, with the bulk of the mute residents somewhere in between. It was not simply a clash between extremists and moderates but rather something more subtle, difficult to define, for none of the factions that emerged was ever prepared to resist evacuation except by a kind of martyrdom, buried and unpublicized, in a dark corner of an Ontario prison camp. Everyone had accepted, however reluctantly, the fact that the evacuation was inevitable, and all were agreed that government policy must be modified so that families could be kept together. It was on the issue of how important this notion of family solidarity was and what steps could be taken to counteract the government’s seeming indifference that the community split up.

In the United States, the Japanese American Citizens League, an all-Nisei organization, had taken over the community leadership lost by interned Issei immediately following Pearl Harbor. It had sent pledges of allegiance to President Roosevelt and, in fact, stated that they were “gladly” co-operating with the evacuation programme “because this is one way of showing that our protestations of loyalty are sincere.”²¹ The JACL leaders soon acquired the reputation of being inu (“informers,” literally “dogs”) and were accused of betraying the parental generation. But the JACL was almost immediately recognized by government agencies as the logical “liaison group” and leadership remained largely within the Nisei group in general and the JACL in particular.

Unlike its American counterpart, the JCCL obtained no such status. Instead of selecting Canadian-born representatives, who might have been most ready to co-operate as a test of their “loyalty,” Security Commission Chairman Austin Taylor chose Morii, along with two fellow Issei, Arthur Nishiguchi and Ippei Nishio, to form a “liaison” committee which would act as an intermediary between the Japanese community and the government agency. Morii was well-known to the RCMP, for he had worked with them during the recent investigation of illegal immigration. But clearly, Morii was not a man who enjoyed the confidence of the Japanese community in terms of his integrity, objectivity or personality. In fact, he was a man profoundly feared by the Japanese to whom he was tarred by his connection with gambling clubs in Vancouver, a man who had been involved in a murder trial and a man who had made speeches, shortly before Pearl Harbor, justifying Japan’s military mission in Asia in order to solicit funds and “comforts” for Japanese soldiers.

In light of his background and reputation, it was incredible that Taylor and his two fellow commissioners, F.J. Mead and John Shirras, would select Morii except for the fact that Morii undeniably wielded considerable influence in the community. And if there was anything that the Security Commission wanted, it was a tight hold on community reaction to the evacuation. But if it had hoped to gain an easy acquiescence in this manner, it was badly in error. The Security Commission, working from what appeared to be a fund of ignorance, felt that the Japanese community was all of a piece, so well organized and homogeneous in character that any problem could be settled with dispatch. Indeed, critics of Canada’s Japanese had always claimed that they were all alike (“Once a Jap, always a Jap”) and if the Security Commission – at bottom, not less sanguinary – had thought that the Japanese would all act in a predictable manner, it was in for a rude shock.

The cleavage between Issei and Nisei, already on the boil, was bound to have its repercussions. The fact that the Liaison Committee was composed entirely of ultra-conservative, Japan-born men was galling to Nisei who had been agitating for a more equitable role as Canadians in a “democratic” society. But further complicating the matter were the aspirations and resentments of a sizeable number of naturalized citizens who felt that they also had certain legal rights. From the Nisei and these naturalized citizens, then, arose the main opposition to the Liaison Committee, which they felt was totally unrepresentative, patronizing and dictatorial.

But any group the Security Commission might have selected for liaison purposes would have become the object of enormous hostility and the object of vilification. It would soon have been stigmatized as inu, as collaborationist, as “traitors” to the entire group. In periods of crisis or stress, both Nisei and Issei have shown that they seldom agree among themselves; vilification and scandal-mongering have often been symptoms of this malaise.

By the first week in March, more Japanese nationals were leaving for road camps under the threat of immediate internment. And after the Security Commission was organized on March 4, it was made quite clear that these nationals would be joined in the road camps by Canadian-born and naturalized males aged 18 to 45. On March 14, the Security Commission announced that the evacuation of some 2,500 people from coastal villages and towns and isolated Vancouver Island areas would begin that very day and would be completed within two weeks under a complex transportation scheme utilizing rail and steamer facilities. These early evacuees, mainly fishermen and their families, lived in “strategic” areas as far north as Stewart, adjacent to the Alaska border, and were scattered along inlets, bays and river mouths. They were all to be assembled in temporary quarters in Hastings Park to await further orders. The first group, from Tofino and Clayoquot on the west coast of Vancouver Island, entered the Park on March 16 and within nine days, the RCMP had uprooted and moved 1,593 evacuees there. Within the same month, the Security Commission was planning the evacuation of the rest of the “defence area,” moving males to road camps and volunteer families to sugar beet farms on the prairies and attempting to find suitable accommodation somewhere for the women, children and the elderly. By March 17, the removal of the able-bodied Japanese nationals was almost completed, with over 1,000 placed in road camps on the Hope-Princeton road, the North Thompson highway and the British Columbia-Alberta Jasper route.

In this confusion and flux, only one thing was clear: the evacuation, willy nilly, had become solid fact. And the normal social and political organization of the community as the Japanese knew it in Vancouver had already broken down. All of the scattered communities outside the main population bloc of the lower mainland were in the process of being corralled into Hastings Park. Only in Vancouver, with its heavy concentration of Japanese, was there a possibility of resistance.

One early attempt to form a representative body of Issei and Nisei came to nothing. On March 1, over 100 Issei and Nisei delegates approved a plan advanced by the JCCL to form an “advisory” committee that would be responsible for the “safety and welfare” of all evacuees, with the avowed aim of co-operation with government agencies.²² But underlying this mild principle was one that was to be the basis of the resistance, though the demands were not yet fully fleshed out: a temporary cessation in the evacuation of males until arrangements for the care of families were made and the belief that families could be evacuated in large blocs to form self-sufficient communities.

But the Security Commission was highly unlikely to accept a committee that had such recommendations to make, or that might attempt to formulate policy. What it wanted were men to wield rubber stamps, to co-operate in the full sense of the word. The commissioners carefully ignored the JCCL and officially designated the Morii committee as the sole representative of all Japanese in the province.

Although the Morii committee was ostensibly broadened out to a so-called “Wartime Security Commission,” comprising of about 150 men from various JCCL areas and at one time including three Nisei from the JCCL, it was Chairman Morii who was kingpin. Officially he was not given special powers, and his committee was designed simply to facilitate government orders, to handle the myriad details of a complex movement, to provide interpreters and to handle paperwork for those who wished temporary deferment from the evacuation. Whether or not Morii, in the course of nearly three months, actually abused his position, used intimidation, took bribes and acted as informer was not really relevant. What was crucial was that Morii rapidly became a concrete symbol of government authority that in itself was too generalized and faceless for most Japanese on which to vent their increasing frustration and bitterness.

Three groups emerged in opposition to Morii: the Naturalized Citizens Committee, formed mainly from ranking members of the old CJA; the Japanese Canadian Citizens Council (JCCC), a Nisei group emerging out of a nucleus of JCCL leaders; and the militant Nisei Mass Evacuation Group, which split away from the larger Nisei body.

The Naturalized Citizens Committee, under Bunji Hisaoka, former President of the CJA, was the first to formulate open opposition and the first to be broken up. Its main concern, like the others, was the welfare of families which were being left behind by evacuated males. Consequently, it asked the Security Commission to accept a plan, costing $1,884,000, for mass – not piecemeal – evacuation of men, women and children into areas where they could be self-supporting rather than become listless wards of the government. If this plan were unacceptable, the committee urged that evacuation of dependents ought to precede that of heads of families so that the latter at least would know that their families were safe in some designated site. And, of course, both the committee and the Nisei members of the JCCC wanted Morii’s influence negated:

We are well aware of the disreputable character of Morii; and his past behaviour in committing numerous acts of violence makes impossible our accepting him as the acting guardian of our families during the period of separation; or his having any control or direction in the affairs and welfare of our families.²³

To discuss these three major issues, the group retained Vancouver lawyer Dennis Murphy. But Taylor turned down the group’s main proposal on the ground that suitable land for mass evacuation was not available because no part of Canada wanted any part of the Japanese. The other two issues were ignored.

The JCCC was formed when the JCCL felt that its membership was “not sufficiently representative … to grapple with increasing problems facing the community generally and Canadian citizens specifically.”²⁴ The JCCL asked all Nisei organizations – at least those that were still extant – to send three delegates to an organizational meeting on March 22. Delegates from 51 groups then met in an atmosphere of “tense concern” over the events moving so rapidly about them and elected a council of 30 to act as a “central coordinating body” for Nisei in the province. Their efforts, in part, were to be directed towards co-operating with the Security Commission in the evacuation and assisting in organizing social services within the community and in Hastings Park, particularly in the areas of relief, education and health.

As these groups were being formed and were making known their demands, the Security Commission did not at any time announce plans for the final disposition of the evacuees – simply because it had none. Shortly after it was organized, the Security Commission began surveying areas which might be suitable for housing evacuees for the duration. It was faced with a difficult problem: all of Canada favoured removal of Japanese from the Pacific coast; no part wanted them. “Furious” objections came from city councils across Canada, demanding of Ottawa that no Japanese be sent to their areas. The Security Commission could only assure provinces and city councils that the Japanese would not be sent where they were not wanted and that they would be “checked” and kept under surveillance wherever they were moved. But although this might have alleviated the thorny political problems that had been evoked, it made the Security Commission’s problem much more complex. Perhaps the chief reason for its delay in producing a reliable set of basic policies was that it had to start virtually from scratch. None of the high officials had any experience in supervising a racial minority element of the population, or in caring for needs of thousands of men, children and women who were being uprooted from their homes under a cloud of widespread popular distrust in time of war. The problems were so unprecedented, so complex and so unpredictable that the process of policy formulation could only be dragged out, leaving in its wake a great deal of unnecessary hardship and avoidable anguish.

At first, the road camps had seemed an ideal way of getting rid of some men who were ostensibly dangerous to “national security.” Under the circumstances, they could be paid cheap subsistence wages. Highways were needed in British Columbia to link the interior with the coast, and the government was suddenly flooded with requests from local councils that needed projects either initiated or completed, provided that the Japanese were kept under prisoner-of-war guard.

But the road-building scheme did not really work out. Although the Security Commission had 26 road projects in mind on five major highways in British Columbia and Alberta which could absorb about 5,000 men, many of them were situated close to transcontinental railways. The Department of National Defence balked at placing large groups of supposedly sabotage-minded Japanese in potentially sensitive and dangerous areas. By May 21, then, the Security Commission had to revise its plans, though by that time it had already placed 2,028 men on highway projects in the province, some of them quite close to vital railway lines.

Also hampering the Security Commission’s hand were the cumulative objections of the Japanese themselves. Japanese nationals did not attempt to evade going to the road camps. But once they were placed in these isolated camps, performing menial tasks, they became restive and bitter, worrying over abandoned families. At Gosnell, Geikie and Descoigne, road camps in the Jasper area, several protest demonstrations were held because the men were separated from their families, their annoyance compounded by long delays in issuing the meagre pay cheques. Although RCMP called these outbreaks “minor,”²⁵ the men simply having dropped their tools and refused to work, they arrested 29 “ringleaders,” shipped them to the immigration detention sheds in Vancouver and then, still under guard, to internment camps in Ontario. The monthly wage of $50, from which $22.50 was deducted for room and board and another $20 for family support, would have been grudgingly accepted if the men had been assured that suitable arrangements were being made for their dependants.

The issue of their separation from their families was also the main problem besetting the proposal that would send Nisei and naturalized citizens to road camps in Ontario. Far from the Pacific coast, the Ontario camps were supposedly immune from sabotage; the government, by sending them to this area, was supposedly separating them from Japan-born men and their “nationalistic” influence. But the Nisei balked.

Although the JCCC was concerned, among other things, over the appalling conditions at Hastings Park and over the lack of sufficient time given as notice of evacuation (it wanted one week rather than 24 hours of notice for men going to road camps), the group circulated a request on March 29 that the community throw its support behind 103 Nisei who were ordered to leave for the Ontario camp of Schreiber. These Nisei had “solemnly pledged” that they would go to the camp “for the sake of the whole community.”²⁶ The JCCC also urged that the community work for “an orderly evacuation” and not be misled by “irresponsible rumour-mongers” who were suggesting that Nisei sent to the East would be drafted into the Canadian Army, used to man tankers in the Great Lakes or the Atlantic or would be left to die of privation and cold. It was a test case, in essence, as resistance to evacuation was becoming more unmanageable. A few days previously, only a handful out of a group of over 100 men had shown up at Vancouver’s CPR station for an Ontario-bound train. Some 86 of them were discovered later that night in the offices of the Tairiku newspaper office, huddled in chairs and half asleep. The RCMP took them into custody and rounded up 17 others for detention in the Immigration Building.

The JCCC, in effect, was co-operating with the Security Commission. When the first step in evacuating people from Vancouver was taken on March 25, with the Security Commission instructing all men to report to the RCMP barracks under pain of a penalty of a $500 fine and one year of imprisonment, it was clear that the government had no intention of evacuating the Japanese as family units but instead was planning to carry out its scheme of shipping men to road camps and women and children elsewhere. Obviously, this policy was not acceptable to some members of the JCCC and they split away, under the nominal leadership of Fuji Tanaka, to form the Nisei Mass Evacuation Group.

Nisei leaders were faced with one of the most crucial problems in their entire lives. The stand which the JCCC took was phrased most clearly by its general secretary, Kunio Shimizu, when he addressed a packed meeting of 800 people at the Japanese Hall:

After weeks of negotiations with the Commission, during which the main issue was the evacuation of families as units, we came to the conclusion that temporary separation … was inevitable. We feel that the Commission and the government are sincere in their desire to see that the last family is reunited …. Instead of bucking evacuation orders, we should do the only alternative of asking the Commission to make sure that the evacuation is done in the most humane manner. Therefore we ask the Niseis to cooperate with the government and evacuate in an orderly manner and be a credit to our people. We have faith in the government that they will not neglect the welfare of the people left behind.

And returning to the issue of resistance, Shimizu added:

There is considerable talk among the young men that by not complying with government orders to evacuate, their demands can be obtained. We do not feel that it is to the best interests of the family to have oneself interned. I therefore make an appeal to you to comply with the government order to evacuate as soon as possible for the national safety of Canada.²⁷

Beyond a doubt, this attitude of co-operation with government policy was sincerely and deeply felt by JCCC leaders. But there was room for doubt regarding whether the statement accurately reflected the attitudes held towards the evacuation by many Nisei or even the majority of rank-and-file members of the JCCC. The JCCC leaders had chosen to accept, out of their idealism, the concept that co-operation with the government was the only method at their disposal to prove their worth as Canadian citizens beyond all possibility of reasonable doubt. Others were stunned and unable to express their thoughts; many were deeply and permanently embittered.

The JCCC was adamant in its belief that only one course of action could be followed. It even appointed a “Discipline Committee” to investigate members “carrying on activities contrary to the best interests of the JCCC.” It recommended that members who disagreed with the avowed aims of the group should hand in their resignations.

After its formation, the Nisei Mass Evacuation Group protested to Taylor:

We have said YES to all your previous orders, however unreasonable they might have seemed. But are firm in saying NO to your last order which calls for breakup of our families.²⁸

The outcome, however, was inevitable: internment. Those who evaded or resisted evacuation were immediately detained in the Immigration Building and then transferred to Petawawa and Angler, two internment camps in Ontario. Including those who were immediately incarcerated after Pearl Harbor, the camps were to hold 758 men. Since internment for most of these men was meted out as a disciplinary measure, not as a means of safeguarding “national security,” they were given several opportunities to obtain their release. Few, however, took advantage of these offers. At war’s end, 426 men were still interned. Some among the internees wholeheartedly espoused the cause of Japan’s war effort and made concerted efforts to “convert” those who chose internment as an instrument of protest.

No violence marked the protest and no physical resistance was offered when the RCMP made house-to-house searches and took evaders into custody. Only on May 13 was there a minor disturbance when 130 men detained on the third floor of the Immigration Building broke windows, hurled toilet paper and rubbish to the ground and flushed water from a fire hose onto guards. After this noisy demonstration, visitors were warned to keep off the premises and soldiers were posted to guard the approaches. A group carrying a Japanese flag attempted to enter the building but was gently turned back.

As the result of the organized rejection of the Morii Committee, however, the Security Commission announced on April 8 that instead of giving recognition to only one group it would hear representations on behalf of “any responsible group or organization.” But the fate of the JCCC and the Naturalized Citizens Committee was sealed when key male members, amid complaints of a notorious “black list” allegedly prepared by Morii for the RCMP’s edification, had deferment permits suddenly cancelled and were shipped to road camps.²⁹ The last to leave were members of the Morii Committee who were transferred to the Bridge River self-supporting project.

The Morii episode was not yet over. On September 26, 1942, the Vancouver News-Herald spread across its green-tinted front page the sensational headline: “Nippon Black Dragon Operates Within B.C.” In its story, the News-Herald quoted a brief which representatives of 36 Japanese organizations had sent to Ottawa, in which it was alleged that Morii had been President of the Canadian chapter of the Sokoku-kai (Fatherland Society), a “sister organization” of the notorious Black Dragon Society rumoured in existence to promote espionage activities. Morii, it was charged, was a “fascist” and “advocate of Japanese nationalism and militarism,” for many years proselytizing his attitudes in speeches and by distribution of the magazine Sokoku. The newspaper claimed that Morii had intimidated the Nisei with his henchmen, all of whom were judo experts, and had also extorted substantial sums of money under the guise of establishing a fund to assist needy persons during the evacuation. Morii, it was alleged, also had utilized his influence with the RCMP to levy tribute on all Japanese who for one reason or another wished to secure permits to defer evacuation. Of the 150 members of the so-called “Wartime Security Committee,” an off-shoot of the Morii Committee, nearly half were Japanese nationals and many of them were Morii’s subordinates and judo cronies. Why had Ottawa ignored these charges made by Nisei and by sympathetic friends? Why was the RCMP so complacent? So the News-Herald asked, demanding immediate public investigation.

The allegation that the leader of a “Japanese fascist-like gang” was closely associated with the RCMP and the Security Commission was sufficiently serious to call forth an open inquiry. Presided over by Judge C.J.A. Cameron of Belleville, the inquiry opened on October 30 in Vancouver and was eagerly reported on by the press with lip-smacking gusto for 23 days. Senator John Wallace de Beque Farris, counsel for the News-Herald, made the most of his appearances in court, his florid rhetoric enlivening the proceedings. Farris called Morii “disloyal,” “dishonest,” “vicious,” “a dangerous character who would take advantage of any position he held” and a man for whom “there was every necessity” for internment.³⁰ But the case against Morii broke down almost from the very beginning for lack of evidence. The RCMP’s dossier on Morii, Cameron ruled, was “secret and confidential” and could not be produced “in the interests of public safety.”

The inquiry, however, brought to light the fear and hostility that the Japanese community felt towards Morii. Undoubtedly Morii was a man of many faces. An immigrant to Canada in 1906 at the age of 16, he was cleared of a first-degree murder charge and given a suspended sentence for manslaughter in 1921. He became controller of the Showa Club and made part of his living out of the gambling that took place there. Before Pearl Harbor, he was known for his speeches in Vancouver in favour of Japan’s imperialism in China, claiming that Japan was “a divine country” engaged in “a holy war.”³¹ He was once photographed with the national director of the Sokoku-kai during a visit to Japan, a photo that was reproduced on the front page of the News-Herald. He was said to have received money, as much as $4,000 at a time, from immigrants who sought his assistance in applying for naturalization papers and fishing licences. On two occasions he had violently assaulted George Shoji, a former sergeant in the Princess Pats during World War I, when the latter opposed his views.

Among witnesses who appeared to support the allegations was Harold Winch, provincial CCF leader, who testified that he had been approached by Nisei who complained bitterly that such a man had been appointed to represent the entire Japanese community. But Winch noted that he could not get the Japanese to swear out affidavits to support their statements because “they appeared to be in actual fear for their lives.” Rev. William Norman, a missionary recently returned from Japan, also appeared on the stand as did Dr. Norman Black. Both were members of the Vancouver Consultative Council, an organization which had taken an interest in the evacuees and which had sent a brief, based on Nisei complaints, to Mackenzie King and Justice Minister St. Laurent, outlining charges against Morii.

Ten Japanese were brought back from the interior to testify. One Nisei, Buck Suzuki, a former member of the JCCC, told the court that, because of Morii’s machinations, many Japanese had been routed out of bed at midnight and in the early hours of the morning to report to the RCMP barracks for evacuation. Other witnesses told of men being beaten up by the “Morii gang” when they failed to comply with his demands.

In any case, for the Japanese, the inquiry was held too late to be of any practical purpose. In fact, the inquiry was a farce. Much of the testimony offered against Morii’s “terrorist” behaviour or “racketeering” was hearsay or rumour. And the diminutive Morii, with his “enigmatic smile,” denied all allegations, claiming that his work for the Security Commission had been merely “philanthropic.”

The RCMP and Security Commission members, of course, were all behind their man. As Commissioner Mead offered, “we secured co-operation from the Morii group that we didn’t get from the Nisei. We had a duty to perform and naturally we wanted co-operation.”³² RCMP officials, for their part, dismissed Nisei charges as “a campaign of vilification,” characterizing Morii’s admittedly pro-Japanese speeches as neither subversive or “anti-British” but simply “charitable” and, for that reason, not a sufficient reason for internment.³³ One official perhaps best summed up the RCMP’s attitude to Morii’s utility: “In wartime, all types of people are needed.”³⁴

Ultimately, Judge Cameron’s 98-page report “unreservedly” upheld in all respects the uses made by the Security Commission of Morii’s services and found unproven the “vast majority” of the charges against him. He chastised the News-Herald and the Vancouver Consultative Council for not investigating the authenticity of their information and for making statements that tended “to discredit government bodies charged with the safety of the state.” Cameron could find no evidence for the allegation that Morii was closely associated with the Black Dragon Society but he suggested that the RCMP “should carefully review every aspect of the case” with respect to his internment. Was Cameron having it both ways? Pawn or scapegoat, saint or villain, racketeer or philanthropist – Morii was probably all of these.

The judicial inquiry was the only wartime case that brought attention, even peripherally, to the evacuation. But by the bleak autumn and winter months of 1942, the evacuation was already a fait accompli. Stripped of all the lurid rhetoric, verbiage and innuendos about Morii’s part in a Japanese fascist spy ring, what the inquiry did was to exonerate the work of the RCMP and the Security Commission and the methods which they used to expedite the evacuation. The RCMP and the Security Commission even received praise from Judge Cameron for having undertaken and completed their tasks in “a most efficient and humane manner.”

Coincident with the factional disputes rampant in Vancouver was the strange situation in the “assembly centre” at Hastings Park which housed, under RCMP guard, those evacuees from other areas of the province. The work of revamping buildings to make them suitable for habitation had been rushed by 200 civilian and military personnel under the direction of the army only a week before the first evacuees arrived on March 16. The whole operation of a village – sanitation, hospital, stores, post office, recreation and mess halls – had to be improvised almost overnight. At the peak of its habitation, on September 1, 3,866 persons were living there and over 8,000 passed through the Park at one time or another. At first, the Security Commission had planned only to use the Park for a short period as a point of concentration and confinement, a preliminary to a further controlled mass migration, until permanent sites for detention could be found. But the occupation period lasted for ten months.

Some of the most harrowing experiences of the entire evacuation were those suffered by those early evacuees, many of whom had been rousted out of their homes at short notice by RCMP officers at all hours of the day or night. Given time to sort out and carry only the barest of necessities, they were then forced to live and associate with total strangers in former cattle stalls in the Livestock Building. It was some weeks after their arrival that living conditions in the Park were improved to the point where at least their most basic needs could be met.

As in the power struggle that developed in the outer community, the Hastings Park committees that proliferated failed to achieve co-operation among themselves. The Morii Committee’s influence in Park affairs was deplored by the JCCC which objected to the “presence of enemy nationals” among its personnel; JCCC members, in turn, were considered by the white Park administrators as “trouble-makers.” Still, with the aid of various church groups and members of the Vancouver community, both Japanese and white, who assisted in the organization of educational and recreational activities, the Park settled down, within six weeks, to a reasonably efficient assembly centre to facilitate the evacuation.

It was not that suspicion, unrest, resentment and feelings of persecution were stilled. Indeed, they were accelerated, confirmed and reinforced, for in the confines of the Park, the evacuees could compare experiences, find targets for their hostility and, in general, feed upon each other’s anxieties. Wild rumour, gallows humour and gloom hung heavy. Apart from the basic issues of family welfare and property disposal, complaints were rife over lack of adequate medical attention, the heavy gambling, quality of food, and lack of privacy. Then, too, rumours that the Security Commission was planning to leave the evacuees in the Park for the duration of the war and that they were receiving better food and medical care than white civilians caused no small amount of resentment among the general population of Vancouver.

On March 17, the Security Commission announced that the entire Hastings Park complex would be taken over for use in housing the evacuees from the outlying areas of the province, compounding the rumour that the inmates might be living there for an indefinite period, if not the duration of the war. Wrote one Nisei:

This uncertainty, this fear, this sense of insecurity is in the eyes of the womenfolk, in their silence as they sit whiling away the hours on their rude cots, in the low murmur of their voices as they sit in their unfamiliar places around the stove in the dining room.

The Pure Foods Building and the Forum were taken over, as was the Manufacturing Building.

As the evacuees filed through the gates of the Park, many of them gave every indication of being carefree and casual. Some were impassive, shy and incommunicative. Others were openly sullen and resentful. But in the minds and hearts of nearly all, to a greater or lesser degree, there was trouble and confusion and sharply conflicting emotions. The Park had its share of drunkards and gamblers, but the great majority were a psychologically bruised, badly puzzled and frequently apathetic group of people, though they attempted to continue their previous practices of religious worship, concerts and meetings and tried to achieve some semblance of order and unity in the midst of broken lives. They bore little resemblance to the image of the sly, ruthless, Emperor-worshipping fanatics which the white public persisted in creating as the prototype of the evacuees.

The inmates, contrary to what segments of the outside public felt, were provided with not much more than the minimum established by relief rates for the City of Vancouver. Many complaints naturally centered around the unappetizing food, prepared as it was in great quantity. The kitchen staff went on strike several times because of overwork. On April 27, for example, inmates who had been grumbling over the food conducted a sit-down in the mess hall after being served a “thin, starchy gruel” for breakfast. The official report of the Security Commission, Removal of Japanese from Protected Areas, baldly stated that “many valuable lessons in food values were learned by the Japanese during their stay in Hastings Park,” every effort being “made to educate them to the correct standards of proper diet.”³⁵ If such results were indeed achieved, it must attest to the innovative wizardry of the cooks, who served a total of 1,542,871 meals during the operation of the Park at an average cost of $0.0933 per meal.

Hastings Park was a suspension in limbo. People of different occupations and from different areas of the province were thrown together in cramped quarters. They felt ashamed and disgraced. There could be none of the traditional pride of carrying out the usual forms of etiquette which was so important to them. Domestic and personal security, for the Japanese, had been based on property ownership, occupations and family and community organizations. These were shattered at a blow. Moreover, evacuation had intensified the pain and anxiety of the past, which became fashioned into hostility towards the government, so that the painful experience of the past prevented consideration of the future. Living, for many of the Japanese – except for those who believed in a short war and who were buoyed by rumours of compensation by Japan for hardships undergone – tended to be aimless.

The Livestock Building was the perfect metaphor for the Japanese experience. The atmosphere of the Building – no matter how the walls were whitewashed, the floors fumigated – was that of the incipient abbatoir, of the felt, if unseen presence of thousands of cattle who had long since gone to the slaughterhouse, the smell of blood spilt, of urine and faeces, of troughs and droppings. The cattle stalls were the physical correlative to the emotional experience of those evacuees who claimed “we’ve been herded around like a bunch of cattle.”

Even by June 6, as small groups of women and children were being shipped to the “ghost towns” in the interior of the province, the family issue was not yet settled. Labour Minister Humphrey Mitchell told the Commons on June 16 that up to 7,500 women and children could be housed in Indian residential schools in Williams Lake, Edmonton or St. Albert, Alberta, and Elkhorn, Manitoba. But two weeks later, he announced that the plan – conceived without consultation with the Security Commission – would be dropped because the latter had completed its own plans.

Finally, on July 1, the Security Commission announced that it would undertake expansion of housing facilities in the ghost towns and that it would permit men in road camps to be reunited with their families. Temporary tent towns, the first of which would go up in Slocan, were to be built to speed up evacuation until the three-room, two-family housing units could be completed.

This announcement was, of course, hailed by proponents for co-operation with the government as the

welcome fulfilment of implied pledges made months ago which wholly vindicates the position of all those who urged that co-operation … would assure for every single one of us the very best possible treatment …. It suggests … that a program of defiance to law and order, which … has bordered on the hysterical, was wholly unnecessary.³⁶

But it was probably this very programme of defiance, not the policy of compliance, that proved to be the saving factor.

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Notes

1. See Dore, R.P., City Life in Japan (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958). ↩
2. Kitano, H.L., Japanese Americans: The Evolution of a Subculture (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969), pp. 96-7; Burma, J., “Current Leadership Problems Among Japanese Americans”, Sociological and Social Research, 37 (1953), pp. 157-63; Babcock, C.G., “Reflections on Dependency Phenomena as Seen by Nisei in the United States”, in Smith, R.J., and R.K. Beardsley, Japanese Culture: Its Development and Characteristics (Chicago: Aldine, 1962), pp. 172-85. ↩
3. The New Canadian, December 12, 1941. ↩
4. Ibid. ↩
5. Ibid. ↩
6. Vancouver Province, February 6, 1942. ↩
7. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1942, p. 433. ↩
8. U.S. Army, Western Defense Command and Fourth Army, Final Report, Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1943), pp. 77-8. ↩
9. The New Canadian, January 7, 1941. ↩
10. Vancouver News-Herald, January 7, 1941. ↩
11. The New Canadian, January 12, 1941. ↩
12. McKenty, N., Mitch Hepburn (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1967), p. 220. ↩
13. The New Canadian, January 30, 1942. ↩
14. The New Canadian, February 27, 1942. ↩
15. Ibid. ↩
16. The New Canadian, March 5, 1942. ↩
17. The New Canadian, March 3, 1942. ↩
18. The New Canadian, April 21, 1942. ↩
19. Statistics cited are, unless otherwise specified, from the Eighth Census of Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 4. The date of reference, therefore, is June, 1941. On December 7, 1941, a total of 205 adults and 1,483 children of Japanese origin from Canada were visiting in Japan and were forced to remain there throughout the hostilities. ↩
20. British Columbia Security Commission, Report of the British Columbia Security Commission on Removal of Japanese from Protected Areas (Vancouver, 1942), p. 7. ↩
21. Thomas, D.S., and R.S. Miyamoto, The Spoilage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1946), p. 21. ↩
22. The New Canadian, March 3, 1942. ↩
23. Japanese Canadian Citizens Council, minutes, April 3, 1942. ↩
24. The New Canadian, March 20, 1942. ↩
25. Vancouver Province, June 25, 30, 1942. ↩
26. JCCC, minutes, March 29, 1942. ↩
27. JCCC, minutes, April 7, 1942. ↩
28. Letter to Austin C. Taylor from Nisei Mass Evacuation Group, April 15, 1942. ↩
29. 29. JCCC, minutes, May 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 1942. ↩
30. Vancouver Province, October 30, 1942. ↩
31. Vancouver Province, November 3, 1942. ↩
32. Victoria Times, October 31, 1942. ↩
33. Vancouver Province, November 18, 1942. ↩
34. Vancouver Province, November 19, 1942. See also Canada, Department of Justice, Report of His Honour Judge C.J.A. Cameron, Re Japanese Inquiry at Vancouver, B.C., 1942 (Ottawa, December 9, 1942). See also Norman, H., “Vancouver Memories”, The New Canadian, September 15, 19, 22, 26, 1974. ↩
35. B.C. Security Commission, op. cit., p. 8. Cf. U.S. Army, op. cit., p. 152, which describes the use of converted stalls at Santa Anita race track in California, used by the U.S. Army as one of the assembly centres for evacuees: “For extended occupancy of men, women and children whose movements are necessarily restricted, the use of facilities of this character is not highly desirable.” For a personal account of daily life in an assembly centre, see Okubo, M., Citizen 13660 (Columbia: University Press, 1946). ↩
36. The New Canadian, July 4, 1942; JCCC, minutes, July 3, 1942. For an opposing view, see The New Canadian, February 19, 1942. ↩

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