Chapter Eight: A Low, Dishonest Decade

A vote for the Liberal candidate in your riding is a
vote against Oriental enfranchisement. The Liberal
party is opposed to giving the Orientals the vote.
– Advertisement, 1935

Spreadeagling the course of events in Canada and ultimately providing the sanction for evicting the Japanese from the west coast of British Columbia was Japan’s pellmell military rush for territory in the Far East. The Japanese Kwantung Army’s seizure of the city of Mukden on September 18, 1931, raised the curtain on the conquest of all Manchuria. Within a year after the creation of the new “independent” state of Manchukuo, Japanese troops advanced into Inner Mongolia and soon compelled the Chinese to accept a large demilitarized zone between Peking and the Manchurian border.

The massive economic and social malaise of the Depression years combined with Japan’s military adventures provided the climate for the sharpening of attitudes towards the resident Japanese in British Columbia. For example, shortly after Japan launched her Manchurian campaign, charges were made that Japan had the same intentions towards Canada as she had towards Manchuria, except that her method for controlling Canada was that of “peaceful penetration,” which was being conducted in an “orderly, consistent, and continuous” manner, “possible only with a homogeneous, aggressive, organized and imperially-minded people.”¹ In Ottawa, A.W. Neill had found an able partner for his invective against the Japanese in Thomas Reid, Liberal member for New Westminster, who declared that he had information about Japanese naval officers who were operating as spies in fishermen’s clothing and were devoted “to familiarizing themselves with the Pacific Coast” in order eventually to take military control of it.²

When the RCMP uncovered a ring in 1931 which had been smuggling Japanese into Canada, a basis was provided for continued charges, through the decade, that illegal entrances were still being made. Japan, it was suggested, wished to have as many Japanese in Canada as possible for the purpose of “peaceful” but ultimately “insidious” penetration and was therefore promoting both legal and illegal entry. Some 2,500 Japanese were found to have entered the country illegally in a 15-year period up to 1931, at least half of them by means of forged documents provided by a confidential interpreter employed by the Immigration Department. He was charged with conspiracy, breach of trust as a public officer and bribery and was subsequently jailed for two-and-a-half years. Several other Issei received shorter sentences after an intensive investigation by the RCMP and a highly sensationalized trial.³ Some 2,200 of these illegal entrants were concluded to have fled Canada for fear of apprehension. The RCMP arrested 213, of whom 161 were deported and 47 allowed to remain “on compassionate grounds.” Only 120 were deemed to be still at large.⁴

Given the tighter quotas of the 1923 and 1928 modifications to the “gentlemen’s agreement,” it was perhaps inevitable that Japanese would attempt to squeeze into Canada.⁵ Yet this “smuggling” of 2,500 people was not so much “one of the most spectacular conspiracy cases in the history of B.C.”⁶ but a rather haphazard enterprise. None, in fact, of the illegal immigrants was singled out by the RCMP as espionage agents. The fact that the ring was uncovered, however, strengthened beliefs in the “Yellow Peril”; henceforth, as the Board of Review of Immigration phrased it, “the public mind [was] made susceptible” to the scenario in which “well organized gangs of smugglers run boatloads of Japanese across the Pacific, landing them in the dark of night on the West Coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands or of Vancouver Island.”⁷

Rumours of surreptitious entry, however, continued to be disseminated as records of fact. When Mackenzie King appointed a Board of Review, headed by Hugh Keenleyside, to investigate these charges in 1938, not one single name or item of evidence was supplied by those individuals who had been loudly circulating stories of illegal entry, although the Board provided them with ample opportunity to present this evidence. Touring the province, the Board held sessions in camera and arranged that a special detail of the RCMP would investigate every clue, however tenuous. The only useful information was supplied by some Japanese nationals who had grudges to work off. At the end of the probe, 100 suspects were uncovered, of whom only 19 were Japanese.

Since this method of acquiring information was an obvious failure, the Board decided to take a “controlled sampling” of the Japanese population, in which the RCMP undertook an intensive examination of certain “typical” communities. Giving no prior warning of their visits, the RCMP checked the papers of every Japanese resident of those selected communities. Special attention was given the Queen Charlotte Islands, Gulf of Georgia islands and logging camps on Vancouver Island which had been referred to as centres of smuggling operations by MacGregor MacIntosh, the Conservative MLA for the Islands. A few months before the Board of Review was appointed, MacIntosh was quoted in the Vancouver Province that he had been “credibly informed that a month or so ago 40 Japanese arrived in the Queen Charlotte Islands” as illegal entrants from Japan-based “floating canneries.”⁸ But when RCMP officers made a special check of the Queen Charlotte Islands, they found nothing more than a small community of legally resident Japanese and “nothing whatsoever” of any evidence substantiating charges made by MacIntosh.

After checking a total of 1,881 in the “controlled sampling” process, the RCMP held only 11 persons for deportation, and the Board concluded that the widely circulated charges were unfounded. But this investigation, which was part of a series taken by Ottawa to reduce tensions in British Columbia, failed dismally to achieve that objective. Indeed, federal investigations and published reports were totally unsuccessful in counteracting the propaganda of those who were interested in keeping alive certain aspects of the “Japanese problem.” The attitude that Ottawa ignored provincial interests was deep-rooted, and federal assurances were of little value to the people of British Columbia. Ottawa’s assumption that the incontrovertibility of carefully established facts would convince reasonable people had little bearing on this issue, especially when political expediency was involved.

With the resurgence of anti-Japanese hostility, linked to anxieties over developments in the Far East and the presence of Japanese settlers in British Columbia, the “Japanese question” had evolved into a political party issue, coincidental to the appearance of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). When the new national political party was organized in 1932, the Japanese found, for the first time, an important party willing to lock horns on their behalf with the two old parties in a cause which had little political advantage. The CCF gave notice that if it came into power, it intended to amend legislation which had prohibited citizens of Oriental ancestry from becoming citizens in the full sense of the word. The “Regina Manifesto,” hammered out at the CCF’s first national convention, included the principle that the party would seek “equal treatment before the law of all residents of Canada irrespective of race, nationality or religious or political beliefs.”⁹ Adhering to this clause meant that the CCF would run against the mainstream of popular beliefs and the traditional attitudes of the two major parties in British Columbia.

Years previously, J.S. Woodsworth, then Independent member for Winnipeg North and later CCF national leader, had made his viewpoint on race relations sufficiently clear by challenging A.W. Neill’s more provocative speeches. Should the preservation of “our civilization” depend, as Neill advocated, on the dominance of white races of the world? Better, Woodsworth declared, that this civilization perish “from off the face of the earth” than other races be kept in subordination.¹⁰

During a Commons debate, Woodsworth upheld the principle that all citizens, including those of Oriental descent, should be allowed to vote:

I protest very decidedly against Dominion legislation following the lines of some one particular province. It seems to me that if we are acting here on behalf of the Dominion at large, our legislation should be uniform, and there should be no exception of any kind for the prejudices of some one particular province.¹¹

Since the federal elections were coming up in 1935 and the new party was facing its first federal contest, the Liberals were delighted with Woodsworth’s stand. The rising strength of the CCF in British Columbia in a time that was favourable to the propagation of socialist ideas was worrying the Liberals, especially as the new party had suddenly emerged in 1933 as the Official Opposition in the province. A copy of the Hansard page showing Woodsworth’s speech was printed in newspaper advertisements and prominently displayed on platforms during the 1935 campaign. British Columbian electors were told that there were 50,000 “Asiatics” in the province and that the CCF was pledged to extend the franchise to them:

A vote for any CCF candidate is a vote to give the Chinamen and the Japanese the same voting right as you have.

From this enormity, the Liberals gallantly undertook to protect the electorate:

A vote for the Liberal candidate in your riding is a vote against Oriental enfranchisement. The Liberal party is opposed to giving the Orientals the vote.¹²

Six Liberal candidates also embellished the advertisements with their photographs. And a radio broadcast, allegedly supported by the Vancouver Liberal Association, put the matter visually:

Look behind the solicitor for a CCF candidate, and you will see an Oriental leering over his shoulder with an eye on you and your daughter.¹³

To what extent the Liberal propaganda influenced the election results in October was, of course, impossible to gauge accurately, though some CCF members maintained that their policy lost them many votes. The CCF polled the largest vote of any party, but only three, including Angus MacInnis, were elected among the 16 ridings in the province. Two of the more notable anti-Japanese Liberal members – Ian Mackenzie and Thomas Reid – were re-elected, as was Independent member A.W. Neill. And Howard Green made his first appearance as a Conservative MP for Vancouver South.

The Liberals’ eagerness to snatch victory at the polls by an appeal to illiberal feeling was a disheartening sign of the times. It was also apparent that a few of the provincial CCF members were not quite as keen as their national leader in advocating Oriental rights. Following the election, the CCF News, the provincial newspaper, took Woodsworth to task for giving CCF opponents an issue to exploit. Woodsworth replied that

undoubtedly in British Columbia the application of our principles to the Orientals is rather inconvenient …. Does this mean that … Opportunism should be our guide?¹⁴

Woodsworth operated on a concept to which politicians had shut their eyes: that adherence to principle strengthened rather than weakened a political party.

But as the 1930s waned, the franchise issue disappeared from the political scene, and the issues that were heatedly debated in Victoria and Ottawa still centered around the now-ancient subject of immigration. And the agitation for complete restriction of immigration from Japan was accompanied by a growing movement to expel all Japanese, regardless of citizenship, from Canada. This trend was strongly linked with spreading rumours of espionage activity on the west coast, normally a common ploy among British Columbian politicians but now cropping up among well-known individuals in Eastern Canada. For example, Archdeacon F.G. Scott, poet and hymn-writer, was quoted by the Toronto Star as being informed “on good authority” that Japanese naval officers were working in disguise in west coast fishing villages and that “40,000 Japanese living in Vancouver” represented a serious threat to Canadian security. According to Scott, fishing boats concealed 16-inch guns ready to spring into action the day that Japan should declare war.¹⁵ Naval experts hastened to assure the excited Scott that the concussion from such heavy guns would blow any fishing boat clear across the Rockies, but stories of concealed guns remained immensely popular.

Despite the fact that immigration from Japan was now averaging some 82 persons a year – well below the quota of 150 – the federal Conservative Party formally went on record at its 1938 national convention in Ottawa in favour of the complete exclusion of all Orientals from Canada.¹⁶ As part of its official platform, the Tories adopted the following resolution:

That the Canadian government should take effective measures for the exclusion of all Orientals from Canada by strict enforcement of the existing statutes and regulations, and by taking the necessary steps to secure the rescission of the Lemieux Agreement.¹⁷

Ontario Conservative Party leader George Drew, perturbed by Japan’s threat to British territorial rights in China, demanded that since Japan had repudiated Canada’s friendship, all Japanese in Canada “should be asked to leave the country.”¹⁸ The anti-Conservative Vancouver Sun, while chastizing Drew for “political opportunism,” also took the view that it would be an ideally opportune time to expel the Japanese because they “do not properly belong to this country.”¹⁹

The increasing hostility in the late 1930s towards the resident Japanese in British Columbia was, of course, linked to suspicions of Japan’s foreign policy. When Japan committed herself to a massive invasion of China, marked by the notorious rape of Nanking and the bombing of open towns, popular revulsion against Japan became exceedingly crystallized. As most Canadians associated the immigrant Japanese and their children with the activities of the Japanese in the Far East, the year 1937, in effect, became a decisive turning point in the fortunes of the Japanese in Canada. Regardless of their own wishes, they were caught up in the tides and currents of Japan’s affairs.

By the fall of 1937, demands for a boycott of Japanese imports and an embargo on exports to Japan became widespread from Vancouver to Montreal. When large shipments of nickel and copper to Japan were increased, appeals were made to Prime Minister King, and a series of mass meetings were held to persuade the government to impose economic sanctions on Japan. King’s position, characteristically, was that Canada should remain strictly neutral. The government’s complaisant attitude concerning the unrestricted sale of raw materials to Japan was owing in some measure to the pressure of vested interests which wanted to maintain trade with Japan. But temperatures were running high over Japanese barbarities in China; newspapers like the Vancouver Province were warning that “some of our hot resentment … must inevitably recoil on the Japanese who are living in this country.”²⁰

An informal boycott of imported goods from Japan was not especially successful, but the resident Japanese found themselves caught up in the widespread resentment against Japan. Storekeepers in Vancouver suffered losses when white patronage declined. Chinese grocers refused to handle hothouse rhubarb and vegetables grown by Japanese farmers in the Fraser Valley as well as goods such as mandarin oranges imported from Japan. Local Chinese distributed handbills urging a boycott of specified goods; at mass meetings, a usual feature was a local Chinese representative of some “patriotic” society who would tell the story of the plight of China in effectively broken English. It was to be expected, of course, that ill feeling would exist between the Chinese and Japanese communities, and the local Chinese reaction was a concentrated manifestation of the general resentment against Japan transferred to resident Japanese.

To counteract anti-Japan attitudes, the Canadian Japanese Association of Vancouver circulated a pamphlet “elucidating” the Sino-Japanese war – a rather bald justification of Japan’s aims in China. In Montreal, the Canada Nippon League sent letters to the Ottawa Citizen declaring that boycotts would harm Canadian exports and therefore the Canadian economy. The Vancouver Jikyoku Iinkai (Emergency Committee) was organized to combat the boycott. Formed in an attempt not only to arrest local development of anti-Japanese sentiment, it was also, under the alleged guidance of Vancouver gambling kingpin Etsuji Morii, quietly collecting funds, tin foil, medical supplies and “comfort bags” for Japanese soldiers.²¹ Among these Issei groups and their supporters, and among Issei generally, there was an unquestioned belief that Japan’s militaristic policy was both right and necessary. But at this time, there was not yet the problem of choosing between two competing loyalties.

The Japanese government, faced with the problem of making her policies acceptable and plausible, did indeed attempt to secure adherents to its foreign policy among Japanese settlers abroad and sent “goodwill missions” to Canada and the United States. In Canada, their propaganda activities appeared to be limited to emphasizing the ties that bound Japanese, both Issei and Nisei, to the mother country. Visiting Japanese dignitaries spoke to gatherings on the west coast about the need for Nisei to act as “go-betweens” between Japan and Western nations. They tried to define the Nisei role as one that was particularly suited to clearing up “misunderstandings” of Japan’s aims in the Far East and to counteracting “Chinese propaganda.”²² Such claims scarcely took into account the political and social impotence of the Nisei, and organizations such as the JCCL were sceptical of this transparent whitewashing of Japan’s war aims.

The atmosphere on the west coast over boycott and embargo demands remained excitable. Demonstrators, many of them women, picketed boats from the Orient on the Vancouver waterfront, carrying placards labelled “Stop Mass Murder of Chinese Children.” Parades were organized to protest against shipments of scrap iron to Japan. The war in the Far East, then, was exacerbating the already palpable tension. And from this rush of anti-Japan feeling sprang further movements of political and business opportunism against the resident Japanese.

With raw materials moving to Japan through the port of Vancouver, with the city council extremely intent on “keeping the Japanese under control,” and with the Vancouver newspapers giving extensive coverage to almost every aspect of the “Japanese problem,” Vancouverites were highly sensitized to the Japanese in their midst, people whom they had been made to feel could not be trusted. The Powell Street “ghetto” provided a focal point for white feelings and also provided seemingly irrefutable evidence for real or imagined grievance against the Japanese.

The agitation was spearheaded by one man who gave direction and vehemence to the general hostility that had existed for decades in the area. By the end of 1937, Halford Wilson, alderman on the Vancouver City Council and a member of the rabid Native Sons of British Columbia, was gearing himself for a cantankerous drive to “control” the Japanese in the city. The antecedents for his obsession were clear, for he was the son of the Reverend G.H. Wilson, a chief speaker at the anti-Oriental rally of 1907. During a rather headlong career, in which he overshadowed his fellow cohorts and the “moderate” members in the council, he reiterated every well-known cliche concerning the resident Japanese, and his course of action included attempts to ban trade licences to Japanese and culminated in a proposal for enforced segregation of all Orientals in the city.

At first, he took up the grievances that were common currency,²³ and then gradually came to advocate some “original” ideas as his crusade gained momentum. His proposal to refuse trade licences to Japanese was passed over the opposition of the moderates like Helena Gutteridge who saw disturbing implications for the future:

If we start stirring up race prejudices we are no better than Hitler in his actions against the Jews. It’s a dirty mean trick to wrap up this measure in race prejudice to get public support …. Where are you going to stop? Next you will be excluding other racial groups like Greeks and Swedes. Why not allow people born in B.C. to do business here?²⁴

The plan, however, was temporarily abandoned when the Legislative Assembly rejected a charter amendment which would have empowered Vancouver to deny licences on a racial basis.

When the Board of Review was appointed in 1938 to investigate charges of illegal entry, Wilson and fellow alderman Harry DeGraves submitted a 12-page brief which demanded that Japanese carry identification cards, suggested the closure of the Japanese-language schools “as a menace to Canadian national life” and asked that part of the Oriental population be transferred to other provinces. Since these points were beyond the Board’s frame of reference, it ignored them. But they were all eventually to be put into effect. This “most prominent” member of the anti-Japanese group, as the Ottawa Citizen mildly described him, more acutely characterized in the Southam press as a “thoroughly bad influence,” and attacked as a “charlatan” and “political demagogue” by The New Canadian, carried on his many-faceted campaign well into 1942.

Thus, even after he was blocked by Victoria from legally restricting trade licences, Wilson proposed that Vancouver hold up applications from Japanese for licences to operate dressmaking shops, claiming that tuberculosis was rife among Japanese, making their dresses a “menace,” and that girls worked under “sweatshop” conditions in the back of confectionery stores. He made these claims in the face of arguments that all shops and factories were regularly inspected by city health officials and inspectors. The Province, lately taking a more tolerant view of the Japanese, summed up the Wilsonian tactics neatly:

The too well authenticated suspicion against him is that he is here not first of all concerned with preventing sweatshops and tuberculosis but that he is trying by devious means to discriminate, unjustly and unlawfully, against Orientals.²⁵

But his activities were winning spectacular headlines. In 1941, the irrepressible Wilson was again asking Ottawa to outlaw Japanese-language schools, not only because they were evidence of loyalty to Tokyo, but also because attendance imposed an “intolerable strain” on the health of immature children! JCCL delegations appearing in city chambers to press Wilson for proof of his charges were no match for a man who could also urge that Japanese starlings, imported to combat insect pests, ought to be eradicated.

That most political arguments in favour of the impossibility of Japanese “assimilation” were in reality arguments in favour of its prohibition was perhaps no more amply demonstrated than in Wilson’s “Oriental ghetto” plan. At Wilson’s instigation, the city council appointed a special committee to draft a by-law to prevent Orientals from being either owners or tenants in “other than their own recognized localities.” Wilson warned the council that Orientals were “filtering” into the better residential districts of the city and that white residents were protesting that real estate values would therefore fall. “Where one Oriental buys property, another follows,” Wilson asserted.²⁶ But the scheme foundered when the committee concluded that the city had no legal basis on which to draft such a discriminatory by-law.

The Vancouver of the late 1930s was a shabby place, still not fully recovered from the Depression years. It had witnessed violent scenes at the post office where men on relief were forcibly “evacuated” by the RCMP, an action which caused the sit-downers to pour through downtown streets, smashing windows and looting. Thus the unrest over the “Japanese problem” was only part of the malaise that gripped the city. Dwarfed and cocooned by the brooding North Shore mountains which, in their pristine serenity and beauty, provided a contrast to the ugly humours below, the city seemed not yet grown out of its frontier mentality.

By June, 1939, however, at the time of the Royal Visit, the city had recovered some of its equanimity, as the citizenry in a spurt of enthusiasm united to show their loyalty. Powell Street decked its streets with flags and bunting, 300 girls clad in kimonos lined Thornton Park, communities in the lower mainland and in Vancouver Island erected welcoming arches, and thousands turned out to greet the King and Queen. And in one of the most impressive sights of all, a flotilla of 200 fishing boats hoisting Union Jacks and tri-colour streamers moved out into the Gulf of Georgia from Steveston to greet the royal liner and its convoy of four destroyers. It was one of the rare occasions in which the Japanese community felt that it was taking – and were allowed to take – an active part in the larger community life. But as war in Europe came, and as the outlines of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis began to assume clearer shape, this feeling soon dissipated, and their isolation was more pronounced than ever.

With the entry of Canada into the European war, the issue of military service for Nisei was raised almost immediately. The JCCL dispatched a wire to Prime Minister King pledging “deepest loyalty and devotion” to Canada, and Nisei were advised by The New Canadian in its issue of September 8, 1939, to forget the constant attacks on their character and loyalty and “be prepared to assume our burden and fulfill our part” when Canada did lay down a national policy. To the Nisei, this was a “history-making commitment,” though there were many among them who felt strongly that, denied the vote, Nisei were not obligated to offer devotion or service.²⁷ The same issue carried a full page of pictures and a story recalling the Issei volunteers of the 1914-1918 war who “set an example for Nisei today.” And as Woodsworth spoke in the House of Commons on September 8, referring to King’s plea for toleration of peoples of other nationalities in Canada and the need for national unity as Canada geared herself for war, he declared that:

I would have been almost ashamed, had I been the Prime Minister, to read a telegram from the Japanese Canadians pledging their loyalty, when we refuse to Canadian-born Japanese the same treatment that we give to other Canadians.²⁸

When JCCL chapters met on Remembrance Day for their fourth annual conference, they reaffirmed their pledge of support to Canada’s war effort in the face of sensational articles published in nationally circulated magazines bearing such titles as “The Rising Sun’s Dark Shadow Over Canada” and “The Japanese Invasion of Canada.”²⁹

Various Issei organizations from Vancouver to Prince Rupert were sending unsolicited cheques to mayors and reeves to be forwarded to the Department of National Defence. And when Canada announced its first War Loan in 1940, response from Issei was immediate, with over $55,000 being subscribed in a few months. By August, Japanese communities had given over $4,000 in voluntary donations, and by the summer of 1941 had subscribed $340,200 to the Victory Loan Drive, even as the possibility of war with Japan was looming.

The opportunity for enlistment never came. The fact that several Nisei were turned down already indicated that the authorities were practising a silent discrimination against accepting Nisei in the Canadian Active Service Force, at least within British Columbia. When the programme of conscription for Home Defence was adopted by the Dominion in 1940, there was some anxiety over how Nisei might be affected. The Dominion Militia Act provided for the conscription of all British subjects between 18 and 45, and was not limited to those entitled to vote. The news in September that Nisei would be included in military training medical examinations, however, seemingly put an end to rumours. It caused a real stir on Powell Street: some were hostile, others were enthusiastic. If there were wavering loyalties, a decision had to be made, and families would have to define where they stood.

But nothing came of it. Medicals were completed, but no calls for training came. Army officials suggested, however, that in the event of a call-up the most efficient way of training would be to organize all-Japanese platoons or companies “in order to form homogeneous groups” which would be in keeping with their “physical standards” and offset “language difficulties.”³⁰

Behind this careful reluctance to induct Nisei – and the rationalizations which accompanied it – was patently the issue of the franchise. The Vancouver City Council already had asked Ottawa for assurance that no franchise rights would be granted to Nisei who served in the Canadian forces, adding that Nisei should be exempted from military service “for reasons of security,” or failing that, be forced to serve elsewhere than on the Pacific coast because of the possibility of sabotage. The Vancouver Province of December 8, 1940, reported the following dialogue between CCF members and the Conservative leader of the province:

Colin Cameron (CCF Comox): Indians and Orientals who are willing to give their lives for Canada should be entitled to vote.

R.L. Maitland (Conservative leader): I am opposed to Orientals having the vote even if they were registered British subjects.

Harold Winch (CCF leader): But you are willing to let them fight for you.

Maitland: That is all very well, but the principle of allowing Orientals to vote is wrong. They do not understand Canadian government sufficiently to take part in our legislation.

Winch: They understand it sufficiently to want to fight for it.³¹

British Columbia’s Premier Duff Pattullo had already written to Prime Minister King, questioning the wisdom of calling up Oriental Canadians for compulsory training. King expressed his concern to the War Cabinet about the effect on public opinion in British Columbia of calling up Japanese; it was decided not to proceed. Moreover, on receipt of Pattullo’s letter, King immediately told the War Cabinet that he felt it would be unwise to allow Nisei to have firearms at a moment when war with Japan was possible.³²

An official announcement on the issue of military service came on January 8, 1941, when King announced that a special investigating committee had recommended that citizens of Japanese ancestry be exempted from service. The policy was established “not upon any mistrust of their patriotism,” King emphasized, but because of the “dangerous” situation caused by anti-Japanese hostility in British Columbia. The committee had declared that race riots and other disturbances were highly likely:

The white population, with only the slightest provocation, might suddenly resort to violence against Japanese individuals or groups. The Japanese themselves are alive to this hostility, and their fear and perplexity, and their natural determination to protect themselves if attacked, are further elements of danger.

The situation … may be further complicated at any time by acts committed outside Canada; acts which cannot be foreseen, but which might be intensely provocative. Any occurrence of that nature might not only provoke action against the Japanese in British Columbia, but, if there were Canadians of Japanese race serving at the time in the armed forces of Canada, they might also be in danger of attack by the less responsible element among their comrades.³³

That Nisei were fully entitled to claim the right to serve in the armed forces was not the issue; instead, the committee noted that they were even prepared to fight against “other Japanese” in the event of war against Japan. On the other hand, the committee admitted that race feeling ran so high in the province that even the prospect of white and Nisei youths training together in camp and living in barracks was deemed to be offensive. The committee’s decision was therefore based “upon a desire to protect and to ease the position of the Japanese themselves.” King was told that the decision was taken “most reluctantly” and that the views of the members “were not unanimous.”³⁴

The special committee was composed of Lt.-Col. A.W. Sparling of the Department of National Defence, Assistant Commissioner F.J. Mead of the RCMP, Dr. Hugh Keenleyside of the Department of External Affairs, and Sir George Sansom, a leading authority on the history and culture of Japan. Specifically, the committee felt that its duties lay in discovering the extent and causes of hostile feeling between the white and the Japanese populations; in determining whether the hostility constituted a danger either to the internal security of the province or to national security; and in considering, if such danger existed, what practical steps should be taken to reduce it.

The committee convened in Vancouver and Victoria in October, 1940, holding sessions at which 57 witnesses appeared before it. The eight Japanese witnesses, who included Thomas Shoyama, editor of The New Canadian, and Takeichi Umezuki, Secretary of the Camp and Mill Workers’ Union, represented a fair cross-section of the community. At the same time, the status of white witnesses, who included Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia E.W. Hamber, Premier Pattullo, Pacific Command chief Major-General R.O. Alexander and high-ranking officials of naval and air intelligence, attested to the magnitude of the problem. Members of the anti-Japanese front were also called to testify.

An important result of the hearings was the dismissal of the widely disseminated charges of “disloyalty” and “subversive activity,” for no concrete evidence was brought forth to support these assertions. Members of the various branches of the police were unanimous in declaring that, following the investigation of a “great number” of reputedly subversive acts over a period of years, in not one single instance had they been able to find substantiating evidence. On the contrary, they said, the Japanese had “an admirable record as law-abiding and decently behaved citizens.”

Nevertheless, the mistrust and dislike of the Japanese was a fact. And these ill feelings, the committee concluded,

were kept alive and stimulated … and deliberately inflamed by certain individuals for reasons which can only be ascribed to a desire for personal political advantage.

This deliberate exploitation had created “an altogether unjustified suspicion and sense of alarm in the public mind”; at the same time it produced a sense of persecution and resentment on the part of the Japanese which “make for neither loyalty nor harmony.” Unless anti-Japanese sentiments were reduced to a minimum, the committee warned that there was a likelihood of “riotous occurrences.” Such an incident had already occurred on Powell Street on Halloween night in 1939 when a mob of 300 white youths smashed plate glass windows and looted stores before being dispersed. One looter was severely beaten by a patrol of “aroused” Japanese.

King’s official statement on the committee’s findings encompassed most of its recommendations and also included the imposition of a special registration of all Japanese. He declared that:

The great majority of people of Oriental racial origin who are now in Canada are thoroughly loyal to their adopted, or in the case of the large percentage who were born in Canada, their native land.³⁵

Privately, however, King felt that the danger of subversive activities in the event of war with Japan was great enough to justify the decision to impose the compulsory registration, and great enough to counteract his general policy not to give Japan any pretext for offense.³⁶ All through the late months of 1940 and right up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, King was expecting Japan to enter the war on the side of the Axis at any moment. But he was anxious that Canada should provide neither provocation nor excuse for Japanese aggression, at least until the United States might be involved on the side of Britain and Canada. In order to minimize the effect of the registration order on the Japanese government, King saw the Japanese minister, Baron Tomii, and showed him the statement which had been presented for the press announcing the registration. King found that Baron Tomii accepted it “in a cordial way” and didn’t take exception to the fact that Japanese were being discriminated against by being the only group registered.

Neither, on the whole, did the resident Japanese take exception. Reaction to the news of registration was favourable, mixed inevitably with some irritation and resentment since similar steps were not being taken with aliens or citizens of German or Italian origin. It was accepted, however, as a necessary move to quiet jittery nerves, to add to public enlightenment by disclosing an accurate picture of actual population figures largely inflated to an astonishing degree, and to confound those numerous critics who were alleging that spies were being smuggled into Canada. The attitude of the community was, in the main, expressed by the JCCL’s pledge of co-operation dispatched to the Prime Minister – to which King replied that he was pleased with “the admirable spirit” in which the Japanese accepted the government’s edict.³⁷

King’s assertion that the federal government was convinced of the loyalty of the “great majority” was accepted with some relief. But at the same time, Nisei realized that the fundamental issue of equal citizenship rights remained to be settled – and these clearly included neither exemption nor exclusion from military duties.³⁸ Nor did they miss the fact that nowhere in the official report of the committee or in King’s statement was there any reference to the franchise problem which defined the basic attitude against drafting Nisei for service.

The work of registration was taken up by the RCMP on March 4, 1941, and completed towards the end of August, three months before the outbreak of the Pacific war. A Standing Committee, which was organized as a result of previous recommendations, met community leaders in February to ask that a five-man “liaison” committee be selected to co-operate with the RCMP. Again, Lt.-Col. Sparling and the RCMP’s Mead served on the Standing Committee, with Mayor Fred Hume of New Westminster, Professor Angus of the University of British Columbia and Lt.-Col. MacGregor MacIntosh of the provincial legislature added as new members. The composition of this committee was bound to provoke controversy, since Angus was known to be sympathetic towards Nisei aspirations and MacIntosh was violently anti-Japanese.³⁹

The Japanese sub-committee was composed of three Issei, Etsuji Morii, Arthur Nishiguchi and Mitsujiro Noguchi, and two Nisei, Kunio Shimizu and Thomas Shoyama. Morii, the eminence grise of the business and gambling world of Powell Street, had already “co-operated” with the RCMP during the 1931 investigation of smuggling operations. At once hated, feared and respected, he was a prominent figure in the pre-war community structure.

Even in this instance, there developed a conflict of personality and viewpoint between the first- and second-generation members of this sub-committee, aggravated by Nisei resentment against the doubtful integrity of two of the Issei. The Standing Committee was unable to appreciate fully the changing structure of the Japanese community in which the ferment of independence from traditional Issei control had been brewing within the native-born generation. The impending threat of war in the Pacific had forced Nisei leaders to realize that the entire group, for its survival, had to make known and stand by a loyalty to Canada regardless of future events – a decision that the Issei were not yet willing to make.

During one meeting, the discussion had come around to the question of military service. What were the objections to a separate and distinct Nisei unit? Lt.-Col. Sparling was deft in reply: “Too expensive and complicated.” On another occasion, with war imminent, it seemed to Shoyama that it was urgent not only for Nisei volunteers to be accepted but that the draft be extended immediately to all Nisei. The approach of war, far from being a deterrent to such a policy, was the most vital reason for a swift and radical change in government policy. It was plain that Nisei in uniform would be the most powerful factor – perhaps the only factor – in influencing public opinion for good; and an all-Nisei unit offered the most practical solution. This argument apparently struck the military and Issei members as being “only the impractical outburst of youth.” One of the Issei said to Shoyama later: “I’m glad you talked that way. Of course it’s impossible, but it sounds good for us to say it.”⁴⁰ This already well-developed conflict in attitudes between Issei and Nisei presaged the complete breakdown in the possibility of forming any organized and unified policy on the threat of evacuation after war in the Pacific finally came.

In any case, all persons of Japanese origin over the age of 16, approximately 14,700, were affected by the registration order. Details of about 8,300 children under 16 were recorded by parents. All persons were required to produce birth or naturalization certificates, National Registration cards, passports or other documents that would be evidence of their legal status in Canada. Each person was required to carry the registration card on his person at all times: on it were details as to name, address, age, height, weight, marks of identification and occupation. The card was further embellished with photograph, thumb print and serial number. And symbol-hunters might have gloried in the choice of colours which signified status: white cards issued to Canadian-born, salmon-pink to naturalized citizens, yellow to alien Japanese. When the British Columbia registration was complete, the team of RCMP officers and interpreters moved on to Calgary to interview some 500 Albertans.

Exemption from military service was by far the more fateful decision, isolating the Japanese community more than ever before from the rest of the country. Representatives of 25 Nisei organizations in the lower mainland gathered to protest, and the JCCL wired King, protesting that his policy regarded them “as different and apart from Occidental Canadians.” It seemed quite apparent to them that federal policy was principally a response to local and provincial pressure. And they recognized that the opposition was based in the main on the doctrine that “if a man is good enough to fight, he is good enough to vote” which had been cunningly converted into its ignoble reverse: “If we don’t allow a man to fight, we are under no obligation to allow him to vote.” But Ottawa’s reiteration of its policy was to be expected. Two weeks later, the Department of External Affairs informed the JCCL that the exemption was necessary to prevent the occurrence of “unfortunate incidents.” The issue, then, was officially closed, except that three Nisei, Shigeo Kato, Fujio Aida and Hiromi Tanaka, were accepted by recruiting officers in British Columbia just before Pearl Harbor.

The confiscation of firearms and explosives was another contentious issue, especially as Attorney-General Gordon Wismer had rationalized the ban as necessary “in view of the increasing bitterness” between members of the Chinese and Japanese races. The JCCL fired off a protest to Wismer, discounting “any possibility of violence between Chinese and Japanese who have been born here and who are British subjects” and objecting that the order did not distinguish between aliens and citizens. Moreover, the JCCL declared, the order was discriminatory in that farmers, for example, were required to give up stumping powder, blasting caps and other explosives used for clearing farm lands. Wismer replied that

in view of relations between China and Japan … it is inadvisable that members of the two belligerent races should bear arms; and you can understand how impossible it would be to make distinction between those who are British subjects and others.⁴¹

The matter was quietly dropped but it seemed obvious to Nisei that his order was prompted not by an incipient clash of arms between the two groups but by those hundreds of rumours of fifth column activity which had already been proven false. Relations were indeed strained between Chinese and Japanese but never at any time seemed likely to break out into open violence. Even home-made bows and arrows were banned, as one young Nisei discovered when he applied for a licence to shoot ducks along the Fraser marshes.

King, in announcing the registration of the Japanese, had denounced the “ill-informed” individuals and groups who impugned the loyalty and integrity of Japanese by “inaccurate rumours” and “intemperate words.” But nothing was done to implement the Special Committee’s recommendation that

steps should be taken to diminish anti-Japanese propaganda in the Province, by appealing to individuals and to the Press on the grounds of civil security and national defence; and if necessary, by using Censorship for this purpose.⁴²

Politicians who had been keeping the “Japanese problem” alive for years were unlikely to heed the Prime Minister’s words even in war time. Clearly, such a move had no precedent and was too far-reaching a restraint on “free speech,” especially as the bulk of the anti-Japanese attacks was coming from members of the House of Commons.

It would have been out of character for British Columbian politicians to agree to a self-imposed restraint. The national danger of war might well have created in the province an unusual “sense of community” with the rest of the Dominion,⁴³ but on the Japanese question, British Columbia and Ottawa remained as divided as ever. At the root of the continuation of the anti-Japanese campaign lay the old idea that provincial interests were being sacrificed for the sake of that nebulous concept of “national unity.” The province’s politicians claimed that federal policy on the Japanese once again fell short of the much more drastic measures they would have liked to have seen adopted. Above all, they felt that those who advocated toleration were out of touch with the currents of feeling in the province.

On February 17, 1941, as King reopened proceedings of the adjourned session in the House, he again cautioned those responsible for “irresponsible charges and accusations” which had resulted in an “unfortunate recrudescence” of anti-Japanese feeling. But a week later, during a debate on the registration programme, members of his Liberal Party, Tom Reid and George Cruickshank, as well as Howard Green and A.W. Neill, rose to attack government policy, especially its “sympathetic” attitude to the Japanese on the west coast or what the Toronto Globe and Mail condemned as King’s “meticulous regard” for potentially disloyal people.⁴⁴ To the reminder by the Prime Minister that Nisei were anxious to help in the registration programme, Neill replied:

Whatever the opinion of the Prime Minister or of the government here, we in British Columbia are firmly convinced that once a Jap always a Jap.

Angus MacInnis, the lone CCF member from British Columbia, attacked Neill’s words as a “disgrace to Canada”:

My friend and I are of Scottish descent, and I may say with equal truth, ‘Once a Scotsman always a Scotsman.’⁴⁵

Reid, another Scot, did not like the implication. Rising to his feet, he said that he was indeed Scottish but that he had a different outlook in life from the Canadian Japanese. Unlike them, his first allegiance was to Canada, whereas no member of the Japanese race could ever become a trustworthy Canadian citizen. Patently, the debate had gotten well out of hand, with the rather curious spectacle of three Scots losing their tempers, and no one apparently caring for the Prime Minister’s plea for the soft word. The Vancouver Province, in reporting the story in its February 26 issue, aptly titled it: “MacInnis Vs. The Rest – B.C. Members in Free-For-All Over Treatment of Japanese.”

The next round could well have been entitled Reid Vs. The New Canadian. Departing into invective, the February 28 issue carried an editorial which declared that “several British Columbia members of the House are still unprincipled politicians, first, last and all the time”:

Mr. A.W. Neill … was once again the leading spirit in an attack upon the quality of our loyalty and our Canadianism. With due assistance from his companion in prejudice, Mr. Tom Reid, he sawed violently away at his favourite plank - one, by the way, that he has exploited to considerable advantage for many a year – once a Jap, always a Jap’ …. The editor of this weekly … publicly challenges Mr. Neill and Mr. Reid to an open debate to determine which proposition is more valid: ‘Once a Japanese, always a Japanese,’ or ‘Once an Oriental-baiting politician, always an Oriental-baiting politician.’

Reid took up the gauntlet several thousand miles away in the House of Commons, in an arena in which no Nisei could have stood and debated. Addressing the Speaker of the House, he declared that The New Canadian statements were “false, malicious and scurrilous,” and then identified himself on the side of the angels:

At no time have I endeavoured to arouse hostile or racial feelings against the Japanese in British Columbia …. Such a vilifying personal attack, Mr. Speaker, comes with poor grace from a race of people who have enjoyed, with the exception of the franchise, every phase of our social and economic life.⁴⁶

The issue, then, was whether it was open for a Member of Parliament to say, “Once a Jap, always a Jap,” with all of its sinister implications, but insolent for Canadian journalists of Japanese race to retort, “Once a Jap-baiter, always a Jap-baiter,” implying not merely unwavering opinions but also a compulsive propensity to attack fellow citizens from unworthy motives.

Reid’s new robes, spun of threadbare thinness, were ill-fitting. In adopting the not uncommon ploy that he was free from racial prejudice, he had chosen to ignore the fulminating lava flow of his attacks on the Japanese, buried in House debates, newspaper stories and hustings speeches. In less than 10 months, his equanimity apparently restored, Reid was to urge the immediate “deportation” of all persons of Japanese descent from Canada. The New Canadian, for its part, was showing its mettle as a means of presenting the Nisei viewpoint to the white population.⁴⁷

In the months up to Pearl Harbor, the Japanese community was gripped with increasing anxiety and fear over the possibility of open conflict in the Pacific. But at the same time, the Japanese felt that the difficulties would somehow blow over and that they would be able to carry on as they had been doing. To them, Japan appeared anxious to avoid a clash with Britain or the United States, and so they hoped that international relations would never reach the breaking point. Indeed, as the community carried on its normal round of activities, a considerable amount of wishful thinking permeated its attitudes. Typical was the feature story in the July 18, 1941, issue of The New Canadian which was entitled “Community Cool; Doubt Outbreak in the Far East.” It interpreted the tension in the Far East as likely to subside, with Japan more likely to seek a definite settlement of her four-year Chinese venture rather than becoming embroiled in assisting Germany by attacking Russia from the east. Whatever, they felt that

our record as good citizens – law-abiding, industrious, self-supporting – stands all of us in good stead.

In September, as the American-Japanese talks over the subject of Japan’s aggression in the East went on in Washington between Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Admiral Nomura, with neither willing to give concessions, Japan was sending exchange ships to sections of the British Empire under an agreement for the exchange of nationals engaged in commercial or diplomatic activities. But as no programme of repatriation of immigrants, either alien or naturalized, was being contemplated, resident Japanese felt that this was “proof” of their intention to remain permanent residents in Canada. The “overwhelming” sentiment along Powell Street was that the community was of “such long standing” and “so thoroughly rooted” that any attempt at repatriation would be “preposterous.”⁴⁸ Of more immediate concern was the fact that many residents were stranded in Japan following the suspension of direct trans-Pacific shipping.

As the Washington talks still foundered in mid-October, a formidable crisis developed in Tokyo. The army felt that the time was opportune for a sudden strike at both the United States and Britain, but even at this time, the naval chiefs were reluctant to engage the United States in war. With the backing of Prime Minister Konoye and the Emperor, they might have stopped the war if they had openly defied Tojo, the intransigent Minister of War, and advised acceptance of American demands of withdrawal from China and Indo-China. But Konoye resigned and Tojo took his place, and the die appeared to be cast.

Meanwhile, the Japanese navy took its battle stations, and ships were loaded for the south. On November 26, 1941, a fleet of carriers, battleships and cruisers, which had been assembled in the Kuriles, set sail for the North Pacific, from where it would, in response to a certain signal, and not otherwise, carry out its plans to attack the American fleet.

But while Pearl Harbor was ineluctably drawing closer, the people who were to become the victims of Japan’s military policies and of Canada’s wartime devaluation of citizenship were holding fast to the belief that, even if the worst happened, they could depend on the “tolerance” of Canadians and the “democratic way of life.” They were aware, in the tense days of late autumn, that a crisis overshadowing all previous ones was looming. But the nightmare shapes of what was actually to happen were still inchoate. Nisei were conjecturing that the “worst” that might happen in the event of war would not be any more severe than what happened to German and Italian communities in Canada. It might include a closer surveillance of community organizations and the vernacular press, internment of a few resident aliens, and a periodical reporting to the RCMP of all aliens and restrictions levied on the fishing fleet.

The desperate naivete of their belief in “democracy” – in retrospect almost childlike – was touching and pathetic. But it had been the basis of their strivings in the past, and it was all they could depend on in the future. The theme was stated over and over. To the Nisei, it was not a question of what they would do – as they were so often asked by curious friends – but of what Canada and white Canadians would do.⁴⁹ For the past decade, Nisei had asserted their loyalty to Canada in whatever circumstances; they had co-operated in the onerous programme of the special registration; they had protested against their exclusion from military service; they had contributed to the Canadian war effort in all ways open to them. They felt, therefore, that it was not their conduct that was now crucial but the attitude of British Columbians and of Canadians in general. The Nisei felt that the concepts of “fair play” and “British justice” would stand the sternest test. How should they face a war? The answer was clear:

We need now to place our assurance in the inherent tolerance, good sense and decency of our Canadian neighbours and the democratic way of life.⁵⁰

In the first week of December, Vancouver merchants urged people to shop early because of the wartime shortage of silk stockings, broadcloth shirts and ping pong balls; fire swept through a herring camp in North Galiano Island, burning the belongings of 26 Nisei girls and leaving them homeless; the body of a Nisei girl was found on the beach of the Point Grey Indian reserve; Tom Matsuoka of Lethbridge was honoured by the entire community on the eve of his departure for overseas service; the Upper Fraser Japanese Fishermen’s Association placed the 5,808th label on a can of chum salmon – the last of three-and-a-quarter tons – destined for Britain as a gift from the Japanese; Nisei sportswriters bewailed unsportsmanlike play in the local basketball league. The little stores on Powell Street were gay for Christmas, shining with streamers and neon lights. The scarred street, “Japtown on the Pacific,” followed a seemingly unruffled routine. On December 7, the Japanese fleet which had set course from the lonely Kuriles two weeks before, let loose their planes on Pearl Harbor.

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Notes

1. Hope, C.E., and W.K. Earle, “The Oriental Threat”, Maclean’s, May 1, 1933. ↩
2. Vancouver Province, April 29, 1933. ↩
3. Vancouver Province, July 5, 17, 1931; August 11, 1931. ↩
4. Canada, Board of Review (Immigration) Report (Ottawa: King’s Printer, October 12, 1938). ↩
5. See Angus, H.F., “Canadian Immigration: The Law and Its Administration”, in Mackenzie, N., ed., The Legal Status of Aliens in Pacific Countries (Oxford University Press, 1937), pp. 71-3, for an analysis of the case of Munetaka Samejima who had been detained under a deportation order of the Board of Inquiry at Victoria in 1931. Samejima had been alleged to have entered Canada by misrepresenting that he was a domestic servant going to a Japanese employer. He was cleared of the charge in the Supreme Court of Canada. ↩
6. Vancouver Province, March 31, 1945. ↩
7. Board of Review (Immigration) Report, p. 6. ↩
8. Vancouver Province, January 19, 1938. ↩
9. Section 12, “Freedom”, Co-operative Commonwealth Federation Programme, Adopted at First National Convention, Held at Regina, Saskatchewan, July, 1933. Cited in McNaught, K., A Prophet in Politics: A Biography of J.S. Woodsworth (University of Toronto Press, 1959), p. 328. ↩
10. MacInnis, G. and A., Oriental Canadians – Outcasts or Citizens? (Vancouver: Federationist Publishing Co., 1943), p. 9. ↩
11. MacInnis, G., J. S. Woodsworth: A Man to Remember (Toronto: Macmillan, 1953), p. 210. ↩
12. Angus, H.F., “Liberalism Stoops to Conquer”, Canadian Forum, 15 (December, 1935), pp. 389-90. ↩
13. Angus MacInnis, in Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1936, pp. 376-7. ↩
14. MacInnis, G., op. cit., p. 288. ↩
15. See Vancouver Province, November 17, 1937; Martin, M., “The Rising Sun Over Canada”, Asia, 7 (April, 1941), p. 189. The Toronto Star Weekly, April 9, 1938, published a photograph of a Japanese resident using a range finder in Vancouver harbour. ↩
16. According to the Special Committee on Orientals in British Columbia, Report and Recommendations, December, 1940 (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1941), p. 9, a total of 827 Japanese nationals had entered Canada as immigrants during a 10-year period. ↩
17. Resolutions passed at the National Conservative Convention, July 5, 6, 7, 1938 (Ottawa, 1938), p. 6. ↩
18. Vancouver News-Herald, August 8, 1939. See also The New Canadian, August 15, 1939. Nellie L. McClung, member of the CBC Advisory Board, deplored Drew’s speech in an article published in newspapers including the Toronto Telegram, Winnipeg Free Press and Victoria Times. In it, she said: “apart from the immorality of a reprisal [against Japanese residents] there is its overwhelming stupidity.” ↩
19. Vancouver Sun, August 13, 1939. ↩
20. Vancouver Province, February 17, 1938. ↩
21. See Angus, H.F., “Effect of War on Oriental Minorities in Canada”, Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 7 (November, 1941), pp. 509-10, for a discussion of the dissemination of propaganda by the Japanese community before 1941. ↩
22. E.g., The New Canadian, April 17, 1940. ↩
23. E.g., Vancouver Province, December 13, 1937. ↩
24. Vancouver Province, April 26, 1938. ↩
25. “Thanks to the ‘Province’”, editorial in The New Canadian, March 21, 1941. Wilson himself lived in the Mount Pleasant area of Vancouver, largely working class in character and in which small retail, dry cleaning and pressing establishments operated by Japanese were numerous. Swan Brothers Cleaners, a large plant in Mount Pleasant, was reported to have addressed a letter of congratulation to the Council for adopting a policy restricting trade licences. But among protests against Wilson and Council members was that lodged by the Canadian Civil Liberties Union which charged him with “race discrimination” and “public hysteria.” See three-part series in The New Canadian, January 26, February 2 and 9, 1940, “Alderman Wilson and His ‘Oriental Menace’.” ↩
26. The New Canadian, February 7, 1941. ↩
27. In a letter to editor, The New Canadian, September 15, 1939, one Nisei deplored the sending of the telegram and stated that Nisei should “demand lawful rights before enlisting our support to a country that treats us so shabbily.” A series of letters, pro and con, appeared on the subject in subsequent issues. ↩
28. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1939, p. 573. ↩
29. Marshall, J., “The Japanese Invasion of Canada”, Collier’s, October 14, 1939, a compilation and digest of charges against Japanese; Shaw, C.L., “The Rising Sun’s Dark Shadow Over Canada”, Liberty Magazine, November 11, 1939. Shaw was financial editor of the Vancouver Province and author of several anti-Japanese articles published in Maclean’s. ↩
30. The New Canadian, October 2, 1940. Many delegates to the Fifth Annual National JCCL convention in Vancouver, November, 1940, felt that segregated units was another form of discrimination and might “arouse suspicion and doubts in the minds of the Canadian people.” But the consensus was that Nisei would respond to any duty which the government saw fit to impose. ↩
31. Cf. “Franchise For Those Who Serve in Canada’s Army”, Winnipeg Free Press, October 9, 1940: “To withhold [the vote] from citizens who took part in the defense of the country would be out of the question …. To discriminate against those who are glad to live in this country and wish to be regarded as Canadian citizens, would only be warranted if there were substantial reasons for holding that a general exemption was necessary for security.” ↩
32. Pickersgill, J.W., The Mackenzie King Record: 1939-1944, 1 (University of Toronto Press, 1960), pp. 149-50. ↩
33. Special Committee on Orientals, op. cit., p. 12. ↩
34. Special Committee on Orientals, op. cit., p. 14. ↩
35. The New Canadian, January 10, 1941. The official report of the Special Committee was not tabled in the House of Commons until February 17, 1941. ↩
36. Pickersgill, op. cit., p. 151. ↩
37. The New Canadian, January 31, 1941. ↩
38. The New Canadian, January 10, 1941. For an account of these hearings and of the background of the service issue since 1939, see series of five articles by Thomas Shoyama, “Niseis in Canadian Khaki”, beginning December 21, 1946, in The New Canadian. ↩
39. Alderman Wilson challenged the membership of Professor Angus in the Standing Committee: “like myself, he is prejudiced in the matter, having … urged granting of the franchise to the Nipponese.” See Vancouver Province, January 9, 1941. He further stated that the Committee “should comprise a purely disinterested, unbiased personnel.” A.W. Neill also complained that Angus was “so well known to be pro-Japanese that it was almost a matter of common scandal.” See Vancouver Province, February 26, 1941. ↩
40. Shoyama, op. cit., January 18, 1947. ↩
41. The New Canadian, September 18, 1940. ↩
42. Special Committee on Orientals, op. cit., p. 16. ↩
43. Ormsby, M., British Columbia: A History (Toronto: Macmillan, 1958), p. 478. ↩
44. Toronto Globe and Mail, February 26, 1941: “Nor do we think that Mr. King will gain much sympathy for his meticulous regard for the people of Japanese extraction on the Pacific Coast …. Any residents who are not loyal to the interests of Canada and Britain are not entitled to the Government’s consideration. If they are liable to provoke trouble, this is not the place for them.” See also The New Canadian, September 5, 1941, in which Toronto Telegram is quoted as suggesting that in the event of war in the Pacific, “privileges of citizenship” of Japanese Canadians be cancelled by the government. ↩
45. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1941, p. 1019. Some of the more bitter anti-Japanese politicians were of Scottish descent: MLAs Macgregor MacIntosh and R.L. Maitland; Thomas Reid, A.W. Neill and Ian Mackenzie, members of the House of Commons; Fergus McKean, leader of B.C.’s Labour Progressive Party. In March, 1945, the curious issue of the Scots in Canada not “yet being assimilated” was raised by Mrs. Laura Jamieson (CCF Vancouver North) after several members of the B.C. Legislative Assembly declared that “Orientals cannot be assimilated.” In a protest against her statement, R.C. “Claymore” MacDonald appeared in the House at Victoria in full Highland regalia and piped himself into the Assembly with bagpipes. Vancouver Sun, March 8, 1945. See also Jamieson’s article, “Where White and Brown Men Meet”, Canadian Forum, 21 (August, 1941), pp. 146-8. ↩
46. Canada, House of Commons Debates, 1941, p. 1537; The New Canadian, March 21, 1941. For a succinct statement of this not uncommon ploy of agitators to disclaim race prejudice, see Garrard, J.A., “Parallels of Protest: English Reactions to Jewish and Commonwealth Immigration”, Race: the Journal of the Institute of Race Relations, 9 (July, 1967), pp. 47-66. ↩
47. Ottawa Journal, September 11, 1941, quoted The New Canadian on the military issue and stated that it showed “beyond question a hearty loyalty to Canada on the part of the majority of the Canadian-born Japanese.” The July, 1941, issue of the weekly Marpole-Richmond Review contained an article, “The New Canadian Reveals the Mind of the Canadian Nisei”: “It is difficult for the average ‘white’ Canadian to get to know and understand the mind of the Oriental. Even the second generation withdraw themselves into a polite acquiescence when approached, revealing little of what they think of Canada and Canadians …. The New Canadian is valuable in disclosing more of the Nisei mind.” ↩
48. The New Canadian, September 12, 1941. ↩
49. E.g., Vancouver Sun, December 16, 1941. The headline on its editorial read: “Should British Columbia’s Japanese People Be Interned? Answer Depends on Their Own Conduct.” ↩
50. The New Canadian, November 14, 1941. ↩

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