Chapter Fourteen: Still a Yellow Peril

We are profoundly concerned about the precedent of making, in peace time and without any possible consideration of safety being involved, an inferior … class of citizens who can be compelled to live in this part of the country and prohibited from living in that part at the will of the government. This is a precedent which … will ultimately return to plague us. It is the first step which costs: an injustice once performed is fatally easy to repeat.
– Saturday Night, April, 1947

As of January 1, 1947, the Japanese population in British Columbia had been depleted to 6,776 people – one-third of the pre-war figure. Evacuees east of the Rockies were distributed as follows: Prairie provinces, chiefly Alberta and Manitoba, 5,871; Ontario, 6,616; Quebec, 1,247; others, 47, making a total of 20,588 Japanese remaining in Canada after “repatriation” to Japan was concluded. Although this somewhat startling redistribution did not wholly accomplish King’s stated ideal – that is, “to settle the Japanese more or less evenly throughout Canada … where they will not create feelings of racial hostility,”¹ it still shattered, once and for all, what he had called “the fact of concentration” in one province.

British Columbians did not wish to have this redistribution disturbed and, in fact, continued to press not only to prevent the return of the Japanese to the west coast but also to oust them completely from the province. During the Commons debate on the Citizenship Bill in April, 1946, Howard Green asked that the province be declared a “permanent” protected zone. Warning of “bloodshed” on the Pacific coast, he declared:

There will be 40 or 50,000 Japanese on the coast … again under the domination of the Japanese consul, still worshipping the Japanese emperor and still a menace.²

This kind of tough-minded, if apocalyptic, sentiment was widely ventilated by Liberal and Conservative members of Parliament, by the traditionally anti-Japanese newspapers like the Vancouver Sun, and by such groups as the Army, Navy and Air Force Veterans of Canada, which urged, at its annual convention of February, 1947, that government control be extended for 10 years to prevent

the return of this centrally-controlled, dual citizenship foreign bloc [which] would operate as an insidious menace to all citizens in this area, particularly to our war veterans now seeking re-establishment in farming, fruit-growing, fishing and small business.³

Writing in the Sun early in 1948, columnist Jack Scott lamented:

Even today the writer who defends the rights of those citizens of Japanese extraction can count on a flood of vitriolic, hysterical mail.⁴

While anti-Japanese hostility east of the Rockies generally abated after the end of the war, political and public pressure from British Columbia remained a constant – and was the chief reason for restrictions being held over until March 31, 1949. King had little difficulty in extending absolute control over the movement of Japanese by means of the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act of 1945. A year-and-a-half later, the Continuation of Transitional Measures Act, 1947, was designed to keep in force, among other orders-in-council, P.C. 251 of January 13, 1942, which prohibited fishing licences being issued to Japanese, and P.C. 946 of February 5, 1943, which empowered the Minister of Labour to control the Japanese in such matters as employment, business, travel, residence and association “with any persons.”⁵

The issue of extending absolute control of Canadian citizens, especially at a time when many Canadians had become interested in the need for a Bill of Rights, gave rise to a heated debate in the Commons in April, 1947. But when a vote was taken on April 24, an amendment proposed by the CCF calling for the removal of the restrictions from the schedule of continuing orders, only four Liberals and two Conservatives, including John Diefenbaker, member for Lake Centre, Saskatchewan, supported it, hardly sufficient to offset the Liberal majority. The vote was 105 to 31 against the amendment.

The retention of these orders clearly showed the effectiveness of pressure from British Columbia. For example, with federal by-elections looming in Vancouver Centre and Yale in the summer of 1948, Premier Byron Johnson flatly told King that the Liberals would lose the Vancouver seat if the Cabinet allowed the Japanese to return to the coast. Meeting on February 3, 1948, the Cabinet agreed with this view, with only Justice Minister Ilsley saying that he was prepared to lose both by-elections and “that history would denounce the party for having continued these orders.” King replied that:

History would condemn a government standing for certain principles if it allowed itself to be defeated and an enemy [CCF] government take its place …. One always has to take the larger view.⁶

Many Liberal members raised a “rumpus” at the party caucus on February 18, the members wanting to speak of nothing except the Japanese issue. King told the caucus that all five British Columbian Liberal members, Cruickshank, Reid, Mackenzie, Mayhew and Sinclair, were united in their opinion that the orders be extended and that if they were not, the consequences would be “very serious” for the party:

I said I agreed with the question of the rights of minorities … but I wanted to know which minority it was we intended to protect. Was it a minority constituted by a handful of Japanese, or was it the minority constituted by the entire population of British Columbia?⁷

But despite the wily manoeuvrings, the key seat of Vancouver Centre – vacated by Ian Mackenzie who opted for a place in the Senate – was taken handily by the CCF’s Rodney Young, with the Liberal candidate running third. The CCF’s Owen Lewis Jones also won the Yale seat.

The Cabinet revealed in the Commons on March 13, 1948, that it was seeking Parliament’s approval to continue 27 wartime orders, including two Japanese restriction orders, by means of another year’s extension of the Transitional Measures Act. Again, a CCF motion to force an end to controls as of March 31, 1948, was defeated by a standing vote of 73-23. Labour Minister Mitchell, however, announced that restrictions on movement in British Columbia would be eased slightly with no permits required for the Japanese to travel within the province. But “no person of the Japanese race” – unless he received a permit from the RCMP – could enter the coastal area or enter the province. The only exceptions to these regulations were veterans of the two world wars and their dependents.

Permits were occasionally issued for evacuees to enter British Columbia if such visits, as in the case of family deaths, were deemed to be emergencies. But the ban on entry into the coastal area was rigidly enforced. Yoshiji Takahashi of New Denver returned to Mission to demand title to his farm in October, 1945, but was arrested by the RCMP and sentenced to a year in Oakalla Prison for having travelled without a special permit. In another case, three years later, Akihide Otsuji was also sentenced to a year’s hard labour for the same breach of regulations. Vancouver Sun columnist Jack Scott wrote:

There was no great outcry of protest when this boy left the court room. The magistrate gave no indication that this was a case with deep roots of intolerance and bigotry. Indeed, there had been no counsel for the boy. He had conducted his own case in a pathetic and ludicrous manner. It was all over in five minutes. An open and shut case. The evidence against him was simply that he was a person of the Japanese race.⁸

For the Japanese, the return to the west coast was a theoretical rather than a practical issue – even for those who had remained in the province. It was not a matter of “going home,” of resuming former occupations and positions, for their homes, businesses, chattels, farms and boats had been confiscated and sold, and their struggle for a more equitable return from the forced sale was not to be resolved until June, 1950. In the United States, where the exclusion orders were withdrawn at the end of 1944, the anti-Japanese elements of the population in California employed practically every weapon, short of lynching and murder, to keep the evacuees from returning to the area. Hostile signs, anonymous telephone calls, night-riding “vigilantes” and arson were not uncommon. The acts of terrorism declined, however, both in frequency and seriousness, mainly because of the intensification of a publicity programme extolling the valour and record of Nisei combat units in Europe and in intelligence work in the Pacific theatre. But whether or not the same campaign of terrorism would have been mounted in Vancouver or Prince Rupert was purely academic. The total disinheritance of the west coast Japanese had effectively militated against even the possibility of a minor influx back to the coastal area. Indeed, the impasse involving eastward settlement – which evacuees had resisted – had been broken by 1946. Faced with the alternative of being “deported” to Japan, about two-thirds of the evacuees had abandoned their tactics of remaining in the province as long as possible.

For many of these reluctant resettlers, however, relocation eastward did not mean an easy transition from camp life to a new job or home in Lethbridge, Toronto or Montreal, but entailed yet another in the series of temporary stopovers, barracks, mess halls and communal living. Housing congestion and lack of suitable jobs in Eastern Canada meant that “hostels” had to be established by the Department of Labour to provide temporary lodging. In another of its euphemisms, these were dubbed by the department as “temporary regional centres.”⁹

After the first hostel was opened in April, 1944, at Summerville, Ontario, seven more facilities were established during 1946 from Saskatchewan to Quebec in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan; Transcona, Manitoba; Neys, Angler, Hearst and Fingal, Ontario; and Farnham, Quebec. These “hostels” had a capacity of 2,500 and all of them were filled by the fall of 1946. Some 733 Japanese lingered in them until May, 1947, having spent their fifth winter as displaced people without proper homes or employment – despite the less than subtle pressure exerted on them by hostel officials to accept whatever jobs were being offered.

Notices placed in interior camps in the Slocan Valley and Tashme, which were still extant in the summer of 1946, informed inmates of three choices: voluntary relocation, voluntary transfer to “hostels,” or voluntary “repatriation” to Japan. A notice posted in Lemon Creek, for example, outlined these three choices and ordered all persons 16 years of age and over to report to the camp administrators. Persons wishing to remain in Canada were given the choice of selecting the particular “hostel” which presumably struck their fancy. Those who did not report were “assumed [to be] content to be assigned to the particular relocation centre selected by this office.”¹⁰ Some 800 evacuees were shipped to Neys and herded behind the barbed-wire fencing which once enclosed German prisoners-of-war. Huge dormitories, reminiscent of the Hastings Park “assembly centre” of 1942, were divided into 9-by-14-feet rooms equipped with double-decker bunks. Each “room” was partitioned by walls 7 feet 3 inches high in order to provide “privacy” for the families. An open space of two feet from the ceiling to the top of the “partitions” guaranteed that there would not be.

These “hostels” provided rather convenient centres in which to dump the evacuees, expedite the closing of the interior camps and thus accelerate the rate of dispersal. After a residence in these hostels ranging from a few weeks to several months, most families did find jobs, some in pulp and paper companies in the northern Ontario bush, others in nearby towns and cities. “We are all glad to get out of this damned hostel. It is no place to stay any longer than you can help it,” said one Nisei who moved from Neys to a job with the Pigeon Timber Company. Other evacuees, especially those with large families of young children, found it difficult to find suitable employment. And as some of the hostels, like Transcona, were closed down and demolished by government wrecking crews to salvage lumber for veterans’ housing, the remaining “hostellers” were yet again transferred to Angler and Farnham.

In the context of continued exclusion from the west coast, the far from “voluntary” resettlement programme was described by one of its few critics as “an abuse of constitutional powers …. The defence zone is in fact being used to force [the Japanese] to settle down in other parts of Canada – an operation more like the house-breaking of so many dogs.”¹¹ Indeed, by this time, the Japanese were heartily tired of “being pushed around.” Some, in fact, of the 300 “relocatable” evacuees in the Lemon Creek and Slocan camps, which were scheduled for final closure on November 15, 1946, were determined to act out the ganbari role, “to sit it out until we’re forced out,” rather than go “voluntarily” to an eastern hostel. Department of Labour officials served them with orders requiring them to move east on 12 hours’ notice. RCMP officers knocked on doors, armed with train fares and sustenance cheques to be handed the unwilling relocees. Some of them went into hiding, but after a four-day search, most of them sheepishly surrendered to the RCMP and boarded the last train out of Slocan. Only 200 repatriates waiting for the last boat to Japan, some old and infirm persons awaiting shipment to New Denver and “exceptional” cases of hardship were then left of the 4,000 who had populated the Slocan Valley.

The brief evasion of eviction orders in the Slocan Valley, however, was sheer comic opera. In the main, evacuees co-operated with the government officials, suppressed their hostility and frustration and asked only to be left alone. Others were to channel their feelings into group organization, like the National Japanese Canadian Citizens Association, and use the tools of democracy itself to seek equitable treatment. The “Moose Jaw Incident,” however, fitted into neither of these categories.

In July, 1946, 128 Nisei and Issei internees from Angler, the remnant of 425 men still incarcerated in the Ontario internment camps on V-J Day who had refused to have anything to do with evacuation, relocation and repatriation, were shipped to the Moose Jaw “hostel” at the former RCAF depot, four miles south of the city, in the face of their continued refusal to “co-operate” with Department of Labour officials. Exactly why they were transferred 1,000 miles to Saskatchewan, when Angler itself had been transformed into a hostel and another hostel was located 10 miles away in Neys is not known. Perhaps it was the Liberal Party’s idea of a joke to send such a recalcitrant group to the only province in Canada governed by the CCF which had consistently attacked the Liberal Party’s policies. Then followed a prolonged ganbari confrontation by the hard core of these internees and their families which symbolized the frustration that many Japanese harboured but had been too timorous to express openly or had vented in all the pettiness of internecine bickering. And for over two years, they held federal government officials seemingly in thrall, unable to break the back of their resistance.

At the peak of its habitation in late 1946, the Moose Jaw hostel held some 280 people. The first hint of resistance came in the spring of 1947 when offers of employment were refused and a notice to vacate by May 30 went unheeded. Most of the residents, under some persuasion by Commissioner of Japanese Placement J.F. MacKinnon, left the hostel either to accept work or transfer to an eastern hostel. Several Issei, considered unfit for employment, were shipped to New Denver. Left in the hostel were 11 internees and their families, totalling 61 persons, and 24 single male internees. An Issei spokesman for the group explained that his resistance was linked inseparably with his resentment over his mistreatment at the hands of the government and he demanded “more security or financial help,” redress for past sufferings and losses and suitable employment:

In pre-war days I owned a small business in Vancouver. Into this business I have put my life savings. The business for years was bad and I was forced to work in a sawmill and my wife looked after the little store, but for years my pay cheque also went into the business. It was just before the outbreak of war … that my business turned profitable … An Official of the Custodian of Enemy Property came over to take my business away. At this time he promised me and my family as soon as peace is restored my business will be given back to me. After doing this, the RCMP visited me and told me to leave my family and go to work in the Rockies making roads at 25 cents an hour. This employment I refused for the simple reason that it was impossible for me to leave my family and children, not knowing where they would be sent after I left … I was taken into custody by the RCMP and shoved into a concentration camp [at Angler]. For four years I have spent behind barbed wires and this life was none too good. What did I do to this country or to this government to deserve all this punishment? Was I guilty of something? If I was, why doesn’t the government give me a trial or tell me that I am guilty?

One day an official of the Department of Labour came to the camp and told me and the other inmates that we were moving to Moose Jaw. We did not have any choice. We are called “diehard ex-internees” but that is not true. I have every intention of moving out of here. I don’t want to stay here and I would like to go out and start life again just like every other evacuee family has done … But with all the misery and hate that I have gone through under democracy, it makes me so mad that I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. But one thing I would like to say is that with my family of three children, with the biggest 15 years old, and me getting close to 60, I’ve got to get more security or financial help or I just can’t figure how I could live and start life anew again.

The employment they offer here is mostly farm work – sugar beet or wheat farming. It is impossible for me to accept this type of employment, especially with three girls, all young, and with four years of concentration camp life I am physically and mentally unfit. The Department of Labour is only trying to get rid of us; they don’t care how they do it.

I would like to ask: who is responsible for us? Who was responsible for the misery I went through behind barbed wire for four years? What did I do to deserve all this punishment? The sooner the government gives me a satisfactory deal, the sooner I will get out of this place. My store has been sold without my consent. My life savings are gone. Is this democracy?¹²

In August, Department of Labour officials announced a “final” closing date on the 13th of that month and that food supplies would be terminated thereafter. On August 6, three Issei, classified as unfit for labour and who were quoted as saying they “would rather die” than leave the camp, were taken into RCMP custody. Two days later, guarded by six officers, they were bundled into a train and shipped to New Denver. Two of the men were seen to be without shoes and the other without a shirt. Ross Thatcher, the CCF member for Moose Jaw, protested the seizure and forced eviction in a telegram to King:

Strongly protest forceful evacuation of residents of Japanese camp at Moose Jaw by RCMP. Believe order stopping food may result in hunger to dozens of children and old people. Democratic rights of Canadian citizens apparently endangered by strong-arm tactics. Urge immediate investigation to avoid trouble at camp.¹³

Later, on March 15, 1948, speaking in the Commons against the Liberal Party’s extension of Japanese restrictions until April 1, 1949, Thatcher referred to the actions of the Labour Department in Moose Jaw as those of “a police state.”

When mess hall services were suspended, more people left the hostel, leaving 58 still determined to “sit tight.” They consisted of 18 single men living in an unpartitioned hut, one family taking up another, and hostel supervisor Jack McKillop and six families living in a third barrack. Included in the group were Hirokichi Isomura, a World War I veteran, and his family. The International Red Cross office in Montreal turned down pleas for help and the hostellers depended on sympathetic whites and Japanese from Moose Jaw for food supplies. Interviewed over the local radio station CHAB, Tsuneo Naka, a 26-year-old Nisei, said they were fighting eviction as “a matter of principle”:

We want to be treated like other Canadian citizens and allowed to go back to our homes. We want to be compensated for our seized businesses and homes and for our five years spent in internment camps … The government took us out of our homes, interned us as enemy aliens, and seized our property, all without cause. It may have been legal, but it wasn’t justice – and it is justice we want.¹⁴

The issue, of course, had become a source of acute embarrassment for the Department of Labour, which wanted to clear up the situation as quickly and quietly as possible. Under the authority of Order-in-Council P.C. 946, the department could evict the group, impose a $500 fine or 12 months in jail or both. But it was obviously reluctant to resort to such a drastic step.

Indeed, a sense of unreality hung over the entire situation. Threats of hara-kiri were made by some of the inmates whose money had run out and whose tenure in forced internment or self-imposed incarceration had now run to over six years. Some of these men still wore their Ontario internment camp uniforms of grey trousers with red stripes down the sides and a large red circle on the backs of their shirts. They moved slowly, dragging their feet, prepared to explode even the most trivial incident out of proportion, wracked by an inordinate sense of persecution. As the temperature dipped to 16 below zero, 12 people, including two Nisei girls, engaged in a 48-hour “sit-down strike” on February 7, 1948, huddling in the light of candles after water, electricity and heat were turned off. RCMP officers transported them to Moose Jaw for a medical examination and, “none the worse for their experience,” they were herded back together with the 33 other inmates. But prodded by their 65-year-old “ringleader,” Isomura, and his 26-year-old son, Kunio, the men returned to the corridor outside McKillop’s office and resumed their “strike,” saying they would remain there until the federal government lifted its restrictions on movement of Japanese in Canada. The vigil in the corridor, however, was broken three weeks later.

The passive revolt was finally crushed on July 15, 1948, almost two years after the internees and their families were shipped to the Moose Jaw camp. Twelve movers arrived in four vans, packed and loaded the residents’ belongings and dumped them on a field north of the barracks. Sheriff G.G. Russell then gave the residents half an hour to leave and when they did not comply, he and his six deputies moved them out of their rooms, dragging two old Issei out of their beds. Nine more men were sworn in as deputy sheriffs and posted a 24-hour guard at the camp gates. The residents camped outside the hostel in pup tents furnished by Thatcher but except for two Issei, Tomijiro Naka, 65, and Suekichi Miyagawa, 57, they gave up the struggle after two days and entered Moose Jaw, where they slept in a refreshment booth in the city’s exhibition grounds and in the Japanese-operated hotel, the Star Rooms.

The episode ended with a three-day trial of Isomura, who was charged with drawing a knife on the sheriff. He was given a three-month suspended sentence after being convicted of “obstruction” and required to post a $200 bond to keep the peace. Only the intervention of Thatcher persuaded the war veteran from actually taking the jail sentence. Meanwhile, Naka and Miyagawa maintained their vigil for 136 days outside the hostel until they finally succumbed to the Department of Labour’s invitation to live in the old folks home in New Denver.

Were these people, then, martyrs, heroes or simply fanatics? They were the only people throughout the entire period to carry resistance or ganbari to such desperate lengths. But in doing so, they failed to gain the support or even the sympathy of their fellow evacuees who dismissed them as unstable and ill-advised neurotics whose mentality had been warped by long years of internment. The leading voices among the Japanese were those of the more “assimilated” Nisei in Eastern Canada who counselled moderation in behaviour and eschewed the feckless and melodramatic such as hunger strikes and other demonstrations of martyrdom. Pockets of resistance, for one reason or another, developed during the war in the ghost towns and road camps, but these quickly dissipated through attrition and conservative counsel. The repatriates of 1946 were rebels of another kind but they chose to break off the struggle in disgust. The revolt of the Moose Jaw hostellers was a lonely, hopeless act, sustained against the odds, thoroughly against the grain of the more conformist and reticent behaviour generally typical of the evacuees.

Three years after the end of the war, then, the government still had not tidied up its programme. But there were signs that the tide was turning, slowly if inexorably. The formation of the National Japanese Canadian Citizens Association at a conference in Toronto in September, 1947, had evoked “a certain sense of security and achievement,”¹⁵ for it indicated that the Nisei finally felt confident enough – on a national level – to mount a unified attack against the remaining restrictions and inequities, engendered not only by the evacuation but lingering from decades of anti-Japanese legislative measures in British Columbia. The conference agreed on a budget of $7,500 to be raised by five provincial chapters, appointed a full-time executive secretary, established headquarters in Toronto and set forth a constitution which pledged, in part, to

undertake collective action for the betterment of the political, social, moral and economic welfare of Canadians of Japanese ancestry … [and work] towards the development of a true Canadian democratic social order wherein fundamental civil rights and liberties are accorded all citizens.¹⁶

The NJCCA’s first major test came with the announcement on January 21, 1948, by the British Columbia Department of Lands and Forests that Japanese would be banned from working on Crown timber lands following the lapsing of federal wartime regulations permitting their employment. The B.C. Crown Timber Act, first legislated in 1913, had been suspended by the federal government in 1943 and thus had provided jobs in logging and sawmills for at least 800 Nisei and Issei. This archaic legislation, among a number of other prohibitions such as employment on provincial and municipal public works, on underground work in mines and a host of de facto discriminations flowing from the denial of the provincial franchise, struck at the principal means of livelihood for those who had remained in the province. In a matter of nine days, however, following a flood of briefs and telegrams organized not only by the provincial chapter of the NJCCA but by the Vancouver branch of the Civil Liberties Union which protested “this war of attrition,” the logging operators and the International Woodworkers of America, the ban was suspended until the matter could be reviewed by the legislature. The ban was officially lifted on April 21, but perhaps the most astonishing development was an editorial in the Vancouver Sun which stated that the remnant of the Japanese population could be absorbed into the economy of the province, and proclaimed “These Japanese are Ours”:

British Columbia has long since outgrown this kind of racism. Conditions which prompted racial antagonism have changed since Pearl Harbor …. B.C. must be fair.¹⁷

This unexpected support from a hitherto voraciously anti-Japanese newspaper was a dramatic illustration that the climate of opinion had changed and indicated that political leaders had misread public feelings in pressing for extension of wartime controls on the Japanese until March 31, 1949.

On that date, when the last controls were lifted, the Japanese were finally free to vote in federal elections anywhere in Canada. That right was conferred on June 15, 1948, when the Commons met to consider Bill 198 amending the Dominion Elections Act and approved the deletion of the section which had disenfranchised all Canadians of the Japanese race.¹⁸ Since the Japanese, except for war veterans and those few who resided outside of British Columbia, had been barred from the federal franchise since 1902, it was a moment for quiet rejoicing. The offending section of the Elections Act had specified that persons denied a provincial franchise were also denied the federal franchise – and British Columbia had passed legislation in 1895 excluding all citizens of Asiatic origin. With the evacuation, the Japanese who moved outside British Columbia’s borders would have automatically gained the right to vote in federal elections, but the disqualification was continued in the notorious Clause 5 of Bill 135 passed in 1944.

A Nisei, sitting in the Commons gallery on June 15, wrote that the right to vote came to the Japanese “as effortlessly as the falling of an over-ripe fruit.”¹⁹ No outcries of protest, no repetition of the anti-Japanese tirades came from British Columbian members of Parliament. And to his astonishment, the amendment was passed without a single dissenting vote. But behind this somewhat casual granting of the franchise lay 48 frustrating years of agitation by the Japanese. The irony now, so it appeared, was that the Japanese in British Columbia could vote in federal elections while still being disenfranchised provincially.

But the granting of the provincial vote was inevitable. In April, 1947, the legislature had extended the vote to citizens of Chinese and East Indian descent but in the following year, a legislative committee rejected, by a 5-2 vote, a motion to have the provincial Elections Act widened to include Japanese. As Attorney-General Gordon Wismer explained, the legislature would not consider the franchise issue at least until the federal government lifted its restrictions on movement and the Japanese were “properly domiciled” in the province. The Vancouver City Council then agreed on January 17, 1949, to extend the municipal vote not only to wives of registered voters but to all citizens of Asiatic origin, including the Japanese. That the motion was passed unanimously by council members who included such former antagonists as former Mayor J.D. Cornett and Alderman Halford Wilson was a sure indication that British Columbians recognized the impossibility of forestalling the inevitable with the lifting of the federal wartime exclusion orders only 2½ months away.

“Well, boys, you’ve got it,” shouted Harold Winch, bursting into the Empress Hotel room shared by Seiji Homma, provincial JCCA President, and NJCCA Executive Secretary George Tanaka. Winch, the provincial CCF leader, had just returned from talking to Premier Johnson and had been assured that Bill 43, introduced in the legislature that very day, March 7, by Attorney-General Wismer, would mean that the provincial franchise was won by both the Japanese and the Indians. For Tanaka, it was the culmination of months of lobbying for the NJCCA in the corridors of political and civic power. But for Homma, the moment was fraught with another significance:

What a coincidence that I should be eyewitness to the climax of the work begun by my father [Tomey] 49 years ago! … If only dad could have been here with us to experience this victory. He would have been thrilled, as we were, by the news.²⁰

The news made front-page headlines in the Vancouver press and was greeted with enthusiasm in editorials which now were congratulating British Columbia for her new-found tolerance.²¹ That day, indeed, was a milestone. The stigma of second-class citizenship was almost at an end, and with it, the de facto colour bar, with its long list of political and economic discriminations, was washed away. The Japanese could now become miners, apply for an old age pension bonus, get jobs in public works, obtain licences as hand loggers and pharmacists, serve on juries, vote for school trustees, qualify for public office, study and practise law. One after another, then, the barriers were toppling.

April 1, 1949, was almost an anti-climax. It signalled the removal of the last federal government restrictions, imposed seven years previously, which had convulsed the Japanese population. And almost four years after the end of the war, the Japanese were free – free to move, if they wished, back into the 100-mile “protected area” along the west coast. But for most Japanese, especially those in Eastern Canada, it created little excitement. The evacuation and relocation had done its work only too well, in dispersing them across Canada and in immersing them in the difficult struggle of re-establishing themselves in new homes and jobs. Certainly, stripped of their former homes and possessions, they were not about to engage in a massive movement back to the coast. Despite the apparent shift in public and political opinion in the province, they were not prepared to face a traumatic return.

Was there to be bloodshed on the coast, as Howard Green and others envisioned? As might be expected, people who had engaged in some bitter competition in the pre-evacuation years sounded their toxins of doom. The Native Brotherhood in Skeena announced: “We flatly do not want the Japs back in our coastal region …. If they return, there will be a dog fight and troubles.”²² In the Fraser Valley, the Maple Ridge Board of Trade reflected the alarm of local farmers who warned that the return of the Japanese would cause “a revival of intense racial feeling.” But the Fort Langley and District Board of Trade refused to endorse a resolution by the Maple Ridge group protesting against the return of the Japanese, with one member saying: “There are bigger and better things to do than stir up race hatred.”²³ That appeared to be the prevailing attitude, for there was no revival of organizations like the White Canada Association or the Japanese Repatriation League. And when 80 delegates of the combined boards of trade in the Fraser Valley and the lower mainland met in New Westminster in March, they quickly squashed the Maple Ridge anti-Japanese resolution.

The decision by the United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union not to oppose the granting of fishing licences to returning Japanese was also a crucial hurdle that was overcome. The lapsing of Order-in-Council P.C. 251 on March 31, 1949, meant that the Japanese had the right to enter the industry again, but Minister of Fisheries R.W. Mayhew still had “absolute discretion” in the granting of licences and would presumably withhold permission if the UFAWU was adamant. The NJCCA’s Tanaka spoke before the union’s Fifth Convention on March 22 in Vancouver, assuring delegates that only a few fishermen were expected to return but that they should be allowed, as citizens, to work in any field of endeavour without restraint. The next day, after a meeting closed to all reporters, the union emerged with a carefully worded five-point policy in which it announced that it would not oppose the return of Japanese fishermen, if they would all join the UFAWU and if they were not restricted to certain types of fishing or specified areas, as was the case before the evacuation. They insisted, however, that “control or limitation” should be imposed on new licences in order to prevent “overcrowding” in the industry. These concessions were quite remarkable since the industry had been the scene of acute struggles for supremacy, marked by spectacular acts of violence, among Japanese, white and Indian fishermen since 1885. But the forced sale of their boats had obviously toppled them from their pre-eminence in the industry and had in fact reduced the Japanese to the status of suppliants.

The fear of a mass return of the Japanese fishermen proved to be groundless. The post-war financial investment required to start anew was a formidable barrier, and following the granting of a licence to Y. Sakai on the first day he became eligible, only 209 others followed him within the next year – about 10% of the pre-evacuation force. Then, too, there was an implacable residue of bitterness in many Japanese who had “resettled” elsewhere – so that British Columbia remained a symbol of all that was evil in terms of racist behaviour. This deeply-rooted feeling conflicted with nostalgia for the climate, the mystery and allure of the Pacific Ocean, and all the past associations of the ghetto. After seven long traumatic years, no one really expected that the return would constitute more than a trickle and everyone knew that it would continue to remain so until some sort of equilibrium was established between the Japanese population in the coastal areas and the interior, between those who felt that their destiny was tied to their old hometowns and others who had made a new start elsewhere. Even the Japanese living in the interior had found their little niches in rural communities, scattered through the Bridge River and Taylor Lake country, the Okanagan, Slocan and Kootenay Valleys. By the fall semester of 1948, 15 Nisei, six of them for their second year, had obtained permits to study at the University of British Columbia and others were enrolled in trade schools in Vancouver, indicating that the lure of Vancouver was especially compelling to young Nisei. Two Nisei from Eastern Canada, Lanky Inouye and Roy Oda, had joined the navy and were training at Esquimalt Naval Station early in 1949. But Hizi Koyke, a Japan-born soprano with the San Carlo Opera Company, left Vancouver immediately after her performance in the title role in “Madame Butterfly” because she had been told that she would be attacked and killed if she appeared on the streets of Vancouver.

The high level of post-war employment and the fact that the evacuees had established themselves in the economy of other provinces meant that Ottawa was never asked to remove the Japanese from the provinces with which it had made either formal or informal agreements early in the evacuation. In the case of Alberta, all Japanese had become bona fide residents as of April, 1948, with full privileges of residence, and Ottawa withdrew completely, on March 31, 1950, from having to share financial responsibilities in such areas as education.²⁴ In Toronto, supervisor Ernest Trueman finally closed his doors to the Adelaide St. office of the Japanese Division of the Department of Labour in July, 1949. In Ontario, as in Saskatchewan and Quebec, normal provincial services were extended to Japanese residents upon the revocation of restrictions in 1949. The field office of the Department of Labour in Vancouver, which continued to administer Japanese affairs, closed on March 31, 1951.

Despite these gains, compressed into a short period, one final gnawing issue remained. Immigration from Japan during the 16-year period from 1946 to 1961 resulted in a mere increase of 1,449 persons to the Japanese population in Canada.²⁵ In the same period, Canada accepted 2,100,000 immigrants. Between 1946 and 1952, for example, there were only 37 bona fide immigrants from Japan. King had made his position clear over banning immigration from Japan in his August 4, 1944, statement in the House of Commons:

The government is of the view that, having regard to the strong feeling that has been aroused against the Japanese during the war and to the extreme difficulty of assimilating Japanese persons in Canada, no immigration of Japanese into this country should be allowed after the war. It is realized, of course, that no declaration of this type can or should be attempted which would be binding indefinitely into the future. Nevertheless, as a guiding principle in the years after the war, it is felt that Japanese immigrants should not be admitted.²⁶

And on May 1, 1947, King further expanded on this view:

With regard to the selection of immigrants, much has been said about discrimination. I wish to make it quite clear that Canada is perfectly within her rights in selecting the persons whom we regard as desirable future citizens. It is not a ‘fundamental human right’ of any alien to enter Canada. It is a privilege. It is a matter of domestic policy … There will, I am sure, be general agreement with the view that the people of Canada do not wish, as a result of mass immigration, to make a fundamental alteration in the character of our population. Large-scale immigration from the Orient would change the fundamental composition of the Canadian population. Any considerable Oriental immigration would, moreover, be certain to give rise to social and economic problems.²⁷

King was saying that Orientals, Japanese in particular, did not assimilate as readily as other groups; that Canadians wanted to maintain the racial status quo and that they would react unfavourably should there be changes in the immigration policy. In short, King’s policy was one that unabashedly confirmed and followed racial prejudice and his statement served as the official formulation of Canadian immigration policy until 1962.²⁸

It was never the intention, obviously, of the NJCCA to open the gates to immigration from Japan or even to ask for a quota system. It saw its task as lifting the barriers preventing Nisei and naturalized citizens “stranded” in Japan at the outset of the Pacific war, Nisei who went to Japan under a wartime exchange agreement and naturalized Issei who went voluntarily to Japan under the federal government’s “deportation” scheme, from returning to Canada. The latter two categories had lost their status as Canadian nationals and British subjects under Orders-in-Council P.C. 10773, November 26, 1942, and P.C. 7356, December 15, 1945, respectively. Thus, at the outset, the NJCCA was tentatively concerned with the “re-entry” of former Canadian residents and citizens, and delayed an “all-out” campaign to effect their return until after the wartime restrictions were lifted and the arduous work on property claims was concluded.²⁹ The movement later widened to seek the entry of relatives of Japanese Canadians who were barred by restrictive immigration regulations.

There was little difficulty in gaining the re-entry of pre-war “strandees” provided they had maintained their “Canadian domicile” by reporting annually to the Canadian Consulate prior to the outbreak of war or of those Nisei who were repatriated in 1946. Of other categories, the NJCCA requested Ottawa to show “compassionate” consideration because the “welfare, peace of mind and happiness” of families were being seriously affected.³⁰ Moreover, the NJCCA argued that naturalized Issei who had gone to Japan in 1946 had not lost their status as Canadian citizens because P.C. 7356 specifically stated that persons deported from Canada would cease to be citizens of Canada. As these people had gone to Japan voluntarily, without being removed or sent forcibly, the NJCCA claimed that they were not deported and consequently had not lost their Canadian status.³¹ Various cases of “hardship,” including those of Nisei visiting Japan and being compelled to join the Japanese army and of sons, daughters, wives and husbands, brothers and sisters unable to join relatives in Canada were cited in briefs to Ottawa. For example, Mrs. Sumi Mori, a Nisei who visited Japan in 1940, was stranded there after Pearl Harbor, gave birth to a daughter and lost her husband, was told that her

status had been carefully reviewed and it has been decided that she has retained her Canadian citizenship and therefore, would be readmissible to Canada. However, the daughter [7 years old], who was born in Japan of a Japanese father, is a national of Japan and as such is inadmissible …. It is assumed that Mrs. Mori would not desire to come forward alone, leaving the child in Japan and therefore it can only be suggested that the matter of her return be left in abeyance until such time in the future as there may be a change in regulations.³²

Even some 20 young Nisei who were compelled to accompany their parents to Japan under a wartime exchange agreement – and consequently lost their Canadian citizenship – were deemed inadmissible despite their appeals. Along with the voluntary Issei repatriates of 1946, they were never given special consideration but were later defined as having the same status as any other prospective Asian immigrant.

The campaign for readmission, expressed through hundreds of applications, supporting letters, briefs, delegations and lobbys among sympathetic or influential members of Parliament and the Senate was ineffective. Unlike the deportation and property claims issues, the campaign never went beyond a direct appeal to the immigration minister; no contact was made with the general public, for that would have meant running the risk of arousing xenophobia and many Nisei preferred not to call public attention to themselves once again. The NJCCA submitted briefs and sent delegations to Ottawa from 1948 through 1960 at fairly regular intervals, but there was nothing like an aggressive or sustained campaign.

Successive immigration commissioners and ministers – C.E.S. Smith, Walter Harris, J.W. Pickersgill and Ellen Fairclough – received delegations with studied courtesy but categorically denied any racism inherent in the immigration regulations and promised nothing concrete except to “review” individual cases. The issue usually received some notice in the press and then quickly died down. Mrs. Fairclough, for example, simply told a NJCCA delegation in 1960 that the “bias” in the regulations was “geographical” and not racial³³ and Pickersgill, for his part, claimed that people are not penalized “because of their race [although] it is true that there are certain countries from which we encourage immigration and other countries from which we do not encourage it.”³⁴

The first break in the impasse came when the Cabinet issued Order-in-Council P.C. 6229, December 28, 1950, which amended Section 38 of the Immigration Act, and made it possible for the entry of “the wife, the husband, or the unmarried child under 21 years of age, of any Canadian citizen [of Asiatic race] legally admitted to and resident in Canada, who is in a position to receive and care for his dependants.”³⁵ On the other hand, other residents of Canada, whether citizens or not, were able, under regulations dating from 1947 and earlier, to secure the admission of other categories of relatives such as son or daughter of any age, brother or sister, husband or wife and unmarried children, father or mother, grandparents, orphaned nephew or niece under 21 and fiance(e)s. In addition, persons of certain nationalities, such as those from English-speaking Commonwealth countries, were admissible whether or not they had sponsoring Canadian relatives. By Order-in-Council P.C. 4364, September 14, 1950, revoking an earlier order prohibiting entry of enemy aliens, Germans were placed on the same basis as other prospective European immigrants, but the Japanese remained enemy aliens until July, 1952. Subsequently, under authority of P.C. 1957-1675, December 20, 1957, admissible categories of Japanese immigrants were extended to include fathers over 65 years of age and mothers over 60,³⁶ a concession which did little to assuage the feeling among the Nisei that they still had “second-class status” because they were unable to sponsor relatives on the same basis as other citizens. Thus, while there no longer were racial bars either to the acquisition of Canadian citizenship or the exercise of the franchise, the barriers were kept up against non-white immigration, apart from certain exceptions, and the last major legal discrimination against the Japanese was still maintained.³⁷ Or as the Toronto Star asked:

Why is this country so fearful of the Japanese? How long can it safely go on nourishing prejudice against them? National self-interest in the long run means that Canada cannot afford racial discrimination in immigration – against the Japanese or anyone else.³⁸

Racial discrimination, for the most part, was eliminated in 1962 when Mrs. Fairclough announced on January 19 that education, skill and training would be the major criteria for admissibility of unsponsored immigrants. But the geographical restrictions in the admission of certain categories of relatives still kept the Japanese, other Asiatics, black Africans and others from non-European countries on the bottom of the preferred list. Finally, on October 1, 1967, Jean Marchand, then Minister of Manpower and Immigration, announced Canada’s new regulations which were to be applied universally. These regulations, he said, will “abolish discrimination” and “pay more regard to the claims of family relationship.” The regulations created a point system for selection, including education, personal assessment, occupational demand, skill and age, and three categories for admission – independent applicants, sponsored dependants and nominated relatives.

Despite these changes, Japanese immigration has remained extremely modest. In the 11-year period up to 1966, post-war immigration from Japan totalled 2,665 persons, an annual average of 127. Only from 1967 onwards have Japanese emigrated in somewhat larger numbers. But placed in the entire context of Canadian immigration, the flow from Japan has been so slight as to be almost negligible. In 1967, against a total number of 222,876 immigrating from all parts of the world, there were 838 from Japan. In the period 1967-1974, a total of 6,468 entered the country, and the entire post-war immigration up to 1974 from Japan was 9,133 persons compared to immigration from all parts of the world of 3,877,228. In contrast, post-war immigrants born in China and Hong Kong have totalled 102,902 persons, while Italy – the largest source of non-British immigration – has been responsible for 486,863 persons.³⁹

Immigration from Japan, however, has added substantially to the small Japanese population in Canada, which the 1971 census listed at 37,260 persons, more than compensating for the attrition from death of the aging Issei. The immigrants have caused few “problems” in relation either to the Canadian ethos or the Japanese-Canadian community. Japanese Canadians – except in cases of sponsored relatives – have generally ignored the new element within their population and no centralized organization or agencies such as the Jewish Immigrant Aid Services of Canada in Montreal or the Italian Community Education Centre (COSTI) in Toronto have been organized to facilitate immigration and provide assistance in finding accommodation and employment or facilitating general adjustment. Cultural and social distances and the language problem – and all the factors which tend to inhibit any immigrant from easy “assimilation” into a receiving society – also tend to prevent any significant social contact between Japanese immigrants and Nisei or the third generation Sansei.⁴⁰ In Vancouver, assistance to new immigrants has been much more extensive, with the Japanese churches, the local JCCA and the Japanese Immigrant Reception Committee attempting to obtain housing and employment for those who experienced difficulty in either securing or retaining jobs. But after this initial contact, immigrants are left to their own devices, especially as few immigrants after 1957 were in the category of sponsored relatives.⁴¹ The fact that at least one-third of the immigrants were university-educated and most of them had a high degree of technical skills enabled them to merge quite successfully into Canadian life.

Despite the opening of an immigration office in Tokyo on June 15, 1966, Japanese have shown little interest in immigrating to Canada.⁴² Obviously, home life in Japan with its booming post-war economy, full employment, the security engendered in the paternalism of business corporations and other institutions and the familiar social mechanisms of support and protection in a tightly organized society were among the reasons why people were loathe to leave Japan despite the overcrowded conditions there. Perhaps of all the Asian countries, Japan – with its scientists, technicians, and high rate of literacy – provided the highest percentage of immigrants who could meet the requirements of the immigration regulations in terms of formal education, skills, and aptitudes. But the post-war Japanese are not the type who would willingly change jobs and move from country to country. Almost all Japanese, in fact, expect to spend the whole of their lives with one business firm.⁴³ Perhaps the Japanese also mistrusted Canada’s “good faith” after years of exclusion and the vagaries of anti-Japanese discrimination culminating in the evacuation. The recent surge of Japanese tourists, especially in Europe, travelling in herds and carrying the inevitable battery of cameras, suggests a welling of curiosity – as well as economic well-being.

While immigration from Japan has been negligible, it is another kind of “invasion” – the army of salesmen and investors – that is stirring some apprehension among people in British Columbia.⁴⁴ Resource-hungry Japanese firms by 1974 had invested an estimated $300 million in Canada, mainly in the province’s extractive industries such as lumber, copper, coal and fish-processing plants and have begun establishing marketing positions in Eastern Canada. The $23 million Prince Hotel in Toronto, part of the Seibu chain, opened in July, 1974, as a “trial balloon” for testing the North American market. An even more visible component in Canada – particularly in British Columbia – are those ubiquitous busloads of awkward Japanese tourists. In 1974, for example, some 90,000 visited Canada. In Banff and Jasper, where 5,000 skiers from Japan now make annual visits, menus in some hotels are printed in Japanese, Japanese ski instructors are employed and maps of ski trails are marked in Japanese.⁴⁵

In recent years, however, the “explosion” of immigration from non-white countries – particularly from the Caribbean, Asia and “third world” countries – and the apparent rise in racism in Canada in a period of rapidly rising inflation, slowdown of the economy and unemployment have resulted in a lively concern over immigration and its control, as sensationalized by inflammatory front-page newspaper headlines such as “Immigration: Is It Black vs. White?” and articles that suggest that a dangerous state of racial disharmony now exists. New regulations have been promised by Manpower and Immigration Minister Robert Andras in his Green Paper on Immigration tabled in February, 1975. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had assured that the new regulations “would not depart from the practise of government, and of the law, of ensuring a policy which is universal and non-discriminatory in its selection criteria.”⁴⁶ But the Green Paper, filled with foreboding over the future effects on Canada of recent trends in immigration, expressed concern over the rapid increase in immigrants from outside the “traditional” sources of Canadian settlement and over the decline in French-speaking immigrants. And there was little doubt that when politicians, such as Trudeau and Andras, spoke of limiting immigration they were thinking of non-whites, though they skirted delicately around the topic.

The Green Paper sparked a hot debate. In essence, it was an invitation to Canadians to decide for themselves what kind of immigration objectives and ultimate size of population they wanted. It assumed that a future policy should operate without regard to “race, colour or creed” but it recommended that the system should function in “close harmony” with major areas of “economic and social policy.” Evidently, with crime statistics and racial strife in mind, Andras observed that the United States had developed extraordinary problems and that Canada ought to avoid them. Implicit in the Green Paper was a concern over the rise in non-white immigration since the Immigration Act was “liberalized” in 1962 and in 1967. In 1966, 76% of all immigrants came from Europe and only 6% from Asia; by 1973, the Europeans had dropped to 39% and the Asians had risen to 23%. “What we are worried like hell about is the influx of coloured people and want to clamp down,” a senior Ottawa official was quoted as saying.⁴⁷ One of four options that the Green Paper suggested was an annual quota both on a global basis and for individual countries, while admitting that “the precise basis for allocating visa quotas [would be] extremely difficult to translate … into practice.⁴⁸

Among immigrant communities, the Green Paper evoked apprehension, the Chinese fearing that Ottawa would phase out the category of “nominated” immigrants and the West Indians – the most shrilly militant and vociferous of the groups – complaining that non-whites were being made scapegoats for Canada’s economic, social and housing problems. Whereas in 1967, immigrants had been looked upon as an asset, the 1975 Green Paper looked upon them as a problem, over-populating metropolises, putting the pressure on housing and social services, creating tensions. It was a crabbed, morose vision, opening up a Pandora’s box.

For the Japanese, of course, the revival of racial tensions – or at least the public discussion of them – was all too familiar and, indeed, during the furor over the Green Paper, references to the evacuation as an example of the latent horrors that lie beneath the surface tolerance of Canadians were made by many people.⁴⁹

Only 40 people braved a snowstorm in April, 1975, to attend a public forum sponsored by the Toronto JCCA on the topic of the Green Paper. Apart from that, the Japanese generally avoided the question – as they have ignored issues of race that have not directly and explicitly concerned them – and did not contribute to the “national debate” in any significant manner. But Canadians – as in the past – are scarcely likely to make distinctions between Japanese and Chinese or other Asian groups, and the Japanese could find themselves once again involved and unwittingly drawn into a race struggle which could revert to the excesses of the riot of 1907.

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Notes

1. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1944, p. 5917. ↩
2. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1946, p. 618. ↩
3. The New Canadian, February 22, 1947. ↩
4. Vancouver Sun, January 3, 1948. ↩
5. Other orders-in-council extended were P.C. 469, January 19, 1943, administration of property; P.C. 7355, December 15, 1945, authorization for Department of Labour to assist voluntary repatriates. Restrictions on travel outside British Columbia were revoked as of April 14, 1947, and travel controls applicable to British Columbia were relaxed on February 14, 1948, to require RCMP permits only for persons entering the province and/or entering the “protected” zone. ↩
6. Pickersgill, J.W., and D.F. Forster, The Mackenzie King Record (University of Toronto Press, 1970), 4, p. 234. ↩
7. Ibid., p. 235. ↩
8. “The Crime of Being Born”, Vancouver Sun, October 30, 1948. ↩
9. Department of Labour, Report on Re-Establishment of Japanese in Canada, 1944-1946 (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1947), p. 18. ↩
10. The New Canadian, July 6, 1946. ↩
11. H.F. Angus, speech to Student Liberal Club of University of British Columbia. Cited in Vancouver Province, February 3, 1948. ↩
12. The New Canadian, June 7, 1947. ↩
13. The New Canadian, August 16, 1947. ↩
14. The New Canadian, August 23, 1947. ↩
15. The New Canadian, December 26, 1947. ↩
16. Constitution of the National Japanese Canadian Citizens Association. ↩
17. Vancouver Sun, January 28, 1948. ↩
18. Dominion Elections Act, 1938, sec. 14, sub. 2, cl. 1: “Every person who is disqualified by reason of race from voting at an election of a member of the Legislative Assembly of the province in which he or she resides and who did not serve in the military, naval or air force of Canada in the war of 1914-18.” ↩
19. The New Canadian, June 23, 1948. ↩
20. The New Canadian, March 12, 1949. ↩
21. E.g., “They Have Earned Citizenship”, Vancouver Province; “Japanese Entitled to Vote”, Vancouver Sun, “Erasing a Blot on B.C.’s Good Name”, Vancouver News-Herald, March 7, 1949. ↩
22. The New Canadian, February 23, 1949. ↩
23. The New Canadian, March 16, 1949. ↩
24. Canada, Department of Labour, Report of the Department of Labour for the Fiscal Year Ending March 31, 1948, p. 81. See also Department of Labour, Public Accounts, 1948-49, p. K14, and Public Accounts, 1950-51, p. K16, for details of expenditure on education. ↩
25. Table 15, Country of Birth of Post-War Immigrants, 1946-1964, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Immigration Statistics 1964, Ottawa, p. 26. ↩
26. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1944, p. 5914. ↩
27. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1947, pp. 2644-7. ↩
28. E.g., Corbett, D.C., Canada’s Immigration Policy (University of Toronto Press, 1957), pp. 36-7. ↩
29. Keenlyside to George Tanaka, June 29, 1948. Dr. Hugh Keenlyside, Deputy Minister of Mines and Resources, advised that representations to the Cabinet on such subjects should be delayed until after March 31, 1949. ↩
30. E.g., NJCCA, To the Hon. Walter E. Harris, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, in the Matter of Certain Restrictive Measures Affecting the Re-Entry and Immigration to Canada of Persons of Japanese Ancestry, June, 1951. ↩
31. Andrew Brewin to Tanaka, June 26, 1951. ↩
32. I.R. Stirling, Immigration Branch, Ottawa, to Tanaka, November 21, 1950. ↩
33. Interview, July 19, 1960. ↩
34. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1960, p. 4714. ↩
35. Immigration Act Amendments, Regulations Re Landing in Canada of Immigrants of any Asiatic Race, P.C. 6229, December 28, 1950. P.C. 6229 was an amendment to P.C. 2115, September 16, 1930, which put age limit for admissible children at 18. ↩
36. By amendment to Immigration Regulations P.C. 1954-1351, P.C. 1957-1675, December 20, 1957, revoked paragraph (d) section 20 of the Immigration Act. See also NJCCA, To the Hon. Mrs. Ellen L. Fairclough, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, in the Matter of Certain Cases of Relatives of Japanese Canadians Prevented from Reunion, July 19, 1960. Among reactions, see “Lower the Color Barriers”, Star Weekly, August 20, 1960. ↩
37. Negotiations between Canadian and Japanese governments during 1959-60 led to an arrangement whereby personnel of Japanese-owned businesses in Canada were to be admitted either as immigrants or non-immigrants with special privileges. They were to include managerial, supervisory or technical personnel of Japanese mining, manufacturing or related enterprises planning or carrying on operations in Canada. This type of immigration was beyond the aims of the NJCCA, which did not attempt to enlist the help of officials in Japan. ↩
38. Toronto Star, October 30, 1961. ↩
39. See annual immigration statistics, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Department of Manpower and Immigration. ↩
40. For two conflicting views, see Adilman, S., “Putting Out the Unwelcome Mat”, Toronto Life, March, 1970, and Fukawa, S., letter to editor, The New Canadian, May 15, 1970. ↩
41. Ujimoto, V., Post-War Japanese Immigrants in Canada: Job Transferability, Work and Social Participation (M.A. thesis, Anthropology and Sociology, University of British Columbia, 1972). ↩
42. “Have the Japanese Had a Real Invitation?” Toronto Globe and Mail, August 25, 1964. ↩
43. E.g., Vogel, E.F., Japan’s New Middle Class (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968); Kawasaki, I., Japan Unmasked (Tokyo: Tuttle, 1969), pp. 49, 52-3, 55. ↩
44. “Japan Buys in Canada’s West”, Toronto Star, June 18, 1968; “The Japanese Are Coming – With Money and Pride”, Toronto Star, April 13, 1974; two-part series, “The Japanese and Canada”, Toronto Globe and Mail, February 14, 15, 1974. ↩
45. Toronto Star, October 26, 1974. ↩
46. Toronto Star, October 17, 1974. ↩
47. Time, February 17, 1975. ↩
48. Department of Manpower and Immigration, Immigration Policy Perspectives (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1974), p. 45. ↩
49. E.g., “A New Look at Immigration”, Toronto Globe and Mail, February 5, 1975. ↩

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