The landscapes of “British” Columbia are rapidly changing. For those willing to look, the long-hidden foundations of white supremacy in this region are crumbling.
Newcomers, particularly from Asia, form a greater proportion of the population than ever before, and the coastal economy is developing closer ties to China and India, two rising economic powers.
Furthermore, First Nations in the province are resurgent — most lands have never been ceded, treaties do not exist, and the courts have legitimized their claims to title. Alliances between First Nations and environmental activists are flourishing.
In a feature piece “Lest we overlook the ‘Asian Holocaust,’ ” Vancouver Sun journalist Douglas Todd recently wrestled with some of these difficult issues in relation to imperial war crimes in Asia during the Pacific War. His determination to deal with such a topic derived from a recognition that we are entering uncharted waters, as Pacific tides, past and present, come to the fore. That we must navigate these waters is unquestionable, but venturing forward poses major challenges.
Language, identity and the Pacific
Todd suggests that few people know about Japanese imperial war crimes committed during the war, but “virtually every Canadian” knows about the uprooting and incarceration of Japanese Canadians in 1942, and that thousands of resources have been produced on this topic.
In juxtaposing Japanese-Canadian internment with Japanese war crimes, and in exaggerating the level of awareness about internment in Canada, Todd has inadvertently pitted communities against one another.
It is a timely lesson.
Anyone who cares to check will soon realize that there remains a dearth of resources on Japanese Canadians’ internment. That eight-year episode saw thousands, including Cumberland-born youngster Harry Aoki, forced from their homes and interned, and their property and belongings sold without permission by the Custodian of Enemy Alien Property.
Having surveyed my students on numerous occasions, I found fewer than half ever received any instruction on Japanese-Canadian internment. As for the thousands of resources, the count at the University of Victoria library might, at best, amount to about 100 items.
Alexandra Wood of the Council on International Education Exchange has recently compared education regarding internment in Canada and the U.S., and concluded that Canadians remained largely ignorant about this history and that educational resources were sadly lacking.
To make matters worse, some of the existing material is problematic. Books such as Mutual Hostages, edited by conservative historian Jack Granatstein and others, suggest that “the war forced both Canada and Japan into the hostage business.” Focusing on the war obscures the racist roots of the uprooting, and fails to explain why the restrictions against Japanese Canadians lasted four years after the war ended.
Such works are unfortunate echoes of a noxious past when some politicians pushed the slogan “Once a Jap, always a Jap.” Its legacy lives on. The single word “Japanese” is still so easily ascribed to Canadians of Japanese ancestry that it is no wonder that Japanese Canadians feel vulnerable when their story is associated with war crimes committed by Japanese imperial forces in Asia.
Similarly, talk of the “Chinese” who are supposedly buying expensive real estate and driving up land prices in Vancouver can make many Chinese Canadians, first or fourth generation, cringe.
Racism remains rampant today. Words, like nation-states, reflect the old nationalisms of imperial state-craft and settler colonialism. We need to find new language to build the relationships necessary for a new era. Understanding the history of settler colonialism on the coast is one necessary step in that process.
“Mississippi North” and the local/global nexus
Though the provincial government has taken some limited steps to address the wrongs done to Chinese Canadians, it continues to sidestep its own responsibility for the maltreatment of Japanese Canadians, South Asians and particularly First Nations.
Yet the more researchers delve into provincial policies, the clearer it becomes that the province was a key hub in a circuit of global racism. Many have heard of Martin Luther King or Selma, but few realize that this province was the Mississippi of the north.
From 1902 to 1908, the provincial legislature passed what was known as the Natal Act. Based on Mississippi’s use of “literacy” screens to stop African Americans from voting, it was adapted in B.C. to stop Asian immigration. In 1911, similar administrative measures were brought in federally to block African American immigration.
Racists in southern states such as Mississippi were masters of such measures because the U.S. Civil War resulted in constitutional amendments that legally guaranteed African Americans the right to vote. Voter-suppression methods via bogus “literacy” tests were the means to get around the constitution and stop African Americans from voting.
Closely studied by British scholar James Bryce in the 1880s, the British colonial office promoted that formula in its imperial outposts, including in Natal (South Africa), in Australia and in “British” Columbia.
Not bound by the U.S. constitution, provincial legislators here could do what even Mississippi could not — legislate away the right to vote. The provincial government systematically and successively introduced laws that took away the right to vote from First Nations and Chinese (1872), Japanese Canadians (1895) and South Asians (1907). Challenged in 1900 by Tomey Homma and in 1902 by Alexander Won Cumyow, the provincial government resorted to a special appeal to London to enforce its racist policies.
Moreover, the B.C. government repudiated even the standard colonial practice of signing treaties with First Nations. It still forced indigenous people onto reserves and engaged in systemic practices that, in the light of Truth and Reconciliation Commission revelations, are now understood as being genocidal.
For well over a hundred years, First Nations, Asian Canadians and other racialized groups fought these measures. Yet where in our history textbooks do we find the names of our civil rights leaders?
These same “White Canada” policies also had a direct impact on policies and relations with the Pacific, past and present.
Racism, colonialism and the Pacific War
Twenty years ago, as a newly minted historian of Japan, I was struggling with how to teach the war in the Pacific at a time when Canadian historians were claiming that it was not Canada’s war.
Many people, myself included, did not know much about Japanese war crimes, nor did they know much about the Pacific war beyond Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. To many, the U.S. had won the war in the Pacific.
The fact Japan’s war crimes in the Pacific seem distant compared to Nazi crimes in Europe, I came to realize, was also a reflection of our racist past. If B.C. and Canada had not erected immigration colour bars, Canada’s demographics would have been different and we would have appreciated the importance of the war in the Pacific, as well as the war in Europe.
As I grappled with how to teach this history, I began to work with the B.C. group known as the Association for Learning and Preserving the History of World War II in Asia (ALPHA). It was a formative period, as I became aware of the staggering toll the war had in China and in other Asian countries.
I also came to understand how the war galvanized young men and women in the Chinese-Canadian community in Canada to support China in its war efforts. Alongside were allies such as Norman Bethune.
When the B.C. government decided to produce a learning resource on the topic, Human Rights in the Asia Pacific 1931-1935, I agreed to join that effort to provide historical background.
The resource highlighted the war crimes and in the teacher backgrounder, we provided an in-depth look at the causes of the war, highlighting how the British and U.S. empires, to protect their own colonial interests, collaborated with Japanese imperialism in the carving up not only of China but also of Korea.
We also indicated how racism in Europe and settler colonies such as Canada fuelled racism in Japan. We pointed to the causes of the war and the crimes associated with imperialism, militarism, racism and sexism. In short, I stand by what we wrote in that resource.
However, in treating Japanese war crimes alone, the resource failed to address related issues, including the firebombing and atomic bombing of Japan’s cities. A partial measure, the resource could not rectify what in essence was decades of omissions of various types.
A unilateral emphasis on “Japanese” war crimes can easily contribute to the demonization of Japan and its people, even though it was Japanese citizens who first raised an outcry against that country’s forgotten past.
And it can threaten others, as well. The term “Japanese” transfers all too easily to Canadians of that heritage. The vicious cycle repeats itself.
However, to not deal with Japanese war crimes in Asia, to see them as outside our past, is to deny justice to the survivors of those atrocities and it is to deny Canada’s own racist past. Nor should we forget that China’s liberation war was fundamental to the process of decolonization in the world.
The past is not dead, it is not even past
At a banquet in 2007, Japan’s consul to Vancouver came into the room and, upon being introduced to me, said: “Oh, you’re the pro-China professor.”
ALPHA has been labelled “Agents of Beijing.” Made up largely of human-rights activists with roots in Hong Kong, ALPHA successfully sued to have a book repeating such scurrilous accusations withdrawn from publication.
Such rumour-mongering is perfidious and strangely echoes the accusations made against Japanese Canadians during the war — that they were agents of Japanese imperialism.
Brave souls of the Japanese-Canadian community who have spoken out in support of Asian survivors of Japanese war crimes have also come under fierce criticism from within
the community.
Nation-states and their representatives will try to take advantage of peoples’ heritage, and we are susceptible to such appeals. And as individuals, we cannot avoid personal prejudice and biases.
As a descendant of a European family who settled on indigenous lands a hundred years ago, and whose grandfather was a close associate of the notorious racist Tom Reid, I am beginning to understand the burden of difficult pasts. Left unresolved, they are a terrible legacy for future generations.
Yet as a historian, I increasingly find hope for the future in that same past.
I have heard the stories of Tomekichi Homma, who in 1900 dared challenge B.C.’s racist election laws; of Cowichan chief Charley Isipaymilt, who, with chiefs Joe Capilano and Basil David, travelled to London in 1906 urging King Edward VII to settle land claims; of Husain Rahim, a South Asian socialist who fought for justice tooth and nail from his arrival in this land in 1911; of Velma Chan, who went to Victoria in 1945 to demand the right to vote; of Ruth Lor and Muriel Kitagawa, who together fought to end Canada’s racist immigration laws in the 1960s.
The resilience and determination of so many in these communities to work for social justice is daunting and inspiring. So too are the stories of their Euro-Canadian allies. People such as Lawrence Walsh Hall, who worked with Chinese miners in Cumberland to unionize in the early 1900s, and who later allied with the Sikh community in Victoria, rowing out to support passengers on the Komagata Maru when it came through the harbour in 1914.
Or Nellie McClung, who, after she moved to Victoria, spoke out against the uprooting of the Japanese-Canadian community, one among the Famous Five Canadian women to repudiate racism. Or James Teit, who fought with and for indigenous people for most of his life.
Their stories can guide us as together we shed our colonial past and find a way forward on this Pacific coast.
John Price teaches history at the University of Victoria.
