Japanese Canadian Internment - Internment Camps

Internment Camps

The December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor spurred prominent British Columbians, including members of municipal government, local newspapers, and businesses to call for the internment of the ethnic Japanese living in Canada under the Defence of Canada Regulations. In British Columbia, there were fears that some Japanese who worked in the fishing industry were charting the coastline for the Japanese navy, acting as spies on Canada's military. British Columbia borders the Pacific Ocean and therefore believed to be easily susceptible to enemy attacks from Japan. 22,000 Japanese Canadians (14,000 of whom were born in Canada) were interned in the 1940s for political expediency. Prime Minister Mackenzie King decided to intern Japanese Canadian citizens based on speculative evidence, because both the RCMP and defence department lacked proof of any sabotage or espionage.

On February 24, 1942, an order-in-council passed under the Defence of Canada Regulations of the War Measures Act gave the federal government the power to intern all "persons of Japanese racial origin." A "protected" 100-mile (160 km) wide strip up the Pacific coast was created, and men of Japanese origin between the ages of 18 and 45 were removed and taken to road camps in the British Columbia interior or sugar beet projects on the Prairies, such as Taber, Alberta. Despite the 100-mile quarantine, a few Japanese Canadian men remained in McGillivray Falls, which was just outside the quarantine zone; however, they were employed at a logging operation at Devine (near D'Arcy in the Gates Valley), which was in fact inside the quarantine zone but without road access to the Coast. Japanese Canadians interned in Lillooet Country found employment within farms, stores, and the railway. Tashme, on Highway 3 just east of Hope, was notorious for the camp's harsh conditions and existed just outside the protected area. Other internment camps, including Slocan, were in the Kootenay Country in southeastern British Columbia. Leadership positions within the camps were only offered to the Nisei, or Canadian-born citizens of Japanese origin, however excluding the Issei, the older generation born in Japan.

The Liberal government also deported able-bodied Japanese Canadian labourers to camps near fields and orchards, such as the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. The Japanese Canadian labourers were used as a solution to a shortage of farm workers. This obliterated any Japanese competition in the fishing sector. During the 1940s, the Canadian government created policies to direct Chinese, Japanese, and First Nations into farming, and other sectors of the economy that “other groups were abandoning for more lucrative employment elsewhere”.