Japanese Canadian passengers on the S.S. General M.C. Meigs in Vancouver in the summer of 1946 as Canadian officials look on. The U.S. Army transport ship was used by the Canadian government to deport nearly 4,000 Japanese Canadians to war-torn Japan after the Second World War. Many were Canadian citizens who had never been to Japan and did not speak the language.
(CP Photo)
Canada’s expulsion of thousands of Japanese Canadians 80 years ago offers lessons in a world of sharpening borders, insecurity and talk of who does and does not belong in a national community.
Federal Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino said a registry of foreign agents would protect Canadians and bolster efforts to address foreign interference.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
Political pressure is mounting on the federal government to launch a registry of foreign agents. But a history of racial discrimination is reason to be cautious.
Loyalty to the British Empire is taught to these second and third generation Japanese children in an Internment Camp in British Columbia circa 1942.
(CP PHOTO/Jack Long National Archives of Canada C-067492)
Recently, 300 protest letters written by Japanese Canadians in the 1940s were reopened. The letters convey a deep sense of loss, injustice and outrage by Japanese Canadians who lost their homes.
