Canada has a historical legacy in anti-Asian sentiment and is especially prevalent on the West Coast in British Columbia. Before 1942 about 95 percent of the Japanese population in Canada lived in British Columbia, and more than 75 percent were citizens. However, by the end of 1942, there were no Japanese Canadians within a 100-mile radius of the west coastal line. What changed? Under the Wars Measures Act, the Canadian government forcibly uprooted Japanese Canadians from their homes, families, and communities. In 1942, Japanese Canadians were considered enemy aliens when they were required to register with the government.

Japanese families were sent to Hasting Park Manning Pool, a fairground for agricultural exhibitions, and converted from animal use to human use in 7 days. The women and children were separated from the men and boys over the age of 12. Families were separated from one another, with no idea what was going on and what would happen to them. All this is going on, and the smell of livestock overwhelming. 

On March 25, 1942, the first round of men received orders to leave their families and start working on road camps, and about 100 men refused and instead were sent to Prisoner of war camp. Japanese women were not told about the whereabouts of their husbands. Despite it being illegal for Japanese people to own cameras, the chaos of the mass removal of Japanese people meant that officials did not thoroughly investigate their belongings. Mothers would sit with their children for portraits. They would send a copy to their absent husbands and other family members, knowing there was the possibility they would never see their family again. 

The majority of Japanese Canadians, about 12,000, would be sent to “interior housing centers” where these families wintered in simple un-insulated stud walls built out of greenwood and a single sheet of tar paper to protect from the elements. The cabins had greenwood to construct beds and tables and one stove. Once in the Camos nothing was provided for, prisoners had to provide themselves with food, clothing and education.

Around 3,500 Japanese Canadians signed contracts to work on sugar beet farms. They avoided Hasting Park and were separated from their husbands, sons, and brothers by doing hard labour on sugar beet farms in Alberta and Manitoba. Reality quickly put the promise of decent housing and a minimal amount of freedom to bed. The families were expected to live in chicken coops or uninsulated granaries. They washed and drank from alkaline water and arrogation ditches and perform labour far more strenuous than they were used to on their fruit farms. To make matters worse, some of the farmers, because of Japanese Canadian’s status as enemy aliens, treated them as slave labour and exploited them.  

The history of the Internment of Japanese Canadians has left a legacy of trauma in Japanese Canadian communities still felt today. Not a single Japanese Canadian was ever charged with an act of disloyalty. In 1988, the Prime minister Brian Mulroney delivered an apology on behalf of the Canadian Government for the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. Along with the apology the government announced a compensation package for those 13,000 survivors as well as a Japanese community fund and a Canadian race relations foundation to make sure that discrimination such as the Japanese Internment never happens again.