Wartime Discrimination in Canada

Discrimination, the cruel treatment of a category of people, is an age-old problem that we still encountered this century. Historically, in Canada this treatment was heightened during wartime when not only civilians, but the government also discriminated groups of people because of their ethnicity. "Racism knows no color, ethnicity or race. Only ignorance, fear and hate." –BLD - is a statement that rings true to our country’s history, as there are instances of racism towards people of all nationalities: Japanese, Germans, Jews, Italians, and more, especially during times of war. So today, we ask the question: how was discrimination present during wartime?

It is immensely frustrating and disheartening looking back at a discriminatory government, as all people should be equal before the eyes of the law, regardless of their sex, religion and race. Especially when Canada is known as a country that encouraged immigration to help build up the nation.  One of the major instances of discrimination by the government was the War Measures Act enacted on August 22nd, 1914 during the First World War. The War Measures Act gave the government full and legal authority to do everything deemed “necessary for the security, defence, peace, order and welfare of Canada” during circumstances of “war, invasion or insurrection, real or apprehended”. This “everything deemed necessary” included powers of media censorship, arrest without charge, deportation without trial, and the expropriation, control, or disposal of property. Many were arrested without charges and held on suspicions of sympathizing with the enemies. It gave the government the power to violate the civil rights of its citizens. This act was used during both World Wars until 1988 when the Emergencies Act, which was specified as to when it could be used, replaced it and how. During the wars, it was common for people to be taken to internment camps or deported. It was this Act that allowed the government to seize the property of the Japanese, seize their boats and take them as well as Germans to internment camps. Now, looking back, these camps seem to have a similar concept to the concentration camps of the Nazis to a lesser extent, Canada interned people according to their race and they were forced to complete hard, intensive labours like clearing forests and building roads. Our internment camps were similar to the very thing that Canada was fighting against, something that the War Measure Act allowed.

During the First World War, it was the Germans and immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire that were the victims of prejudice and persecution of “enemy aliens”. They were viewed this way because Britain was at war with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empires. As Canada’s foreign affairs were still controlled by Britain at this time, Canada was also at war. The Germans and people of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were dismissed from jobs, placed under police surveillance and interned. They had their language schools and churches closed, newspapers censored and suppressed, and rioting soldiers and civilians attacked their clubs and businesses. From 1916-1917, many Austrian men were paroled to fill job shortages and there were about nine thousand German and Austro-Hungarian men dispersed across the twenty-four camps across Canada. About eighty women and one hundred sixty children voluntarily went to these camps in order to stay with their fathers or husbands. At these camps they were forced to do plenty of manual labour as they wanted “the labour of interned enemy aliens [to] be utilized for productive purposes”. This discrimination brought on by the war is disgraceful, but Canada did not learn their mistake as this racism continued to worsen during the next war.

During World War II, the amount and variety of people discriminated against increased by tenfold. From Germans to Jews to the Japanese, many were discriminated against by people who were fuelled by paranoia and self-righteousness. World War II was when many countries united to end the aggression of the Axis Powers - Germany, Italy and Japan. Germany began annexing neighbouring countries and taking over the lives of the Jews. In Canada, prior to the war, there was already a heavy anti-Semitic sentiment. Some loathed them for religious reasons, some because they represented the millions of other “aliens” entering Canada, and to Canada’s elite, they did not fit their perceived concept of what a Canadian should be. However, this sentiment was just a grumble that Canadians had in passing; it was the war that amplified this anger. When Jewish people most needed assistance, Canada closed its doors. They did not allow Jews to seek refuge in Canada, away from the Nazi’s reign. For those already residing in Canada, they were given informal residential restrictions, quotas in university professional schools, and exclusions from elite social clubs, beaches and resorts. On the other hand, Germans were discriminated as well. Many made the assumption that every German was a Nazi and acted with this belief in mind. German immigration was banned and the remaining Germans were given a hard time. Some were sent to one of the twenty six internment camps across the country, some had biased court cases against them, many were subjected to verbal and physical abuse in the workplace, children were bullied in schools, and in provinces such as Alberta, land sales were banned for people of such descent.

The battle between Germany and the Allied countries was only one part of World War II and the Germans and Jews were only some of the nationalities of people discriminated against. The second side of the war was between Japan and the countries against the Axis Powers. By 1937, Japan and China were officially at war. Japan intended to establish a “new order in East Asia” and in 1940, signed a formal alliance with Germany and Italy. The United States, did not approve of their actions and placed a heavy trade embargo on them. The response the Japanese chose to pursue was a surprise attack at the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbour in December of 1941. Soon after, the Japanese forced the surrender of the British in Hong Kong. Concerns of a Japanese invasion, followed this attack and added to the already-present resentment of the Japanese-Canadians as the early BC settlers felt that their British origin made them superior to all others and did not hesitate to show racism towards the “inferior”. In fact, the tension between the Asians and English existed even during the time of the gold rush as British feared that the Japanese would take all of their jobs. While the Chinese seemed content with a few industries, the Japanese seemed to infiltrate all of them, especially the fishing industry.  The Japanese were also accused of being resistant to assimilation by the British. Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbour, the CPR and many other Canadian industries fired all of their Japanese workers. Additionally, the navy seized about 1,200 boats belonging to Japanese people as many believed that Japanese fishermen were charting for the Japanese Navy. About two months later, late February 1942, the Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King issued a series of “orders-in-council” which ordered all 23,000 Japanese to move to a “protective area”.  For months, the Japanese were kept in pens designated for animals before being sent on a train carrying only one suitcase. They were sent to the interior to housing areas that were not fenced, but were crowded, restrictive and had no running water or electricity. Men aged 18 to 25 were sent to road camps and all of their property that was in the government’s “protective custody” was sold the following year. The Japanese did not fight the relocation as forbearance is part of their culture. After the war was over, the Japanese were told to disperse east of the Rocky Mountains, away from the Pacific ocean, or to move back to war-ridden Japan. Though the Japanese were already discriminated against before the war, World War II heightened this discrimination and created a chain of events that led to inexcusable actions against the Japanese. The mass exodus of the Japanese, which took place in 1942, was the largest in the history of Canada.

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