Documenting moments of a dark shame in B.C.
A `micro history' of Japanese Canadians on Gulf island
On April 22, 1942, the SS Princess Mary tied up to the wharf at Ganges Harbour on Salt Spring Island.
The entire Japanese ancestry population of the island was herded onto the ship and taken away to be held in horse stalls, “internment camps” and shacks far away from the Pacific Coast. Despite many of them being Canadian citizens, the government had decided they should be treated “as if they were the enemy.” Over 22,000 other Japanese Canadians shared this fate.
Every country has its dark and guilty secrets, lapses of collective morality that are, typically, swept beneath a tattered, squalid rug of historical amnesia or post-hoc rationalization. Canada is no exception.
The “internment” of Japanese-ancestry Canadians during the Second World War and the bureaucratically administered theft of their properties rank high on any accurate list of our collective shames, together with the centuries of cultural genocide waged against Indigenous peoples, the residential schools, the slaughter of the Beothuks and Prime Minister John A. Macdonald's campaign to “clear the plains” of Indigenous nations and, even today, widespread patterns of economic injustice, harassment and police brutality against people of colour.
In his new book, historian Brian Smallshaw sets out to render a highly detailed closeup of how a form of ethnic cleansing played out on Salt Spring Island, one of the idyllically beautiful Gulf Islands lying between the B.C. mainland and Vancouver Island. In this well-researched and eloquently argued book (based on his master's thesis at the University of Victoria), Smallshaw deftly presents what he calls a “micro history” of what happened after Japan's Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii to Japanese-ancestry residents living on Salt Spring, where the historian currently makes
his home.
It is a story laced with the anti-Asian racism that had been endemic in B.C. for decades before the events chronicled in this text, and with squalid greed. (Notably, the same government agent who administered the seizure of Japanese-owned properties on Salt Spring ended up buying the largest farm at a firesale price. He developed the land and made a fortune.)
In a time when we are seeing more frequent anti-Asian racist attacks across the country, this is an important and timely read.
This is also a story about resistance and dignity. Smallshaw invites us to celebrate the courage and persistence of the Murakami and Iwasaki families, who made valiant attempts to contest the theft of their property.
Highly recommended.