Chapter Thirteen: Judgements

When authority in any form bullies a man unfairly,
all other men are guilty; for it is their tacit assent
that allows the authority to commit the abuse. If
they withdrew their consent, authority would
collapse.
– Pierre Elliott Trudeau

May I say that we have sought to deal with [this problem] and in doing so we have followed the ancient precept of doing justly but also loving mercy, and the Orders-in-Council … will give expression to that approach.¹

His words evaded the harsh realities of the situation, deliberately obfuscating it, for his proposal was designed to expel citizens from their own country. Slightly over a year later, after having been convinced to repeal the orders, he was to insist that the forced sale of evacuee property early in the war had also been conducted in a “fair” manner. But if, for the most part, the Japanese had co-operated with the federal government’s policy of mass evacuation with almost lamblike acquiescence, they were not now prepared merely to be teased by the discrepancy between political rhetoric and deed.

Thoughtful people were asking: does the law permit the “deportation” of Canadian citizens and residents, despite the fact that there admittedly was no shred of evidence of overt disloyalty? Is naked executive power still justifiable after a state of emergency has ceased? And if so, why? There was no doubt that the War Measures Act gave King untrammelled power to make orders whenever he deemed it desirable in the national interest. But to the Nisei and their supporters, this power had a fascist air and King’s concept of “justice” and “loving mercy” brought to mind the cant phrases of totalitarian origin, especially since the emergency which once might have rationalized mass evacuation and detention was no longer applicable.

The extent and nature of the wartime power of the Cabinet over civilians had not been questioned by most Canadians. That private rights could be invaded to wage war successfully was a corollary of the right of national self-preservation. But how far they must yield, in what circumstances and according to what tests were the pressing questions. And when limitations on freedom and individual rights were based on race and ancestry, then the question of the Cabinet’s power was raised to its highest degree. The whole vast, harsh and discriminatory programme of evacuation and imprisonment was ordered and supervised by King and his Cabinet, and now a third component, forced “deportation,” was added to the litany. The scheme violated and degraded the basic precepts which sustain a democracy, for forced “deportation” was based on assumed disloyal beliefs and attitudes – unaccompanied by acts. And the entire episode culminated in a sanctification, by the highest court in the country, of the power of King and his Cabinet to deprive citizens of their rights.

The three orders-in-council were a comprehensive scheme which defined the classes of Japanese held to be deportable, empowered that the status of Canadian nationality be removed after deportation, and provided for the appointment of a tribunal which was to investigate and recommend for deportation some others whose conduct during the war could be deemed as “disloyal.” The central order, P.C. 7335, defined four major categories of deportable people:

1. Every person of 16 years of age or over, other than a Canadian national, who is a national of Japan resident in Canada and who has, since December 8, 1941, made a request for repatriation or has been interned for any reason as at midnight of September 1, 1945.²
2. Every person who is a naturalized British subject, 16 years of age or over, who made a written request for repatriation which was not revoked in writing prior to September 1, 1945, the day before the unconditional surrender of Japan.
3. Every Canadian-born person of Japanese origin, 16 years of age or over, who has not revoked his request prior to the making of the Labour Minister of an order for his deportation.
4. The wife and children under 16 years of age of any person against whom an order for deportation is made.

In addition, P.C. 7357, the third order-in-council, which provided for the appointment of a three-man commission “to make inquiry concerning the activities, loyalty and the extent of co-operation with the Government of Canada during the war of Japanese nationals and naturalized persons of Japanese race in Canada,” could recommend the deportation of anyone of Japanese ancestry if it was “desirable in the national interest.”

The second order, P.C. 7356, provided that any naturalized citizen who is deported under the terms of P.C. 7355, “shall, as and from the date upon which he leaves Canada … cease to be either a British subject or a Canadian national.” Under this order, those who had few or no assets were to be given a “grant” to bring their funds up to a minimum of $200 for each adult and $50 per child. And in order to forestall writs of habeas corpus, section 9 of the order required that

Any person for whom an order of deportation is made and who is detained pending deportation or who is placed under restraint in the course of deportation … shall … be deemed to be in legal custody.

The orders were passed under the War Measures Act, which expired on January 1, 1946. After that date, they were continued in force by Order-in-Council P.C. 7414 under the National Transitional Emergency Powers Act.³ As of November 21, according to Labour Minister Mitchell, a total of 10,347 were involved in the deportation programme. Of this number, 6,844 actually signed requests, the remainder being dependent children under 16 years of age. Those signing included 2,925 nationals of Japan, 1,451 naturalized citizens and 2,460 Canadian-born citizens. Thus one-third were Canadian-born children and three-quarters were Canadian citizens.

The orders imposed less severe disabilities on the basis of national status, since naturalized and Canadian-born citizens who had revoked their applications for repatriation before September 2 were allowed to remain in Canada. But the “loyalty tribunal,” as King defined it, was not to be an investigating commission holding hearings where individual Japanese, represented by counsel, could present their cases. The commission’s authority was, indeed, to be draconian – as broad and sweeping as the War Measures Act. And referral of cases was to depend only on the discretion of Mitchell, who had categorically stated that “loyalty” was premised on whether or not the evacuees had revoked their requests prior to the official surrender of Japan.

After Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Allied Supreme Commander in Japan, informed King that he was “prepared to accept” the Japanese involved in the deportation programme, King was anxious to expedite the completion of the scheme. King had written to MacArthur stating that Canada

is anxious to proceed with repatriation and deportation as soon as this can be arranged without causing you embarrassment …. You will appreciate the desire of the Canadian Government to proceed with these plans as soon as possible. The Canadian Government would be grateful for your advice as to the earliest date on which you would be prepared to have these people arrive in Japan.⁴

Upon acquiring MacArthur’s approval, Mitchell arranged the first boat, bearing 800 deportees, to leave Vancouver on January 6, 1946. There was an air of headlong, almost panicky, rush in the Cabinet’s proceedings following the tabling of the deportation orders in the Commons. As King had admitted in the Commons in seeking extension of wartime emergency powers; “the peculiar character of the present problem requires more expeditious and broader action than the present statutes allow.”⁵ What King did not anticipate, however, was the cumulative force of opposition to the deportation orders, both from the prestigious Co-Operative Committee on Japanese Canadians (CCJC) and the evacuees themselves. But once King realized that he had an exceedingly unpopular and contentious matter on his hands, he asked the Supreme Court of Canada to decide whether the deportation orders were ultra vires of the Cabinet, either in whole or in part, and stated that

it is urgently required in the public interest that the opinion of the Supreme Court … be obtained … with the least possible delay.⁶

Time, equally, was of the essence for the Japanese. Even before King’s policy announcement, a Citizenship Defence Commission, comprised of Issei and Nisei, met in Toronto on December 8 to formulate plans to raise $10,000 from evacuees throughout Canada in an effort to resist compulsory deportation. A Civil Rights Defence Committee was formed in Winnipeg for the same purpose and Nisei in other cities geared for action. The CCJC, organizing a nation-wide publicity campaign, distributed 75,000 copies of a pamphlet entitled From Citizens to Refugees – It’s Happening Here, employed Rev. Hugh MacMillan as a full-time paid executive secretary, and organized regional public meetings from Vancouver to Montreal. The Vancouver Consultative Council published a leaflet, Orders-in-Council Threaten Your Citizenship, and suggested that Canadians “write or wire the Prime Minister and your Member of Parliament,” organize protest meetings and help finance the Supreme Court “test case” on the legality of the deportation orders. As a result, an “avalanche” of letters cascaded into Ottawa.

Christmas, 1945, had an unreal air for the Japanese. Four years previously, in their west coast homes, they were in a state of high tension, hoping somehow that events, despite the bombs that gutted Pearl Harbor, would turn out for the best. Now in peace-time, after bombs of a different kind had devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki and helped to end the war, a large portion of the Japanese population in Canada faced exile amidst the hymns that reverberated of “goodwill to men.” It was the logical end to their years in Canada – as hopefully programmed by anti-Japanese racists for decades. But at least the Japanese had friends this time around.

Although other groups, such as the Civil Rights Defence Committee in Winnipeg, organizations in the interior camps of Tashme and Slocan and the Issei-dominated “Joint Committee” of Southern Alberta,⁷ were beginning a grass-roots protest movement, the lead came from the CCJC and the JCCD. Toronto lawyer Andrew Brewin was retained by the CCJC which issued writs on December 27 against Attorney-General St. Laurent, now combining that portfolio with that of Justice, to test the legality of the deportation orders. The writs were issued in the names of Yutaka Shimoyama, a Nisei mushroom farm labourer in Port Credit, and Mrs. Yae Nasu of Toronto, an Issei widow of a naturalized citizen and a mother of seven Canadian-born children. On behalf of the two plaintiffs, the CCJC claimed that the deportation orders were “invalid, illegal and beyond the powers” of the Cabinet and, further, that the repatriation forms which they had signed in August of that year – which included a statement that they wished to “relinquish” their Canadian nationality and to assume the status of a national of Japan – were “illegal, invalid and of no effect” because the Cabinet was not authorized by the War Measures Act “or by any other valid statute or law” to take such an action.⁸

A CCJC delegation, which included B.K. Sandwell, editor of Saturday Night, and Prof. George Tatham, President of the Civil Liberties Association, then met Department of Justice officials on January 14, asking that the test case be referred to the Supreme Court and that deportation be suspended until the legality of the orders was determined. They were told that thousands of writs of habeus corpus would be issued unless they referred the matter to the Court.

Meanwhile, the protest movement reached its emotional summit before a packed house of 1,000 people at Jarvis Collegiate in Toronto when Sandwell, Senators Arthur Roebuck and Cairine Wilson and Rabbi Abraham Feinberg inveighed against the “condemnation of Canadians without trial or justice” and the unprecedented deportation of citizens “for no crime or reason.”

After evoking images of Macbeth’s bloodstained hands, which he said would remain with King and Mitchell forever, Roebuck, a stylish figure in winged collar and pince-nez spectacles, put the point vividly:

I do not advocate a witch hunt among Germans or Italian Canadians, but I ask why are the Japanese singled out since the highest authority assures us no act of sabotage has been uncovered? Non-co-operation with the government is being used as grounds for deportation …. May I ask when non-co-operation with the government became a ground for deportation?⁹

Rabbi Feinberg had the final word:

I am here on behalf of six million Jews who were slaughtered … for no reason other than being Jews …. The ghost of Hitler still walks in Canada. The thing for which Hitler stood has been inscribed on the order-in-council which punishes little children for crimes they couldn’t commit.¹⁰

And so the battle was enjoined on two bleak winter days in January, 1946, the first case to be heard in the new $4 million Supreme Court Building. In one corner, the Japanese Canadians; in the other, the federal government of Canada. Behind the massive oak doors, sitting in scarlet chairs in the panelled courtroom were the seven puisne judges in their black gowns, looking vulnerable and yet so powerful in the huge scale of the setting. They were seven men who could chisel reason – and perhaps justice and compassion – into the lives of people of whom they had only read in newspaper headlines. But, in its pragmatic existence, it was beyond the scope of the Court to examine social conditions or political philosophy. The vision of the Supreme Court with Canadian judges doughtily defending civil liberties or using its power actively to curb parliamentary abridgements of basic freedoms might have been convincing if the Canadian judiciary had shown any inclination to do any such thing over the past years. The characteristics of the Court flowed through its real image as a dispute-settling institution; its decisions were based on legal material to the exclusion of social science or moral philosophy. And, as a mirror to that image, the decision rendered was legalistic, cautious, retiring and practically bereft of theoretical reasoning.

The argument of the CCJC, as conducted by Brewin and J.R. Cartwright, a noted constitutional authority and future Chief Justice, was directed towards proving that the deportation orders were beyond the power of the Cabinet. They argued that although the Cabinet had issued the orders on the basis of the sweeping powers delegated by the War Measures Act, such powers were restricted to “arrest, detention, exclusion and deportation.” The term “deportation” was not apt

to describe the sending to Japan of Canadian citizens who were either born in Canada or … naturalized in Canada and who have no connection with Japan other than ‘race’. Deportation is the return of an alien to the country from whence he came and not the exile or banishment of a citizen to an alien country.¹¹

Further, it was argued that

the banishment of [Canadian] subjects by any court or body for any other reason than conviction of felony is expressly forbidden under heavy penalties by Habeas Corpus.¹²

Then, appealing to general “humanitarian” principles, the CCJC counsel stated that

there is a presumption that Parliament does not assert or assume jurisdiction which goes beyond the limits established by the common consent of nations.

That is, they argued that the deportation of civilians on racial grounds was contrary to the accepted principles of international law, “a crime against humanity.”

Among other arguments, the CCJC counsel claimed that, with the end of the war and the lapsing of the War Measures Act, the control of civil liberties properly reverted to provincial governments.¹³ Although the advent of the war had justified the Cabinet in encroaching on this realm of provincial power, they noted that Parliament, through its enactment of the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act, had recognized that the “emergency of war” had ceased on January 1, 1946, and that the powers of “arrest, detention, exclusion, and deportation” were specifically absent in the language of that act.

The government, on the other hand, maintained that it was clearly within its powers, under the War Measures Act and the Transitional Powers Act, to “deport or exile or banish aliens or subjects or citizens of the state and to deprive them of citizenship.¹⁴ Moreover, counsel claimed that, under Section 91, head 25, of the British North America Act, the government had “full sovereign legislative authority” to enact such deportation orders “for the peace, order and good government in Canada.” It was further argued that no question of constitutionality could arise as to the power of Parliament to continue the three orders-in-council “in full force and effect” after the end of the war because the passage of the Transitional Powers Act assumes that a “state of war” still exists. In short, then, the government’s major point was that the Supreme Court had no authority to determine whether or not the provisions of the deportation orders were required and concluded that the authority conferred on the Cabinet by the War Measures Act “is not subject to review in a court.” As to the deportation of wives and children, government counsel blandly asserted that it was “necessarily incidental to proper humanitarian provisions” – a concept hugely ironic in view of the federal government’s early evacuation policy of separating men from children, husbands from wives.

The decision of the Supreme Court, as handed down on February 20, vindicated the government’s stand.¹⁵ But, at the same time, because the Court was divided on at least two major issues, it failed to give the Cabinet the unanimous judgement it had sought. Three judges, Chief Justice Thibaudeau Rinfret, Judges Patrick Kerwin and Robert Taschereau, decided that the orders were, in every detail, completely valid; four judges, A.B. Hudson, J.W. Estey, I.C. Rand and R.L. Kellock, ruled that certain parts were invalid.

If too much power had been delegated to the Cabinet, Rinfret said, “the remedy lies in [the government’s] own hand,” for Parliament has full authority to amend or repeal the War Measures Act or “to make ineffective” any order-in-council. “There is always … some risk of abuse when wide powers are committed in general terms to any body of men,” Rinfret admitted, but he quickly pointed out that the Cabinet was “the sole judge of the necessity or advisability of these measures” and that it was not competent to any court to make judgements on the reasons why such wide powers were necessary in the first place. Rinfret also dismissed the CCJC’s argument that “deportation” could only apply to the removal of aliens by stating that the term could also apply to the “exclusion” or “exile” of any national from his country. He said, however, that any discussion of the meaning of the term is “really immaterial,” for the act of deportation came under the general powers conferred by the War Measures Act

to do and authorize such acts and things, and make from time to time such orders and regulations … by reason of the existence of real or apprehended war, invasion or insurrection … necessary or advisable for the security, defence, peace, order and welfare of Canada.

Departing briefly from his legalistic defence of the government’s position, Rinfret made one value judgement. Speaking of Canadian-born citizens, he said they were people who had made requests to be sent to Japan …. Surely under the circumstances that existed during the actual hostilities with Japan or in the ensuing months, the Governor-in-Council might well be justified in considering such people a menace to Canada.

Justices Hudson and Estey supported the views of Rinfret, Kerwin and Tachereau except on the matter of deportation of wives and children, noting that there was “no recital or statement” on the part of the Cabinet that such an action was necessary for national security. Rand and Kellock also agreed that deportation of wives and children was unjustified, Rand adding that their expulsion was presumably for the “welfare and peace” of the family – an aim that was clearly beyond the range of the War Measures Act. The two justices also held that it was invalid to revoke the naturalization of British subjects if they were deported either after making a written request or after being ordered to be removed by the loyalty tribunal. Indeed, the problem of deporting naturalized citizens troubled Rand, for he found that there was nothing in the language of the orders-in-council that claimed they were “disaffected” or “disloyal” and that the sole reason put forth for their deportation was that they had not revoked their requests by the Cabinet’s deadline. Rand asked:

Are we to imply … that the Governor in Council is satisfied in each case of the disaffection and disloyalty of the naturalized person? Here is a penal provision of a drastic nature, and as it affects British subjects, I am unable to supply that conclusion by implication.

Both he and Kellock concluded that it was beyond the Cabinet’s powers to “deport” or “repatriate” Canadian-born citizens. If “repatriation” could be defined as “return to one’s country,” Kellock pointed out, it was not applicable to Canadian-born people who had no country but Canada. For Rand, similarly, the term “repatriation” simply meant a return to patria or fatherland. The word “deportation” was also deemed inappropriate as it signified the removal of an alien from the country. Kellock concluded:

Where an equivocal word leaves a reasonable doubt of its meaning … the benefit of the doubt should be given to the subject and against the legislature which has failed to explain itself …. The word ‘deportation’ is not apt in the case of citizens who have committed no offence, and as to whom there is no charge, no trial, no conviction …. Insofar as the orders-in-council provide for the removal of natural-born Canadian citizens against their will, they are invalid.

The majority decision pinpointed the need for a Bill of Rights to be entrenched into the Canadian constitution which it would be the duty of the Supreme Court to defend, even against Parliament itself.¹⁶ The constrictions under which the Court operated suggested a need for a Supreme Court along the lines of the American model which, in the Japanese-American evacuation issue, became the arena in which the struggle of the public conscience was most visible.¹⁷ In one American case, the Supreme Court declared that a Nisei, Mitsuye Endo, was unconstitutionally detained in a relocation camp, unanimously finding that there was nothing in the acts of Congress or executive orders of the President which authorized the detention of a loyal citizen. Justice William Douglas, reading the court’s opinion, declared that

a citizen who is concededly loyal presents no problem of sabotage or espionage. Loyalty is a matter of the heart and mind, not of race, creed or color …. When the power to detain is derived from the power to protect the war effort against espionage and sabotage, detention which has no relationship to that objective is unauthorized.¹⁸

In another case, decided on the same day and involving Fred Korematsu who had evaded evacuation by undergoing plastic surgery and posing as a Spanish-Hawaiian, the Court upheld the validity of the evacuation orders – but not without vigorous dissent from three justices against the validation of racial discrimination in an emergency. One statement by Justice Robert Jackson, for example, brought out into stark relief the judicial self-restraint of Canada’s Supreme Court:

Once a judicial order rationalizes such an [evacuation] order to show that it conforms to the Constitution … the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination …. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. Every repetition imbeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking and expands it to new purposes.¹⁹

Five of Canada’s Supreme Court Justices gave an almost complete approval of Cabinet’s deportation programme without inquiring into the character of citizenship, its sources, rights and terminability, and sustained a drastic act without inquiring into its factual justification. It ought to have been the function of the Court that the kind of excessive legality to which it limited itself did not impair justice and that the shibboleth of “national security” did not justify the unnecessary destruction of the rights of people and bring about an impairment of the democratic processes of government. Canada’s Supreme Court always had the alternative of avoiding a patently bad precedent by not making it.

Privately, Brewin, writing to Prof. Frank Scott of McGill University, had had his reservations: “We got a good hearing from the Court, but I am pessimistic. Two or three of the judges seemed favourable, and two against us. The other two were mute.”²⁰ When the Court handed down its ruling, it was described by the CCJC as “a tremendous moral victory,”²¹ but the majority decision made it clearly possible for the Cabinet to proceed with its policy. Not since the early days of the war had the evacuees been front-page news. The Toronto Star wrapped a nine-column headline, “Rule Some Japs Deportable,” around its page-one story, and editorials in many Canadian newspapers²² denounced the Court’s decision, particularly as it did not touch the “moral issue.”

As for the evacuees themselves, particularly those with parents who were Japanese nationals, the ruling was dismaying. Yoshiko Kurita, a household economics student at Alma College in St. Thomas, broke out into tears when she heard the news. Two sisters, Lillie and Kathleen, and one brother, Roy, were in Eastern Canada but her parents, still living in Slocan, had signed repatriation requests and another brother, Peter, aged 16, was still living with them. Yoshiko said:

I have waited so long for this decision and now that it has come it is heartbreaking …. My poor father wouldn’t know what to do or where to turn to now. But maybe my brother, Peter, won’t have to go. Maybe Peter will be able to stay with us. And maybe my mother can stay, too.²³

Some Nisei soldiers like Mickey Nobuto, still with the Occupation Forces in the Far East, could return home to find that their families had been deported. A Toronto Nisei, Tony Tateishi, lamented:

My parents are old, my father is a helpless cripple. If they are sent to Japan, one of us [three brothers living in Toronto] would have to go with them to look out for them. What will I do if I go to Japan? I am a Canadian. I cannot speak the language. Who would employ me? I am a Canadian and an enemy.²⁴

Since independent legal opinion agreed that the right to habeas corpus was not taken away by the deportation orders, it was presumably left open for evacuees to apply for writs and individual hearings when and if an order for deportation was made. By the time that the Court had announced its ruling, 1,370 evacuees in British Columbia had instructed counsel to apply for habeas corpus and a mass of “evidence” had been collected to show that they had signed for repatriation through “misrepresentation” or “coercion.” Meanwhile, the lack of a sweeping decision by the Court and the strength of the protest movement which continued unabated upset the plans of the Cabinet considerably. In subsequent briefs to members of Parliament and the Senate and in public meetings throughout the country, the CCJC emphasized the “inhumanity” of “separating families, depriving wives of their husbands and children of their fathers, thus making in effect widows and orphans of Canadian citizens.” It prepared to raise $10,500 for an appeal to the Privy Council in London. King was asked by a delegation – which included Col. David Croll, Liberal MP from Toronto Spadina, CCF leader M.J. Coldwell and Charles Millard, National Director of the United Steelworkers of America – either to consider referring the case to the Privy Council or to rescind the orders. King chose the former, and the battleground shifted to the House of Lords for four days in mid-July.

The result, however, was really a foregone conclusion, as it was felt that the Privy Council – like the Supreme Court – would consider only the legal points involved. No court in Britain, for example, had overturned a deportation ruling by the Home Secretary who, through the Alien Restriction Act of 1919, enjoyed sole legal power to determine what was conducive to “the public good” in the matter of deporting aliens. In concluding the hearings on July 19, Lord Chancellor Viscount Simon declared that “this was one of the most important cases that has ever come before us,” but when the ruling was handed down on December 2, 1946, it did not reflect the level to which the case had been elevated. In fact, the Judicial Committee simply ruled that the deportation orders were valid in all respects because the Canadian government could legally do anything it wanted under the War Measures Act. As Lord Wright concluded:

It is not pertinent to the judiciary to consider the wisdom or propriety of the particular policy which is embodied in the emergency legislation. Determination of the policy to be followed is exclusively a matter for the Parliament of the Dominion and those to whom it has delivered its powers.²⁵

Over nine months had elapsed between the decisions of the Supreme Court and the Privy Council. Even if the rulings were unfavourable, at least the court action had bought time, since the Cabinet was forced to suspend compulsory deportation during that period. After the Privy Council decision, the Cabinet was faced with three choices: to proceed with deportation as originally planned; to limit deportation to those categories unanimously approved by the Supreme Court; to rescind its orders. It was caught between two fires – one group demanding deportation, the other just as vehemently opposing it.²⁶ But since almost 4,000 evacuees had already left voluntarily for Japan and the “resettlement” programme was in the process of being completed, it was expected that King would announce a dramatic shift in policy. Finally, on January 24, 1947, King announced that the deportation orders had been repealed, and the long fight, which had begun in the fall of 1945, was at an end.

The casualties were those who found the prospect of remaining in Canada intolerable and elected instead to go to a war-devastated Japan. King had announced on March 13, 1946, that the Labour Department would proceed with arrangements to assist any Japanese who wished to go to Japan under the terms of Order-in-Council P.C. 7355, which included “free transportation” and financial assistance where necessary.

In late May, most of the first group of 668 gathered in the immigration shed on Vancouver’s waterfront after arriving from all parts of Canada. A detachment of RCMP officers guarded the building, allowing no one to leave and permitting only those with medical or legal business to enter. Of that group, 150 men had spent the war in the internment camp at Angler, and for some of them, the immigration shed evoked bitter memories of a time early in 1942 when they had resisted evacuation and had been incarcerated there. One of them, asked why he was going to Japan, answered: “The white people hate us and we have no other place to go.”

The S.S. Marine Angel slipped its moorings at the CPR dock at 10 p.m. on May 31, glided through the calm waters of Burrard Inlet and headed across the Pacific towards the U.S. Army repatriation centre, a barren and filthy set of barracks in Uraga on Tokyo Bay. It carried the vanguard of 3,964 people who sailed for Japan that year. The last boat, the Marine Falcon, left Vancouver on Dec. 31, carrying 290 passengers. Another 145 persons were scheduled to leave from San Francisco on October 3, 1947, but Ottawa suddenly cancelled the sailing a few weeks before departure. Department of Labour officials explained that would-be repatriates would now have to go at their own expense.

Most of the people who lined the sides of the repatriation ships, “eager faced” for a glimpse of Japan, had sad, disillusioned stories to tell later. Shinzo Tanaka of Lemon Creek wrote to friends in Canada:

For the first time we realized the hopelessness and the sufferings which reign in a defeated nation. I am regretting the rashness with which I decided to leave Canada …. On landing in Uraga, we were taken by trucks to the receiving centre. There were 30 buildings, each measuring about 350 by 50 feet …. We were given a blanket and a small pillow. We were told that this year has been the worst for food shortages. We were served with wheat rice, miso soup and three pieces of takuan. Sometimes we got a mixture of rice and beans cooked together with vegetables. Sometimes we just had udon (noodles). At first the bleak experience … filled us with an indescribable feeling of hopelessness.²⁷

Another Issei who took his young children from Coaldale, Alberta, to return to Kumamoto prefecture, found that both his parents were dead; yet another Issei returned to Osaka to discover that his parents’ home had been levelled by bombs. He wrote that post-war Japan was “like a bad dream which bears no resemblance to the Japan he once knew.” And for Koshio Matano, an Issei World War I veteran wounded above the left eye by a German shell in France while serving with the Canadian 50th Battalion, the unreality widened into the surreal. A patient in Essondale Mental Hospital since 1933, he had not signed repatriation papers but had been removed forcibly – as Labour Minister Mitchell had to admit in the Commons.²⁸ He was one of 17 mental patients to be repatriated, although the others had apparently gone willingly.

The main casualties, of course, were the Canadian-born, who comprised over half of the repatriates, 33% of whom were dependent children under 16 years of age. Eighteen-year-old Toshiko Sasaki, who had to accompany her parents, left three older sisters and one brother behind in Letellier, Manitoba. At the train station, she explained her plight:

I’m the youngest in the family. My father decided he wanted to spend his last years in Japan and told me I was to accompany mother and him there. I could do nothing else. I was born in New Westminster, B.C., and know no other country. I’m hoping all the time that I can return. Two of my sisters are engaged. I’ll miss their weddings.

Her three sisters were all at the station to see her and their parents leaving for Japan. They all sobbed heavily when time for departure drew near. One sister fell alongside the train when it was leaving the yards and despite pleadings of the RCMP corporal guarding the group of 53 people, the girl wouldn’t move and had to be carried away.

Then there was another lingering, festering sore that had to be given a palliative. The mass evacuation of 21,000 people meant that some 6,000 income earners had to abandon their boats, stores, farms, tools, machinery and stock of merchandise – as well as their jobs – by which they had supported themselves and their families. Then, too, there were the homes, cars, furniture and other possessions accumulated over the major part of a lifetime. Property ownership had represented a special personal value among the Japanese who had had to counteract the very marginal and precarious position they held within the hostile pre-war society. Since anti-Japanese legislation had driven the Japanese out of several occupations and restricted them in others, property ownership had provided the economic and emotional security around which they had organized their tightly-knit family and community life. Property, no matter how humble, had been a symbol of success in the immigrant community.

Although all orders-in-council with reference to mass evacuation had been passed in terms of “members of the Japanese race,” there had been no reason for the evacuees to feel that removal from the “protected area” indicated that ownership of property would be a threat to “national security” or, indeed, that they would not be allowed, once the war crisis was over, to return to their homes and regain possession of their property and businesses. Order-in-Council P.C. 1665, March 4, 1942, stated that

as a protective measure only, all property situated in any protected area of British Columbia belonging to any person of the Japanese race resident in such an area … shall be vested in and subject to the control and management of the Custodian as defined in the Regulations Respecting Trading with the Enemy, 1939.

The order went on to direct that in the application of the regulations, they were to applied mutatis mutandis to the “same extent as if such property belonged to any enemy.” No advice was given by the Custodian regarding temporary disposition of property nor were storage depots provided. Hence, many evacuees – in panic or desperation – stored personal property, often without crating, in attics, basements, garages, barns, community halls, temples, churches and schools. Some people “lent” their automobiles or “rented” their homes to neighbours with a verbal agreement that they would be returned.

The Custodian confined his activities to receiving reports on property from evacuees before they were removed from the “protected area.” For a large number of evacuees, removal meant being uprooted from outlying areas of the province and being placed in Hastings Park in Vancouver or road camps in the interior; the precipitate nature of the orders for evacuation meant that many Japanese had from only a few hours to a week to dispose of property as best they could. In many cases, packing and storing of possessions had to be performed by wives and children of men already in road camps and goods were sometimes hastily sold to friends, neighbours and swindlers who had a terrified, confused group of people at their mercy. A fledgling organization at the end of March, the British Columbia Security Commission still had not solved the problem of the ultimate disposal of the evacuees, and it was only in the summer of 1942 when the decision was made to utilize ghost towns in the interior as detention camps that the evacuation became a relatively controlled movement. Household and personal goods could then be shipped, at the evacuees’ own expense, to the interior camps, but the majority of the Japanese had so depleted their savings that they could not afford to pay for this transportation or else, engulfed by the uncertainties of the future, preferred to leave their goods in their west coast homes.

During the interval between the first removal of males and the decision to liquidate all property, the Custodian’s office in Vancouver, which was in charge of safeguarding property of absentee owners, could not prevent initial loss or steadily mounting loss. And suffusing the entire problem was wartime hate, prejudice and greed, fanned by extremists, politicians and anti-Japanese newspapers, which saw in the evacuation an opportunity for a considerable windfall in wresting control of the fishing and small fruits industries from the Japanese and taking over their other commercial interests.

Intimations of how government policy was to develop, however, were to be found in the takeover and forced sale of 950 fishing boats out of a fleet of l,130 by the summer of 1942.²⁹ Including the later liquidation of 201 boats by the Custodian, the fleet was sold for $1.4 million. An allowance of $80,000 was later awarded for vessels sunk during impoundment, hull and engine damage and loss of skiffs, lifeboats, galley equipment and personal belongings.³⁰ A second major move was the authorization given on June 29, 1942, under Order-in-Council P.C. 5523, to the Director of Soldier Settlement to purchase or lease farms owned by the Japanese. The director then carried on negotiations, without having to consult owners, to buy 572 farms in the Fraser Valley for future disposition to returned veterans of the Canadian armed forces. Farms which had an assessed value of $1,239,907 were sold to the Veterans Land Administration for $841,225.³¹

Outraged by the low prices, Yasutaro Yamaga of Haney, respected among local farmers for his 34 years of experience in the Fraser Valley, quit in disgust from the otherwise non-Japanese five-man committee which had been appointed by the director to consider the bids and tenders for the farms. A similar body, the City Property Committee, consisting of Justice Sidney Smith, Vancouver Alderman Charles Jones and Kishizo Kimura, was appointed to “advise and supervise” the sale of urban property. Smith also headed the Fishing Vessels Disposal Committee. All of these government-appointed committees, despite their token Japanese representatives, were primarily interested in quick sales.

The decision to liquidate all properties, without consent, except liquid assets such as stocks and bonds, was made nearly a year after the announcement of evacuation and two months after the last Japanese had been cleared out of Vancouver. It was authorized by Order-in-Council P.C. 469, January 19, 1943, in which the concept of control of property “as a protective measure only” was abandoned to the vagaries of public auction and tender. It was then, perhaps more than at any other time, that the Japanese came face to face with the reality of an open breach of trust. Political and economic pressures had not only pushed King into ordering mass evacuation and considering deportation, but had gradually influenced him into making the decision to strip the evacuees of almost an entire life’s work, without consideration for citizenship.

The morality of the action, however, was ignored by King. In the same speech, on January 24, 1947, in which he announced the repeal of the deportation orders, King blandly added:

With respect to the property of persons of Japanese origin who were removed from the Pacific Coast, and whose property was sold by the Custodian, the government is of the opinion that the sales were made at a fair price. In all cases a complete appraisal was made before disposition. The total of the prices secured is greater in aggregate than the total appraisal value. To ensure, however, the fair treatment promised in 1944, the government is prepared in cases where it can be shown that a sale was made at less than a fair market value to remedy the injustice.

King made it quite clear that he had no intention of investigating the whole issue and was prepared to make only minor adjustments. In contrast, U.S. Secretary of the Interior J.A. Krug, in approving the Evacuation Claims Bill of 1946, stated that property losses among American evacuees “have been heavy. Some have lost everything they had, many lost most of what they had.” King, for his part, did not acknowledge that any far-reaching injustice had been perpetrated.

The Canadian policy on property, from beginning to end, fell far short of the American record in almost every respect.³² Not only did the United States not envisage, at any time, the compulsory sale of property, but the basic operating principle of the War Relocation Authority, which took over the protection of property, specified that it would act only as intermediary for those evacuees wishing to lease or sell their property. And when the west coast exclusion ban was lifted, the WRA’s focus shifted to helping evacuees reoccupy their properties in the former prohibited zone. After Truman authorized payments for damage to or loss of real or personal property arising as “the natural or reasonable consequence” of the evacuation, claims for $131,949,816 were made. The programme took far longer to adjudicate than did the Canadian, but it was informed by a larger sense of responsibility and generosity. When the last claim was settled, the United States had awarded 26,500 claimants a total of $38 million, and even leaders of the Japanese American Citizens League agreed that it represented a major triumph for the evacuees in that Congress had recognized the error of the evacuation and the justice of the claims.

In Canada, the battle to gain redress did not begin with King’s statement, which merely served to accelerate, channel and organize the agitation and resentments that had been mounting since 1942. Upon learning in January, 1943, that the government was to sell property without their consent, many evacuees mailed letters of protest to the Custodian in Vancouver and to various departments of the federal government in Ottawa. But these were ineffective, and notices for tenders and public auctions began to appear in Vancouver newspapers early in April, each advertisement invariably bearing the statement that the properties or chattels were being offered

under instructions from the Secretary of State of Canada, acting under his capacity as Custodian pursuant to the Revised Regulations Respecting Trading with the Enemy, 1943.

One typical auction sale offered “chesterfield suite, Doherty organ, roll-top desk, buffet, dressers, half-ton chain block, lawn mowers, sewing machines, bench tools, electric irons, beds, tables, chairs, crockery, pots, pans, etc.”³³ Tenders were being asked for items as varied as an ice-cream cone machine to an “eight-room frame dwelling with garage.” All transactions were “for cash” and business was reported to be “brisk.”

It was then that a group of Issei began thinking of testing the power of the federal government to liquidate property, thus hoping to delay the sale. Calling itself the Japanese Property Owners Association, the Issei established headquarters in Kaslo under the aegis of Dr. Kozo Shimotakahara and Saburo Shinobu, and set out to raise $6,500 from about 650 property owners to finance the court action. Their Vancouver counsel, Arthur MacLennan, filed a petition against the Secretary of State in July, asking that he be restrained from proceeding with the sale.

The excessively long delay in having the test case heard in the Exchequer Court in Ottawa – on May 29 and 30, 1944 – and before receiving a negative judgement by Justice Joseph Thorson – on August 28, 1947 – completely frustrated the original purpose of the Owners Association. By the time the case was heard, the sale of property and chattels was practically finished. Deadlines for the final sales and auctions already had been set for the end of April, 1944, and a return tabled in the House of Commons on May 15 showed that 1,101 pieces of real estate had been sold for $1,560,670 as of March 31.

Since the Owners Association’s case was to be heard in the Exchequer Court, the court established to consider petitions of relief from the Crown, it had been necessary to gain permission to sue the Crown; a further delay, through the summer and fall of 1943, was occasioned by a legal technicality involving the question of whether or not the Exchequer Court had jurisdiction over the case. For the Japanese, the delay served to increase the suspicion that justice was conveniently blind enough to suit the purpose of the government.³⁴ Finally, after this issue was resolved, the case for the supplicants – Eikichi Nakashima, a naturalized citizen; Tadao Wakabayashi, a Canadian-born citizen; and Jitaro and Takejiro Tanaka, two Japanese nationals – was heard by Thorson.

Two major points were argued by MacLennan: that the Custodian, as a servant of the Crown, initially had undertaken to hold property in trust “as a protective measure only” for the period of the evacuation; and secondly, that the orders-in-council, as empowered by the War Measures Act, were “invalid and unconstitutional” because the sale of property had no relevance to “national security.”³⁵ When Thorson finally made his ruling, he declared that the supplicants took too narrow a view of the phrase “as a protective measure only” and that there was no implied contract to that effect between the Custodian and the evacuees. And echoing the Supreme Court decision on deportation earlier that year, he ruled that

the [Exchequer] Court has no right to substitute its opinion for what is necessary or advisable for that of the Governor in Council or to question the validity of an order so made …. The only authority that can validly challenge [the Cabinet] … is Parliament itself.³⁶

But Thorson’s rejection turned, not upon broad constitutional issues, but upon a legal squibble: that is, that the Custodian was not a servant of the Crown but a statutory officer who happened to be the Secretary of State. In other words, the property owners had sued the wrong person:

The proceedings are by way of petition of right against the Crown as though the properties were in the possession of the Crown and on the assumption that although they are vested in the Custodian he holds them as the servant or agent of the Crown …. The Custodian is not a servant or agent of the Crown but an independent person in respect of whose acts a petition of right against the Crown does not lie …. Under the circumstances … I must hold that the proceedings were erroneously taken. In my opinion, this ends the matter.³⁷

The original plan by the Owners Association to pursue the case to the Supreme Court was, of course, abandoned. The owners were assessed $1,800 for court costs.

During this protracted period between the time that the petition was filed and Thorson’s ruling, the property issue appeared to be in limbo, forgotten among the other urgent problems. But with the end of the war, the issue was revived. It was not that it was ever out of mind, for it was the major issue around which many disaffected evacuees based their vitriolic hostility against any action that ever hinted of “co-operation” with Ottawa. Even those few who had realized a decent return from the sale of property could not ignore the potency of the argument that the security of the entire group had been stripped away and that losses needed to be redressed.

It was around mid-July of 1946 that the protest movement was renewed. “We feel the time has come,” wrote a group of Issei World War I veterans, “for an immediate appraisal and indemnification of our material and occupational losses.³⁸ Sgt. George Yasuzo Shoji, a twice-wounded veteran of the Princess Pats, told Labour Minister Mitchell:

At the age of 60 years, I have only the sum of $39.32 to show as the fruits of … 30 years’ work. My four years on the battlefront … as well as the back-breaking toil … on my land have brought me nothing but doubt, fear, a sense of insecurity, loneliness and tragedy in the last years of my life.³⁹

Shoji had bought 19 acres of land in the Fraser Valley village of Wonnock in 1931 under the Soldiers’ Settlement Act and then cleared and cultivated nine acres. In 1943, his land, a two-storied house, four chicken houses, an electric incubator and 2,500 fowls were sold, without his consent, for $1,492.59. After deductions for taxes and commissions, Shoji received a cheque for $39.32 which he promptly declined, claiming a loss of $4,725.02.⁴⁰

Several weeks earlier in the House of Commons, CCF leader M.J. Coldwell presented the case of Sgt. Buck Suzuki, a Nisei born in New Westminster and a World War II veteran, whose house, lot and furniture, valued at $7,000, had been sold for $1,963. On August 31, Angus MacInnis, complaining in the Commons about the delay in the Exchequer Court’s decision – “the courts of Canada are not so slow that they cannot find time to deal with these cases over a period of three years” – demanded a commission be set up to investigate property losses. Meanwhile, a sub-committee of the CCJC, composed of Edith Fowke, Kinzie Tanaka and Kunio Hidaka, asked for restoration of property to owners “where possible” and restitution of losses and compensation for net loss in income as the result of the evacuation. The JCCD then implemented plans to make a renewed and organized thrust at the government, backed by a comprehensive survey of losses in property and goods. A survey of 1,800 evacuees in the Toronto area subsequently showed that property estimated to be worth $1,400,395.66 had been sold for $351,334.86, representing a loss of $1,031,732.89.⁴¹

In 1947, with the deportation orders rescinded, property claims took the foreground. Andrew Brewin, who had agreed to head the legal work, presented a draft of a proposed judiciary commission to hear claims and provide compensation for losses “arising fairly” from the evacuation to Secretary of State Colin Gibson. But the Cabinet hedged over the terms of reference and attempted to gloss over the fact that losses were anything but negligible. During the April debate on Bill 22, which dealt with amendments to the Trading With The Enemy Act and the continuation of special duties of the Custodian, embarrassing questions were raised in the House about the disposal of Japanese property, particularly over the Custodian’s neglect of proper safeguards.⁴² As a result, Gibson was obliged to refer the subject to the Public Accounts Committee for investigation. During the same session of Parliament, Gibson admitted that the Ukrainian Labour Farmer Temple Association, which had been declared an “illegal” operation after the outbreak of the war because of its Communist affiliation, had been reimbursed in full and in some cases given awards greater than the sale price following confiscation of its property by the Custodian.⁴³

In fact, it was during these Public Accounts Committee hearings that many details of the Custodian’s handling of property came to public light. Various officers of the Custodian, for example, admitted that losses accruing from vandalism had been considerable:

The storage places have on a number of occasions been broken into and containers ransacked …. A certain type of citizen considered the abandoned homes of the evacuees an opportunity to engage in theft and vandalism …. In one home, every piece of plumbing had been removed, light fixtures and switches had been disconnected and taken away and even leaded glass doors and windows were missing …. The house had been broken into time and time again, even though it was boarded up after each depredation …. A building on East Hastings St. which certain Japanese had filled with chattels … had been ransacked, lids of boxes torn off and the entire contents scattered over the floor.⁴⁴

It was quite evident that local police were all too frequently providing inadequate protection. Their professed inability to find, identify or arrest vandals was either a confession of incompetence or a reflection of prejudice.

After Brewin, the CCJC’s Mrs. Donalda MacMillan and George Tanaka of the JCCD appeared before the Public Accounts Committee to press for a Royal Commission with powers broad enough to deal with all evacuation losses. The committee recommended on June 17 that a commission be appointed to

inquire into and report upon the claim of any person of the Japanese race now resident in Canada for alleged loss which resulted from the amount received by him being less than the fair market value of his property at time of sale or loss.⁴⁵

The Commission was set up on July 18, under the authority of Order-in-Council P.C. 1810, with Justice Henry Bird of the British Columbia Supreme Court appointed as Commissioner. But its terms of reference were ludicrously limited, pertaining only to losses suffered if it could be proved that the Custodian had failed “to exercise reasonable care” in the supervision or sale of property so that the money he received from such property was less than the market value. The onus, then, was on the claimant to provide evidence that the Custodian had been negligent; for example, that he failed to take proper precautions in preventing property from being lost, stolen or destroyed during the absence of the owners. The terms had little relation either with the recommendation of the Public Accounts Committee or King’s promise earlier in the year to redress any “injustice” caused by the sale of property below a “fair market price.”

After considerable pressure was exerted on the Cabinet, Justice Minister J.L. Ilsley announced on September 12 that the terms had been widened to meet with the earlier recommendation. But he also said that Bird would not hear claims for losses sustained during the period before the Custodian took control or for losses for property which was not under his management.⁴⁶ These limitations angered a group of claimants in Toronto who urged a “wholesale boycott” of the Claims Commission on the principle that the government had broken its promise to hold property in safekeeping and thus was responsible for all losses.⁴⁷ The “boycott” movement died down, but it marked the beginning of a rift among those protesters, the CCJC and the National Japanese Canadian Citizens Association, which had been organized after a conference in Toronto, ending September 2, of Nisei groups from across the country. Most claimants, however, decided to accept the terms “under protest” in the hopes that the Cabinet would be amenable, at a later date, to allow further claims. It was also hoped that the Commission would uncover sufficient evidence so that the investigation would indeed be enlarged before its termination.

The task which lay ahead for the CCJC and the NJCCA was obviously not an easy one. To prove that the sale price fell below the “fair” market price of property at the time it was sold, CCJC counsel had to prepare detailed claims and present expert surveys, analyses and valuations. On the other hand, counsel for the government and the Custodian had to present documents indicating why the government opposed a claim. With over a thousand claimants scattered across the country, the case was unique in the history of Canadian jurisprudence. Judicial commissions had had to deal with claims for expropriation of property, some of a very extensive nature, but never before had it been necessary to inquire into the value of so many different properties lost to a large group of residents scattered throughout Canada.

Legal counsel, including one Nisei, was organized for claimants in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, with Brewin co-ordinating the overall operation.⁴⁸ Valuation experts were engaged to investigate each property and evidence was compiled on comparative sales and the relation of sale price to assessment. Claimants were asked to pay a retaining fee of one per cent of the total loss claimed by them. Later another one per cent was assessed to pay additional expenses and finally a levy of 5¾% of the awards granted was added as payment for legal expenses, which eventually cost claimants a total of $100,000. Only the Issei-dominated Southern Alberta Joint Committee, the Sogo Enjokai, decided to act independently and hired Gladstone Virtue as counsel on behalf of 200 claimants. This group, presided over by Sadayoshi Aoki and representing Issei in Picture Butte, Iron Springs and other major Japanese enclaves in southern Alberta, had decided to withhold recognition of the NJCCA – a symptom of a lingering distrust of Nisei leadership and an indication of some internecine strife among evacuees in that province.

Mrs. Ito Imada was the first claimant to appear before Bird as the inquiry got underway in Kamloops on December 8, 1947. She claimed that her Fraser Valley farm, valued at $7,935, was sold by the Soldier Settlement Board for $3,038 for a loss of $4,897. She was later awarded $2,829.93. On the other hand, the seventh claimant, Mrs. Haruko Iwata of Salmon Arm, was later awarded $50.16 after she testified that she had sold her $4,100 home on Vancouver’s Cordova St. for $2,500 in a private transaction. The mother of seven children testified that

We couldn’t understand what ‘Custodian’ means. We thought the Custodian is going to confiscate or surrender the whole thing …. I couldn’t trust the Custodian.⁴⁹

Each claimant was subjected to rigorous cross-examination by Bird and government counsel, with the claimant usually asked to give detailed information about the property extending back to the date of original purchase. Mrs. Iwata’s case, a relatively minor one, was transcribed in 41 typewritten pages by the official court secretary. It became quickly obvious, as the Commission swung eastward early in 1948, that the weight of evidence and rebuttal – which included claims for such diverse items as uncleared bush land in lots and acres, productive farms, fishing boats, buildings in all manner of usage and maintenance, and homes ranging from shacks to select residential property as well as the complex problems evident in claims for goods and chattels, the question of loss and pillage and the assessment of the degree of the Custodian’s responsibility – was snarling the inquiry into a procedure that might take years to resolve. It was also placing further strain on the slender financial resources of the claimants and the limited legal personnel available.⁵⁰

In the spring of 1949, then, both parties agreed to adopt a formula by which Bird would recommend a general percentage allowance for each category of claim, with the provision that evidence could be presented in special cases having “unusual characteristics.” Bird also arranged the appointment of eight county and district court judges to act as subcommissioners so that the hearings would be expedited. Most of the claimants reluctantly accepted this concept of a “settlement” policy but a minority, including 54 claimants from Toronto, rejected it. They felt, for example, that Bird’s general allowance of 5% on claims involving Greater Vancouver property losses was completely arbitrary and unjust. “We all, apparently including Mr. Justice Bird, feel out here as if we are sitting on a keg of dynamite, waiting for the decision with respect to the proposed settlement,”⁵¹ wrote Robert McMaster, the CCJC’s Vancouver counsel. But the scheme was accepted and the inquiry, on that basis, continued through the rest of the year and terminated on March 3, 1950. On June 14, over 2½ years after the first case was heard, Bird’s report was released to the public.

Bird had heard a total of 1,434 claims, involving 2,420 sales of real and personal property for which losses of over $5 million were claimed. These claims were set against 7,086 parcels of real and personal property which were sold by the Custodian for $2,591,456.⁵² A total of 102 claims were withdrawn by claimants or rejected by Bird as being irrelevant to the inquiry. The terms of reference excluded losses caused by deterioration of property, losses prior to assumption of control by the Custodian, losses from the forced sale of fishing boats and other losses such as “goodwill.” A total of 25,046 pages of transcript were recorded and 8,996 exhibits filed. Those who were “repatriated” to Japan in 1946, and who were among the most embittered over this issue, could not file claims, and many had taken the view that it was hopeless to attempt to gain recompense for household effects and personal items. The claims, as agreed upon in the “settlement scheme,” were divided into separate categories including real property in urban and rural areas, farms sold under the Director of Veterans Land Administration, fishing boats and gear, and miscellaneous property.

Bird found that in the first six months of operation, the office of the Custodian was so overloaded with work that it could not “efficiently and promptly” perform its duties, and that “regrettable” losses were sustained. But Bird absolved the Custodian of incompetence or mishandling:

I am satisfied … that the very onerous task … was competently performed, with due regard to the interest of the owners, notwithstanding that the task had to be performed in an atmosphere of public hysteria induced by war. The fact that I have found that in certain respects fair market value was not realized on sales … in no sense reflects upon the work of the Custodian’s organization.⁵³

Cabinet ministers, judges and other officials had often publicly praised the Security Commission for its handling of the evacuation, the navy for its round-up of the fishing boats at the outbreak of the Pacific war, the RCMP for its work in guarding the nation from the Japanese. Now it was the Custodian’s turn.

In the controversial sale of 471 parcels of real property in the Greater Vancouver area, Bird found that the Custodian’s management was “sound and businesslike and the integrity of the appraisers “beyond question”⁵⁴ except that expenses charged to the owners resulted in their receiving less than the fair market price. He ruled, therefore, that the sums deducted by the Custodian be awarded the owners – the only concession he would make. Bird’s ruling ran counter to evidence compiled by the CCJC that the Custodian sold most of the homes and pieces of land by at least 13% below assessment value. What most of the 204 claimants received, then, was a rebate of the commission, roughly 5%, that the Custodian had charged them for confiscating and selling their property without consent. Bird’s decision was made in the face of government counsel’s offer of 10% over and above the sale price. Writing to Justice Minister Stewart Garson, Brewin urged that he take steps to have the matter settled

without any continuing or rankling sense of grievance in the minds of the claimants and those who support their claim …. We are anxious to see that this whole matter be closed out without further controversy and serious disappointment.

Garson replied, briefly, that it would be “the height of impropriety” for him to interfere.⁵⁵ On the other hand, Bird ruled that appraisers used by the Custodians to evaluate 378 pieces of property elsewhere in the province had lacked the “intimate” knowledge or expertise attributed to those who evaluated Vancouver property; hence, he recommended that 10% of the sale price, plus rebate of commissions charged, be awarded to owners.

The land deal redolent of carpetbagging on its most self-serving level occurred in the Fraser Valley. Gordon Murchison, Veterans Land Administration Director, had already admitted before a House of Commons committee that he had been in “a good strategic position” for acquiring lands for future sale to war veterans. He claimed that subsequent sales to veterans were at prices paid to the Japanese owners but, under questioning, had to admit that not all of the purchasers were veterans, and that excessive profits were realized. Two farms, for example, were sold for $2,000 and $3,050 after the VLA had paid $245 and $433, respectively, for them.

A total of 507 claims for a total of $1,838,162.50 were presented against the Custodian’s sale of 572 pieces of farm lands in the Fraser Valley to the VLA. Seventeen farms, which were thought to represent a fair cross-section of the lands, had been evaluated by the Rural Advisory Committee representing the Custodian as worth $43,100 while evaluators employed by the VLA said they were worth $28,232 – a difference of 53%. But when the Committee rejected an offer by the VLA of $825,000 for all the lands owned by the Japanese, the Custodian received a letter from the Director of the VLA:

Advice … indicates that your Vancouver Committee considers these particular lands are worth approximately $1,250,000 …. May I advise you frankly that the DVLA is not interested in these lands at that figure …. This [$850,000] is the final offer I am prepared to make for these particular properties in bulk.⁵⁶

Subsequently, 69 pieces which had been withdrawn from the bulk sale because of doubts over details of title, were sold by the Custodian for an aggregate price of 102% in excess of the original VLA offer. Studies made of Land Registry Office records of sales made by non-Japanese farmers in 1943 also showed that in Mission Village, for example, they exceeded by 212% the sales made by the Custodian in the same municipality. Bird’s conclusion:

I have no hesitation in finding that the claimants did not realize the fair market value of their lands …. The aggregate of DVLA prices must be increased by 80 per cent thereof to attain fair market value.⁵⁷

The terms of reference given to Bird did not include consideration of some 950 boats appraised and sold by the Japanese Fishing Vessels Disposal Committee. Thus of 201 vessels sold by the Custodian himself, claims for $160,432 were presented to the inquiry by former owners of 109 boats impounded after Pearl Harbor. Japanese fishermen complained of heavy losses, not only through the forced sales but also as a result of damage during the hasty impounding and from vandalism and deterioration.

Bird threw out 34 claims as beyond his terms of reference and considered the sale of only 75 boats, sold by the Custodian for $38,504, for which claims of $85,572 were made. He concluded that these sales were made at a “fair” market price except that the boats had suffered “abnormal” depreciation in value by being exposed to the weather for up to eight months. Bird thus awarded an average of 12½% of sale price as compensation and also returned the deduction of 13.5% charged to owners by the Custodian for “sundry” expenses such as “watchmen’s services, wharfage, appraiser’s fees and insurance.”

Of nets and fishing gear, for which 173 claims were made for $148,958.91, Bird said that problems of “exceptional difficulties” arose because of damage, theft, deterioration and faulty storage. To the $48,000 realized by the Custodian’s sales, Bird added 25% – which, in his opinion, was “rough justice,” a phrase liberally sprinkled through his report. A total of 154 claims for $109,660.62 were entered out of the sale of 428 automobiles and trucks confiscated by the RCMP. The Custodian had based his prices on rather “superficial” examinations by used-car dealers whose valuation was up to 35% lower than prices realized from sales of comparable vehicles during that period. Owners were awarded 25% of the Custodian’s sale price.

The final category consisted of claims totalling $975,501.87 for an enormous variety of personal property, for which an inquiry was patently an absurdity. What was, for example, the “fair” market price for family heirlooms whose sentimental value was incalculable? Was the 50¢ paid for a large trunk containing silk kimonos and Japanese records a “fair” market price? Over $90,000 had been realized in auctions and $94,000 in sales by tender on personal property, on which owners claimed specific losses of $521,162.02. Again, as in other transactions, the Custodian had charged commissions to the absentee owners: an average of 23.2% of the sale price for the cost of “handling expense, advertising and auctioneering fees’’ and 12% for “appraisal and advertising’’ for goods sold by tender.

Indeed, these commissions against owners whose property was sold without their consent was the subject of a long colloquy among Brewin, Bird and government counsel John Hunter early in the inquiry:

Hunter: The amounts involved are quite large. There is approximately $100,000 that has been paid to real estate agents, there has been approximately $25,000 paid to auctioneers, and … approximately $27,000 retained by the Custodian for handling charges and the cost of advertising sales. So that amounts to approximately $157,000.

Bird: Is it as much as that?

Brewin: These particular orders-in-council expressly exclude … the commissions with which we are here concerned. Section 12 of P.C. 1665, which was the first enactment dealing with this matter, after vesting the property as a protective measure only, says ‘provided however that no commission shall be charged by the Custodian in respect of such control and management.’

Bird: Your contention … is that the term ‘commission’ is broad enough to include disbursements made to others by the Custodian for services rendered in the sale?

Brewin: The Latin maxim applies, a man who does it to others does it to himself. The Custodian cannot defeat … the intent of this proviso by employing their own people and paying them and charging the man who is the claimant with the commission in respect to control and management.⁵⁸

Bird subsequently ruled that the charges for these “commissions” be returned to the owners and added 6.8% of the sale price realized in auctions of personal goods. He awarded, then, a total of 30% to claimants whose goods were sold by auction and 12% to those whose property was sold by tender. Among claims which Bird flatly turned down were items deemed “valueless” and consequently abandoned by the Custodian, items allegedly worth $70,000 which had not been declared at the time of the evacuation, items left with private agents and subsequently lost, goods shipped by the Custodian to owners in the interior camps or elsewhere and subsequently lost or stolen, and items such as Buddhist iconography for which there was “no market in the Occidental community.”

Except in the case of the Fraser Valley farms, then, Bird generally found little evidence that real property and chattels were sold for substantially less than the “fair” market price, as had been claimed by the owners. The Fraser Valley farmers received a total of $632,226.61, over half of the $1,222,929.26 which Bird recommended as payment to cover losses in all categories. The top award of $69,950, as against a claim for $268,675, was given to the Royston Lumber Company, which had extensive timber rights on Vancouver Island. The smallest award, $2.50, was given to Ishino Makino for a motor vehicle claim.

The awards came too late and were too little – despite Bird’s claim that “rough justice” had been achieved. An old Issei in 1950 could stare at his cheque for $140.50 awarded as his recovery on a house in Vancouver for which he paid $3,000 in 1930 and which was sold by the Custodian for $1,200 in 1943. He could stare and stare and wonder what remote connection it had with the destruction of his life’s work and security. A former Surrey farmer who received $7.84 for a truck could share the same bewilderment. He received $412.50 for his 10-acre farm, but he was too old to start anew. Men and women in their sixties who by frugal living and hard work had attained independence as grocery store or restaurant owners had lost almost everything except meagre cheques for $118.75 or $87.20 or $327.50. Losses had to be measured in terms of entire lives. Even Nisei paid the price in the loss of opportunity and gain represented in their parents’ property.

Perhaps the final irony was that the federal government, through the Custodian’s office, retained the interest on the money attained through sale of evacuee property, which by the end of 1946 amounted to $41,839.41. Evacuees in the interior camps, for example, had been allowed to draw $100 monthly on funds credited to their accounts but were not given the interest. Pleas to award this money to claimants so that they could at least use it to help defray legal expenses had been rejected as “an almost impossible administrative task.” Justice Minister Garson also was “scornful” of the request that the federal government share some of the burden of financing the preparation of claims and to make it easier for claimants to retain the services of experienced counsel and their assistants. Fees for repairs and maintenance, unpaid taxes, insurance and mortgages were paid out of the Custodian’s sales and deducted from awards paid to owners.

Still, the CCJC and the NJCCA felt that their contention that substantial losses had occurred had been shown to be valid and they continued to press the government to consider other claims, such as those involving fishing boats and private sales made under duress.⁵⁹ But the anger and frustration which had been welling up in many claimants came to a boil in September, 1950, when the Custodian required that claimants sign a form releasing the Crown and the Custodian

from all actions, claims and demands whatsoever in respect of real and personal estate of the Releasor and the rents, profits and income thereof respectively, or any part or parts thereof or in respect of any act, deed, matter or thing whatsoever done or omitted to be done by the Custodian in or about the administration, sale or disposal of the Releasor’s property or in any respect of any of the matters above recited.

About the same time that these forms were being mailed to claimants, Prime Minister St. Laurent told the NJCCA, which had sent him a brief asking that further claims be considered, that the matter was closed:

The government has concurred in [Bird’s] recommendations and money has been made available to meet the claims …. We feel we have discharged our obligations both to the Japanese Canadians and to the general public.⁶⁰

It was then that the simmering feud between the NJCCA and the raucous Toronto Claimants Committee, which had been formed as a splinter group to press for full compensation, broke out into an angry confrontation lasting well into the spring of 1951.⁶¹ The Claimants Committee, three of whose members – Senji Takashima, Roger Obata and Kunio Hidaka – had resigned from the CCJC, were advising claimants not to sign the release in order to prevent the claims question from becoming a closed issue. The CCJC and the NJCCA, on the other hand, argued that there was little likelihood that the government would accede to requests for further compensation and that claimants ought not to be “deluded” into accepting this belief. Brewin, for his part, said that signing the releases would not bar the claimants from making further claims but added, rather unconvincingly in view of past evidence, that such future allowances would be a “matter of grace” on the part of the government, “the fulfilment of a moral obligation.”⁶²

There was no doubt that the Claimants Committee, which claimed a membership of 245, was genuinely grieved over what they termed the “total inadequacy” of the government’s awards and felt that only full compensation would even remotely ameliorate the federal government’s grotesquely illiberal policies over the years. But yet, the original compromise in accepting the government’s narrow terms of reference had already been made four years previously, and the Claimants Committee’s often scurrilous attacks tended to besmirch, by implication, the six years’ toil of the CCJC, whose membership was mainly non-Japanese, which had espoused the cause of the evacuees and had implemented its belief in fair play while others had paid only lip service. There was no doubt that members of the CCJC and NJCCA also believed that the awards fell considerably short of rectifying not only the moral wrongs but also the physical losses. Yet, after the defeats and disillusionments of recent years, they felt that it was futile to begin another major test. The scars of that acrimonious, often vituperative confrontation, in which some claimants returned mutilated release forms to the CCJC, still remain, but there are few cases on record in which claimants actually rejected the awards.

A curious postscript ends the property episode. In the summer of 1967, in what Vancouver lawyers Roy MacLeod and Don Small called “our Centennial project,” Torazo and Fuku Iwasaki, then aged 87 and 81 respectively, exhumed the grisly skeleton in Canada’s closet – only to have it, predictably, neatly entombed again. Shortly after World War I, Iwasaki, a naturalized citizen, bought 640 acres of potentially valuable land, including 13,000 feet of shoreline and over 4 million board feet of timber, on Salt Spring Island in the Strait of Georgia and by 1940 had paid off the $3,950 purchase price. Two years later, he and his wife and son were shipped to the Greenwood interior camp after being given two hours to pack their belongings. In May, 1945, Iwasaki received a notice from the Custodian that his property had been sold for $5,250 and that he was credited with $4,932.99, which represented the sale price minus the Custodian’s usual commission. Iwasaki, like many others, refused to recognize the sale and made a claim for $66,000 during Justice Bird’s inquiry. It was a case that the CCJC had felt merited a special hearing since the sale hinted of some elements of “skulduggery.”⁶³ Bird found that a true valuation was over $12,000 and Iwasaki was awarded an additional $8,083, which he reluctantly accepted after signing an official release. Over the following years, Iwasaki wrote several letters to Ottawa, but the federal government – following Bird’s report and St. Laurent’s decree that the entire claims issue was closed – ignored his protests.

When MacLeod and Small took on the case in 1967, feeling – like those lawyers who toiled for the CCJC 20 years previously – that the case had “a hell of a strong moral issue,” especially when all of Canada was celebrating the glories of its past history, they demanded a “voluntary” payment of $1.5 million from the federal government as moral and financial compensation. That, they felt, was not exorbitant since waterfront land was at a premium all along the lower British Columbia coast and prices of $60 a foot were not uncommon. Once again the claims issue, if only briefly, was back in the newspapers and magazines with Maclean’s, for example, headlining its story, “Canada’s Day of Infamy on Salt Spring Island.”⁶⁴

The rest of the episode encapsulates the old familiar story. The “moral” appeal got the familiar Ottawa runaround after it was presented to Secretary of State Judy LaMarsh who, in turn, transferred it to Registrar-General John Turner. Iwasaki then filed a petition in the Exchequer Court of Canada, alleging that his property had been fraudulently “conveyed” by Secretary of State Gibson in his capacity as Custodian to one of his agents, Gavin Mouat, a director of a large Vancouver Island real estate firm. The case was heard in Vancouver on February, 1968, with Judge F.A. Sheppard handing down his ruling, on October 29, 1969, that Iwasaki’s claim was without foundation and that the release he had signed in 1950 was a valid and binding document that absolved the Crown of all subsequent claims. The Supreme Court of Canada upheld the ruling.

It was a decision that surprised no one, but even if the case was an exercise in futility, it raised at least one disturbing question. If, for example, Iwasaki’s former property was worth $1.5 million in 1967, what is the value of all the other property confiscated and sold without the owners’ consent?

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Notes

1. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1945, p. 3767. ↩
2. For precise language of the orders-in-council, see In the Supreme Court of Canada, Factum of the Attorney General of Canada in the Matter of a Reference to the Validity of Orders in Council of the 15th Day of December 1945 (P.C. 7355, 7356, 7357), in Relation to Persons of the Japanese Race (Ottawa. 1946), p. 4. ↩
3. Order-in-council P.C. 7414, December 28, 1945, continued in full force and effect all orders and regulations lawfully made under the War Measures Act in force immediately before January 1, 1946. ↩
4. In the Privy Council, On Appeal from the Supreme Court of Canada in the Matter of a Reference as to the Validity of Orders-in-Council of the 15th day of December, 1945 (P.C. 7355, 7356, 735 7) in Relation to Persons of the Japanese Race, (Toronto: Sovereign Press, 1947), p. 42. See also House of Commons Debates, 1945, p. 2407. ↩
5. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1945, p. 3760. By “statutes”, King was referring to the Immigration Act which “contains provisions for the deportation of enemy aliens or persons who have been enemy aliens in certain cases” and the Naturalization Act which “similarly recognizes the principles of revocation of the status of a naturalized person who has sworn himself by act or speech to be disaffected or disloyal.” ↩
6. Order of Reference to Order-in-council P.C. 45, January 8, 1946. The order outlines the powers on which the orders-in-council rested, the plans of the government and refers to Gen. MacArthur’s assent in the matter of receiving repatriates. ↩
7. See Gladstone Virtue to Andrew Brewin, January 21, 1946: “The Japanese [in Alberta] are so confused and so little organized that they seem to have really no idea of who is representing them either in the way of committees or counsel.” ↩
8. Statement of Claim, Utaka Shimoyama and Yae Nasu vs. the Attorney General of Canada, December 27, 1945. ↩
9. The New Canadian, January 19, 1946. ↩
10. Rabbi Feinberg continued his comparison of Nazi philosophy with Canada’s deportation policy in a sermon at the Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. See “Surely Nazi Philosophy Hasn’t Penetrated Here?”, Toronto Star, January 21, 1946. ↩
11. This and following citations are contained in In the Supreme Court of Canada, In the Matter of a Reference as to the Validity of Orders-in-Council of the 15th Day of December 1945 (P.C. 7355, 7356, 7357) in Relation to Persons of the Japanese Race, Factum of the Co-Operative Committee on Japanese Canadians (Toronto: Sovereign Press, 1946). ↩
12. Act 31, Charles II, Chap. 12, Section 60. Ibid., p. 4. ↩
13. Section 92, chap. 13, British North America Act. ↩
14. For details and citations of legal precedents, see Factum of the Attorney General of Canada, op. cit. The government’s case was supported by a separate presentation by the Attorney General of British Columbia. See In the Supreme Court, Factum of the Attorney General of British Columbia, etc. The province of B.C. naturally was keenly interested in the proceedings and sent Attorney General R.L. Maitland to sit on the government side of the Court. The argument of the CCJC was supported, but in absentia, by the attorney general of Saskatchewan. All attorneys-general of every province were notified of the Supreme Court hearing because of the issue of legislative authority over civil rights which in peacetime normally lay under the control of provincial legislatures. ↩
15. For details, see “Record of Proceedings” in In the Privy Council, On Appeal from the Supreme Court of Canada, op. cit., pp. 1-73. ↩
16. E.g., Submission of Committee for a Bill of Rights to the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (n.p., 1950), pp. 9-10; submission of NJCCA, in Senate of Canada, Proceedings of the Special Committee on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Ottawa, King’s Printer, 1950), No. 8, May 10, 1950, pp. 269-79. ↩
17. See tenBroek, J., Prejudice, War and the Constitution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954), esp. pp. 211-23, for analysis of constitutional consequences of the Japanese American evacuation. ↩
18. Supreme Court Reporter, Ex Parte Mitsuye Endo vs. United States (St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1944), 65. ↩
19. Supreme Court Reporter, Toyosaburo Korematsu vs. United States (St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1946), 65, p. 207. ↩
20. Brewin to Scott, January 26, 1946. ↩
21. Co-Operative Committee on Japanese Canadians, News Bulletin No. 3, February 20, 1946. ↩
22. E.g., Winnipeg Free Press, Toronto Star, Vancouver Province, Lethbridge Herald, St. Thomas Times-Journal editorials. For editorials supporting the Court’s ruling, see Vancouver Sun, Montreal Gazette. The Gazette, February 20, lauded the decision as “a fair, reasonable and democratic disposition of a difficult problem”, while the attitudes of the Free Press and the Star were reflected in the choice of headings for their editorials: “A Moral Issue” and “Above Legal Considerations.” ↩
23. Toronto Star, February 20, 1946. ↩
24. Toronto Star, February 22, 1946. ↩
25. Olmstead, R.A., “Co-Operative Committee on Japanese Canadians and Another and Attorney General for Canada and Another. On Appeal from the Supreme Court of Canada”, in Decisions of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council Relating to the British North America Act, 1867 and the Canadian Constitution, 1867-1954 (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1954), 3, pp. 458-81. ↩
26. “Backstage in Ottawa, By the Man with the Notebook”, Maclean’s, April 15, 1946, summed up the government’s quandary: “As it stands … the Government could (theoretically) send back to Japan a naturalized Canadian, but the latter could leave his wife and children in the Government’s lap. Needless to say, no such absurdities are likely to arise …. Best guess now is that these powers won’t be used. Japanese Canadians will remain in Canada unless they still desire to leave …. But they’ll be encouraged, not forced, to settle away from B.C.” ↩
27. The New Canadian, August 24, 31, 1946; Berton, P., “Marie Went Back to Dark Ages”, Maclean’s, July, 1951. ↩
28. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1946, p. 4639. There were 58 Japanese patients in Essondale during the time RCMP officers made their repatriation survey. ↩
29. Authorized by Order-in-council P.C. 288, January 13, 1942. Those boats not sold were placed under control of the Custodian under terms of order-in-council P.C. 6247, July 20, 1942. ↩
30. Canada, Department of Fisheries, Thirteenth Annual Report of the Department of Fisheries (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1943); Nakashima, K., Economic Aspects of the Evacuation of the Japanese from the Canadian Pacific Coast (M.A. thesis, University of McGill, 1946). The New Canadian, February 27, 1943, reported that the Japanese Fishing Vessels Disposal Committee sold 53 seiners at an average of $5,700 each, 57 trollers ($1,200 each), 64 packers ($2,275 each), 58 cod boats ($740 each) and 625 gill netters ($620 each). The three largest prices were gained for three sea-going boats, the “Kurosho” ($22,000), “Arasho” ($21,800) and “Howe Sound” ($21,000). ↩
31. NJCCA, Submission to the Royal Commission on Japanese Canadian Property, November 12, 1948, p. 25. Also, P.S. Ross & Sons, Report on Examination of the Custodian’s Office Vancouver, B.C., October 20, 1943, p. 10. ↩
32. For studies of property problems in the U.S., see U.S. Department of the Interior, The Wartime Handling of Evacuee Property (Washington: Government Printing Office, n.d.); Bloom, L., and R. Reiner, Removal and Return: the Socio-Economic Effects of War on Japanese Americans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949). ↩
33. Vancouver Province, August 10, 1944. ↩
34. The New Canadian, May 20, 1944. ↩
35. Canada, Exchequer Court, Reasons for Judgement, Between Eikichi Nakashima, Tadao Wakabayashi, Jitaro Tanaka and His Majesty the King (Ottawa, 1947). ↩
36. Ibid., p. 20. ↩
37. Ibid., pp. 6, 13. See also Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1947, p. 536, for discussion among members as to the role and status of the Custodian. ↩
38. The New Canadian, July 13, 1946. ↩
39. The letter was widely quoted. E.g., Fowke, E., They Made Democracy Work (Toronto: Garden City, 1951), p. 26; Grant, C., Home Again (Toronto, n.p., 1949), pp. 13-16. ↩
40. Shoji was eventually awarded an additional $1,996.81 for his land and $112.79 for his chattels. Recommendations for Payments of Awards to Persons of the Japanese Race Whose Claims Were Considered by the Hon. Mr. Justice Henry I. Bird Under the Provisions of Order-in-Council P.C. 3737, September 17, 1947 (Ottawa, April 3, 1950). See also Memorandum of Justice H.I. Bird to Minister of Veterans Affairs Milton F. Gregg, October 23, 1948. which cites the cases of Shoji and two other Issei veterans, Seichi Kinoshita and Zennosuke Inouye, and one Nisei World War II veteran, Tom Imada. ↩
41. The New Canadian, February 1, 1947. ↩
42. Donald Fleming (PC-Toronto Eglinton) was an especially vocal critic of the Custodian’s handling of property. See Minutes and Proceedings and Evidence, Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Ottawa: King’s Printer), April 14, 18, 29; May 1, 1947. ↩
43. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1947, pp. 537-42. ↩
44. Ross & Sons, op. cit., p. 9; report of H. Matthieu, assistant deputy to the Custodian, January 15, 1947, cited in Minutes and Proceedings, Standing Committee on Public Accounts, April 14, 1947. ↩
45. Minutes and Proceedings, June 17, 1947. ↩
46. Order-in-council P.C. 1810, July 18, 1947, as amended by P.C. 3737, September 17, 1947. ↩
47. The boycott group was hoping that precedent established in the Ukrainian Labour Temple Association case would apply to the Japanese case. But the boycott was not feasible unless it gained the support of the majority of claimants, and that was unlikely to be forthcoming since some claimants, the Fraser Valley farmers for example, were certain of gaining fair compensation. Other claimants were fearful that if the commission were to be boycotted, the government could then claim that the evacuees had a chance for compensation and turned it down. See “The Question of the Moment”, The New Canadian, September 13, 1947. ↩
48. Lawyers included R.J. McMaster and J.A. McLennan in B.C.; L.S. Turcotte and W.E. Huckvale in Alberta; Morris Shumiatcher, George Tamaki and P.G. Makaroff in Saskatchewan; S.M. Cherniack in Manitoba; R.A. Best in Ontario; Roger Ouimet in Quebec. ↩
49. Case No. 7, Japanese Property Claims Commission, In the Matter of the Claim of Mrs. Haruko Iwata, Proceedings at Hearings, Kamloops, B.C., December 9-10,1947, pp. 23-24. ↩
50. E.g., in one year ending August 31, 1949, expenses for the CCJC totalled $28,273.11. The main items were solicitors’ fees $9,000, solicitors’ expenses $9,824.43, valuation expenses $7,309.66, expenses of hearings $1,120.80. See Statement to the Claimants, Re: Origin, Nature and Work of the Co-Operative Committee on Japanese Canadians, April, 1950. ↩
51. McMaster to Brewin, April 25, 1949. The Brewin collection, 1947-1951, includes correspondence with other lawyers retained by the CCJC, letters and replies to and from various Cabinet members and other data. Another excellent source is the NJCCA collection, Japanese Canadian Evacuation Economic Losses and Claims, 1946-1948, Files B74-B141. ↩
52. Bird, H.I., Report Upon the Investigation into Claims of Persons of the Japanese Race Pursuant to terms of the Order-in-Council P.C. 1810 July 18,1947, as Amended, April 6, 1950. ↩
53. Ibid., p. 14. CCJC lawyers had been worrying that the entire issue would be determined on the basis of expediency. Bird is “politically conscious”, McMaster wrote to Brewin, “of taking a broad view. He apparently takes the view that if his recommendation for payment is too high, there might be an uproar across the country and the recommendations might never be acted upon …. He is also quite conscious that if his recommendations are too low, there would be a like uproar from the other side and might prove very politically embarrassing to the government”. See McMaster to Brewin, February 21, 1948. Privately, federal government officials were very wary that the Custodian’s role needed to be “whitewashed” since the Secretary of State was the titular head of the Custodian’s office. And as the inquiry wore on, Frank Shears, a director of the Custodian’s office in Vancouver, was reported to be “very upset” (see McMaster to Brewin, October 14, 1949) over the amount of money being awarded to claimants since it reflected on the manner in which the Custodian had handled the sales. Both Bird and John Hunter, the government counsel, insisted on the confidentiality of the “settlement” issue and asked that no counsel or official connected with the claimants make public statements. Wrote McMaster: “the commissioner urged that the whole matter be kept strictly confidential. We explained to him the difficulty of so doing with 1,200 clients to consult. Hunter was very urgent about this as he contends undue publicity might affect the government’s attitude …. Primarily they are concerned about newspaper publicity. Be sure that the New Canadian prints nothing and no responsible official makes any public statements.” See McMaster to Brewin, April 6, 1949. ↩
54. Bird, Report, pp. 22-3. ↩
55. F.P. Varcoe, Deputy Minister of Justice, to Brewin, April 30, 1949. ↩
56. DVLA to Custodian, May 29, 1943, in Bird, Report, p. 27. Difficulties over deeds or titles resulted in reduction of the bulk sale to DVLA to 741 pieces for $792,265.22. The DVLA also reduced money payable to former owners by a further $52,115 through receiving a 2 per cent reduction in the sale price in consideration of the cash settlement and by back dating the effective date of sale from June 14 to January 1, 1943. ↩
57. Bird, Report, pp. 38-9. Evacuation occurred at the height of the spring and summer season for Fraser Valley farmers and unless they had harvested all or most of their crops, they lost the only chance of getting immediate cash. When evacuation orders came, they had little time to harvest crops and crate their furnishings. After working to the last possible moment, farmers boxed up what they could of equipment and personal effects and stored them in sheds or garages, turned the key in the lock and went to the railroad station for entrainment, hoping for the best. Certainly by mid-1943 when they were sold to the DVLA, these farms had sustained shocking deterioration. A few farmers made deals with neighbours to continue production, sometimes only with verbal agreements with tenants who promised to give a designated share to the owner – provided the tenant considered an oral agreement binding. Bird, however, was merely investigating the “fair” market value of the property at the time of sale, notwithstanding the year of absence of owners. The type of farming, the peculiar skills and heavy toil required to wring even a little profit from strawberries and other small fruits, the general confusion of the evacuees and the animosity with which many west coast residents regarded the Japanese, whether alien or citizen, were all factors militating against the preservation of these lands in the absence of the owners and helped the DVLA to turn a quick deal. ↩
58. Proceedings, Inquiry into the Claims of Persons of the Japanese Race Regarding the Management and Sale of Their Property by the Custodian, January 9, 1948, pp. 36-44. ↩
59. E.g., NJCCA, Submission to the Prime Minister and Members of the Government in the Matter of Japanese Canadian Economic Losses Arising from the Evacuation, September 22, 1950. ↩
60. St. Laurent to George Tanaka, NJCCA executive secretary, October 12, 1950. In 1954, the Property Claimants Committee formed that year under E. Kagetsu of Toronto sought to re-open the issue, but Brewin was informed by Secretary of State J.W. Pickersgill that the government had no intention of departing from the St. Laurent policy of 1950. ↩
61. See The New Canadian, October 25, 1950, to June 2, 1951, for exchange of viewpoints; Wangenheim, E.D., The Social Organization of the Japanese Community in Toronto: a Product of Crisis (M.A. thesis, Political Science, University of Toronto, 1956), pp. 111-112; Letter, Senji Takashima to CCJC, November 13, 1950: “Why is the CCJC, which is supposed to be acting on behalf of Japanese Claimants, working hand in hand with the Custodian in using coercion to force claimants to sign … a release?” ↩
62. Statement of Co-Operative Committee on Releases, November 4, 1950, p. 12. ↩
63. McMaster to Brewin, June 4, 1949: “There is one other case where we are going to some considerable expense … to establish a special case …. The appraiser was an employee or a former employee of the ultimate purchaser, Gavin Mouat, an agent of the Custodian …. We have had investigate this property and make an appraisal. In his opinion, a conservative value of the property would be $12,000 and the property sold to Mouat for $5,250. There is also some suggestion of skulduggery on the part of Mouat with respect to the purchase …. Despite the fact that it is going to be expensive to pursue this matter …. it should be pursued and … it may cost us another $200 or $300 before we are through.” ↩
64. Maclean’s, September, 1967. See also Haggart, R., and A.E. Golden, Rumors of War (Toronto: New Press, 1971), pp. 213-7; Torazo Iwasaki v. The Queen (1969) I Exchequer Court Reports 281, Confirmed in the Supreme Court of Canada at 1970, Supreme Court Reports 437. ↩

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