The BC Government and the Dispossession of Japanese Canadians (1941-1949)

A Six-Part Series by John Price


In 2012, the British Columbia legislature adopted a motion introduced by Naomi Yamamoto, the first person of Japanese heritage elected to the provincial legislature, to apologize for events during World War II when “Japanese Canadians were incarcerated in internment camps in the interior of BC and their property seized.”  Celebrated by some, the motion also had its critics, and now the National Association of Japanese Canadians has asked the BC government to go beyond the 2012 motion, fully acknowledge its own responsibility, and adopt initiatives that would assure the events of that era are never repeated. In this exclusive series, we examine what the National Association of Japanese Canadians is asking for and why. The series drills drown into the provincial government’s role in the 1941-49 period, highlighting the impact on communities and illustrating why the community may indeed have a strong case. These articles rely on the foundational research conducted by Ken Adachi, Ann Sunahara, Roy Miki, Mona Oikawa, and others as well as on research conducted in Library and Archives Canada, the B.C. Archives, the City of Victoria Archives, University of McGill Archives, local newspapers, and interviews with Japanese Canadians to whom the author is indebted. The research is in preparation for a new book, Beyond White Supremacy: Race, Indigeneity and Pacific Canada (forthcoming). Full disclosure of BC government documents related to the uprooting remains elusive. A select list of resources and factchecking information for this series is available upon request.


THE SERIES

Part 1: Redress: Again?

Part 2: BC Engineers a Coup

Part 3: BC Polices the Camps

Part 4: Punishing the Children

Part 5: Dispossession

Part 6: The Final Straw

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