Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century

12. Lessons in Citizenship, 1945-1949: The Delayed Return of the Japanese to Canada's Pacific Coast

12 I LESSONS IN CITIZENSHIP, 1945-1949 The Delayed Return of the Japanese to Canada's Pacific Coast PATRICIA E. ROY In the fall of 1945, police in Vancouver, British Columbia, charged John Pow Lungwith breakingand entering. They determinedthat hewas really Akhide Otsuji, an eighteen-year-old Japanese Canadian who had been living in the city for about a year. He also pled guilty to a second charge, that "as a Japanese, he unlawfully returned to the protected area." The prosecutor recommended a six-month sentence to ensure that all Japanese realized the penaltyfor coming to the coast without permission.1 The sentence may have deterred others, but Otsuji went to jail again for the same offense threeyears later. In 1945 no one had publiclydefendedhim; in 1948 twoVancouver Sun columnists protested. Jack Scott suggested that the order-incouncil that kept citizens from moving freely about the country was "every bit as such rank discrimination and hate-breeding as any of those unwritten laws of America's deep south"; Elmore Philpott noted that American Japanese had successfully resettled on the coast for several years but that "this great Christian country-Canada-sends one of its own men to jail for a year for pretending his grandfather was Chinese and not Japanese."2 Until April 1, 1949, Japanese Canadianscould not go within a hundred miles of the coast without a police permit. The postwar debate about the rights of Japanese residents intertwined with the debate about the Canadian Citizenship Act of1947, which for the first time identified Canadians as citizens of Canada and not just British subjects. Discussionsabout the meaningofcitizenshipand aboutthe effects ofthe U.S. Constitution-albeitmisunderstood-on thewartime treatment of Japanese Americans helped raise public awareness of the failure of the new citizenship law to address civil rights. The discussions did not, however , seem to influence federal political leaders or British Columbia Mem- LESSONS IN CITIZENSHIP, 1945-1949 255 bers of Parliament (MPs, elected members of the House of Commons). In this instance, contrary to traditional lore, national leaders heeded the province's MPs, whose advice was in harmonywith their prejudices. Unfortunately , neither group realized that lapanophobiawas fading. The delayed return of the Japanese to the coast was caused more by the atavistic ideas of federal politicians than by popular opinion in British Columbia. Within hours ofthe Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Canadian governmentmade Japanese Canadianfishermen surrendertheirboats, imposed a curfew, and encouraged Japanese languageschoolsand newspapers to dose. In earlyJanuary1942, itannounced that itwould move male Japanese nationals of military age inland to work on road construction, but its slowness in doing so, combined with Japan's military successes, stimulated British Columbians' long-standing antipathies to local Japanese as well as fears of sabotage. In late February, responding to public pressure from British Columbia and warnings of possible anti-Japanese riots, the government declared that no Japanese could remainwithin a hundred miles ofthe Pacific coast. This edict meant that approximately 22,000 people, more than 90 percent of Canada's Japanese population, had to move. The federal government set up a civilian agency, the British Columbia Security Commission, to supervise the move.3 By the end ofOctober, the commission had placed about 4,000 Canadians of Japanese ancestry east of the Rockies. The remainder stayed in B.C.: about two thousand moved on their own initiative , mainly to self-supporting settlements where they had minimal supervision ; 1,500 men were sent to road-building camps; the majority were relocated to former mining towns in the interior, where old buildings were rehabilitated orsmall cabins hastilybuilt to house them. Residents required police permission to leave, but mountains and a paucityof roads effectively curbed movement.4 Both CanadianandAmerican governments had hoped thatwartime relocation would breakup concentratedsettlements ofJapanese and scatter them throughout their respective nations. But few Japanese Canadians accepted jobs in eastern Canada during the war, despite official encouragement to do so. In August 1944, PrinIe Minister W. L. Mackenzie King announced a policy of repatriation and dispersal: Japanese Canadians must "repatriate" to Japan after the war, that is, accept deportation, or move eastofthe Rocky Mountains. In contrast, since that spring, the U.S. Western Defense Command had let a few Japanese return to the Pacific Coast "to test public reception."5 Then, in December 1944, after the presidential election and anticipating that a Supreme Court ruling might lead to their unrestricted PATRICIA E. ROY movement, the army announced that Japanese whose loyalty...