Category: Second World War

The majority (between 6000 and 7000) of the Canadian nisei were born in the 1920s, with the numbers peaking in 1929 and continuing into the 1930s (The New Canadian, January 7, 1950).

By 1931, 40 years after the first arrival of Japanese immigrants to Canada, the total population of nisei was 10700 (Adachi, 1976, page 157).  

The nisei, born in Canada, were very different from their Japanese-born parents.  A huge rift between generations developed as the issei and nisei struggled to understand each other.  The nisei rapidly absorbed the traits of Canadian society through school, where they were integrated with white children. Their preferred language was English, although their parents insisted they attend daily Japanese language schools after regular school hours. However, attending the language school limited their participation in after-school activities at the regular school (Adachi, 1976, page 165), separating them from their Canadian peers.  They finished high school during the Depression years of the 1930s and because of discriminatory laws placed on them, they could only work in fields such as mining, forestry, farming, and fishing. Often, they were forced to work in small family businesses owned by their issei parents.

The issei had arrived in Canada in large numbers until their immigration was restricted, beginning in 1908. They remained physically and culturally separate from Canadian society due to language barriers and pervasive racism. Their struggles to find and retain work sometimes had meant they could not be constantly attentive to their children.  In the 1930s, the issei were the main leaders and business people and had financial control (Theurer, 115) in their communities. Issei were alarmed to see their children quickly adopting the ideals and behavior of Western society. They felt that the nisei lacked their own work ethic and frugality, accusing them of being careless, ignorant of Japanese culture, impolite and hedonistic, lacking in the kind of daring pioneer spirit that brought their own generation to Canada (Sumida, 1935, page 416 to 442).

Rigenda Sumida surveyed the opinions of 2016 British Columbia nisei over the age of 16 (deploying teams of nisei university graduates as interviewers) in the 1930s for his Masters thesis.  He reported that as a result of the discrimination directed against them and because of their parents who couldn’t integrate into Canadian culture and still idealized Japan, the nisei were pessimistic about their future in Canada.  They were criticized by the issei for thinking like Canadians and attacked by Canadians for looking like their parents.  They were not allowed to sit in “white areas” of theatres or use swimming pools during “white hours”.  Nisei were constantly confused by the choices they were presented with: assimilating or retaining Japanese culture and mindset (Sumida, 1935).

The Japanese Students Club was formed in 1935 (Theurer and Oue, 2021, p 115).  It included not only University of British Columbia students, but high school students and other citizens.  The first president of the club was Roger Obata, a UBC engineering student who later served in the Canadian Army and was a key member of the Japanese Canadian redress movement.

Members of the Japanese Students Club were anxious to gain full and equal rights of citizenship and greater opportunities for Japanese Canadians. “If more Canadians could be made aware of Japanese problems, especially if supported by hard facts and not through the rhetoric of politicians, nisei thought that the principles of democracy would eventually be applied to them (Adachi, 1976, p. 158)”. The greatest obstacle to their economic advancement was their inability to vote.  In order to participate in most professions, they needed to be on a voters’ list. However, in 1935, the only Asians allowed to vote in the country were the small number of Japanese Canadian First World War veterans.

Nisei graduates seeking jobs were faced with the same restrictions that the issei had encountered, despite having education or specialized training that qualified them for professional work.  Most university graduates found that they were unable to work in their chosen profession. The exceptions were in dentistry and medicine, but the nisei dentists and doctors labouring during this period worked in the Japanese community (Adachi, 1976, p.172). Eiji Yatabe, a 1939 chemical engineering graduate, was the first nisei to obtain a Master’s degree at UBC. Despite his advanced degree, he was unable to find a job in his field in British Columbia.  When the internment of Japanese Canadians began, he was working as a gardener for his older brother after the death of their father.

Some nisei graduates who were frustrated with the lack of opportunity in British Columbia, including Roger Obata, went to Japan to find work. They found that Canadian nisei were not welcomed in Japan and were regarded as foreigners, despite being able speak Japanese (Theurer, 2021, p. 112). “The nisei were caught between two worlds.  In Japan they were foreigners; white Canadians thought of them as Japanese.  As the foreign policy of Japan veered further and further from western alliance, the plight of the Japanese in British Columbia, never good at the best of times, became worse and worse (Ito, 1984, p. 100)”.

The Asiatic Exclusion League had been formed in 1907 by the Vancouver Trades and Labour Council (Mussett, undated).

“The object of this organization is to work for the exclusion from the Dominion of Canada, its territory and its possessions, all Asiatics by the enforcement of an act similar to the Natal act,” said a story in the anti-Asian newspaper, the Vancouver World, on Aug. 10, 1907. “The list of signatures was headed by Mayor Bethune, and includes several members of the legal legislature and a member of the Dominion parliament (Mackie, 2017).”

The League insisted that Asian immigration threatened the jobs of white workers because Asians accepted lower wages. Frequent mentions were made of Asians having a lower standard of living than white Canadians and being unable to assimilate into Canadian society; the language schools and Japanese associations were evidence of this failure to assimilate. Allowing Asians to raise their standard of living was also apparently a threat.  The objective of the League was to keep Asian immigrants out of British Columbia.

“To counteract the debilitating effects of their lower wage, Asians worked longer hours and had higher productivity than their white counterparts. To the labour agitators, compensating for a low wage with high productivity was an unfair tactic. Damned for having a lower standard of living and damned for working hard in order to raise it, Asians were locked into a double standard (Sunahara, 2000, page 7)”.

“Japanese Canadians were feared by whites because they worked too hard and were too intelligent to remain contented as labourers (Ito, 1984, page 86)”.

The Japanese were seen as not just an economic threat. The Vancouver Sun said “the yellow peril is not the yellow battleships nor yellow settlers but yellow intelligence (Theurer and Oue, 2021)”.

In 1919, Japanese Canadian fishermen owned nearly half of the fishing licenses (3,267). The Department of Fisheries began to reduce the number of licenses issued annually to people “other than white residents, British subjects and Canadian Indians”. By 1925, approximately 1,000 licenses had been removed from Japanese Canadians through the orders of politicians such as A. W. Neill. Japanese had been prevented from using motorized boats on the Skeena River until an issei fisherman, Jun Kisawa, won a legal battle in 1929 to overturn this restriction (Greenaway, 2012).

Politicians in British Columbia fanned the flames of anti-Japanese sentiment. Vancouver Alderman Halford Wilson gave many speeches and interviews on the theme of “the Oriental menace”. His father had been one of the chief instigators of the 1907 anti-Asian riots (Tamaki, 1940). Wilson (the son) restricted trade licences to Japanese Canadians, tried to cancel the licences of nikkei fisherman, and expounded constantly on the threat of Japanese Canadian penetration into the provincial economy and the danger that by 1968 the Vancouver school population might explode to including one-third Japanese Canadian students.

“He exploited Japanese Canadians for his own political advancement and became the No. 1 anti-Japanese agitator. As a public servant, his efforts were wholly incompatible with his responsibilities. He left a crimson trail of ignominy behind him (Adachi, 1953, page 2)”.

Halford Wilson criticized nisei who went to Japan after finishing school in Canada as a waste of taxpayer’s money. The nisei didn’t go to Japan by choice, but there were no opportunities for them in Canada because they were unable to work in most professions.

“A nisei would never be considered for work as a postman, a fireman, a policeman, a salesperson in a white store, work in city hall or any office in the city, a teacher, a nurse, a conductor on streetcars. No nisei was able to obtain a position in municipal, provincial, or federal services. No companies hired nisei, no stores hired nisei…Worried parents saw no future for their children in Canada, and some, with hope, sent their offspring to Japan (Ito, 1994, page 169)”.

Opposition among BC Legislature Members to granting the franchise to Japanese Canadian First World veterans was explained as follows:

“The Japanese had a lower standard of living, and thus it was undesirable for Japanese children to mix with other children. Although they recognized the fact that the Japanese veterans had rendered great service to Canada, they were not willing to grant them the franchise (Shinobu, 1931).”

Once atrocities committed by Japan in China became public knowledge, Canadians on the west coast became increasingly suspicious of Japanese Canadians. In Vancouver, there were boycotts of Japanese and Japanese Canadian products and loud anti-Japanese demonstrations in British Columbia.

Beginning on March 4, 1941, all people of Japanese origin aged 16 and older were ordered to register with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Registration, basically marking all Japanese Canadians as enemy aliens, was based on a federally appointed advisory group’s recommendation (Robinson, 2017). Pink cards were assigned to naturalized Canadians, white to Canadian-born, and yellow to Japanese nationals (Theurer and Oue, 2021, p. 122-123). Prime Minister Mackenzie King told members of his Liberal party in the House of Commons that the Japanese were being as helpful as possible in the registration process. A. W. Neill, Member of Parliament for Comox-Alberni, snapped, “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.” (Adachi, 1976, p. 195).

A secret letter was written by RCMP Commissioner S. T. Wood, dated 1942 August 5 to William S. Stephenson (subject of the book “A Man Called Intrepid”).  Stephenson was the head of British Security Coordination, based in New York City, New York during the Second World War.

The letter said “We have had no evidence of espionage or sabotage among the Japanese in British Columbia. The situation has changed considerably since the report was written, and most of these people are now in isolated areas outside the protected area, and those at present in Vancouver will be removed by the first of November next. These consist largely of women and children…The fact remains, however, that we have searched without let-up for evidence detrimental to the interests of the state and we feel that our coverage has been good, but to date no such evidence has been uncovered”. 

This letter was accompanied by a report prepared for William Stephenson, “Report on Japanese Activities in British Columbia”, written by Sgt. J. K. Barnes, Intelligence Section of British Columbia, “E” Division, RCMP, dated August 1942 (Barnes, 1942).  Sgt. Barnes had been conducting surveillance on the Japanese Canadian community for several years before issuing the report. The report and cover letter are archived in RCMP file RG18-F-3 Volume/box number 3569 at Library and Archives Canada.

Japan’s actions in Asia, beginning in the 1930s, caused alarm in the west. Japan had always lacked its own natural resources, and its industries depended on imports. For instance, 6% of its oil supply was imported. Japan went to war to acquire the resources it urgently required.  Of particular interest to Japan were the Dutch East Indies (a source of petroleum) and British Malaya (a source of rubber and tin).  Japan wanted to cut off the Burma Road which connected Burma with southwest China (RANE Worldview, 2014). 

On September 18, 1931, an explosion shook the tracks of a Japanese-owned railway in Mukden, Manchuria (now Shenyang in Liaoning Province).  Although Chinese nationalists were blamed for the incident, the Japanese colonial army had actually planted the explosives – to provide a pretext for ensuing military conquest (Goddard, 2018).

During the morning of September 19^th, Japanese forces began shelling a
Chinese garrison in Mukden. Manchuria’s small air force was destroyed, and many of its ill-prepared soldiers fled as experienced Japanese troops advanced. By nightfall the battle was over. The Chinese had lost five hundred soldiers, compared to the Japanese, who had only lost two. This was the start of Japan’s greater invasion of Manchuria. Within a few months, the entire region was overrun by the Japanese Army. The resource-rich area was declared as the autonomous state of Manchukuo, although it was, in fact, a puppet state controlled by the local Japanese Army (Office of the Historian, n.d.).

This was not the first time Japan had used its increasing strength to pursue territory.  Japan had already claimed Taiwan and had annexed Korea in 1910. Throughout the early twentieth century, Japan had been wrestling with Chinese and Russian powers for domination of Manchuria. The 1931 invasion was the tipping point, leading Japan down the path to a much larger war (Goddard, 2018).  In an attempt to quell the conflict, the League of Nations voted, in a nearly unanimous 42-1 decision, that Japan return Manchuria to China.  As a result, Japan left the League in 1933 (Narratives of World War 2 in the Pacific, n.d.).  Over the following years, the Japanese military elite would take seats of power from political parties.  By 1937, Japan was controlled by nationalist hardliners and military leaders, driven towards territorial expansion (Goddard, 2018).

The United States began to see Japan as a threat and rival – a state not bound by international treaties, that, officials argued, would not only take Manchuria, but would strive to overturn the US order in the Pacific (Goddard, 2018).  Following the 1937 Marco Polo bridge incident, a full-scale war erupted between Japan and China. Events such as the Japanese attack on the USS Panay and the infamous Nanking Massacre continued to turn Western opinion sharply against Japan and increased fear of its further expansionism (Roberts, 2012).  As a result, the United States, United Kingdom and France began supplying loan assistance for war supply contracts to Kuomintang, the ruling party of China. Australia banned iron ore exports to Japan in 1938 (The Canberra Times, 1938). Japan retaliated by invading French Indochina in 1940, blockading China from Western imports of arms, fuel and materials through the Haiphong-Yunnan railway line (Corrigan, 2010). 

After Japan occupied French Indochina in 1941, the United States froze all Japanese assets in the US and prevented Japan from buying oil. To allow Japan to regain its oil supply, the United States demanded Japan return its occupied territories and remove itself from the Tripartite Pact (an alliance forged with Germany and Italy).  Japan was unwilling to meet these demands.  It would take oil by force – striking south into British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. Knowing that this decision risked direct confrontation with the United States, Japan struck first at Pearl Harbor on December 7^th, 1941 (Imperial War Museums, 2024). Six months after the Pearl Harbor attacks, the Japanese Empire encompassed Manchuria, parts of New Guinea, the borders of India’s Assam province, and the Gilbert Islands of the South Pacific (RANE Worldview, 2014).  People in BC, notably its politicians, used the belligerent actions of Japan to justify the isolation and mistreatment of Japanese in the province, including nisei, who had been born in Canada. It was assumed that all Japanese in B.C. supported the militant actions of their country of origin.