RECALLING BROKEN PROMISES
To our lasting shame, Ottawa sold off Japanese Canadians’ property, write EricM.Adams and Jordan Stanger-Ross.
Seventy-five years ago, Canada made a promise that it tried to forget. We can do better. We can remember.
On March 27, 1942, the Canadian government enacted Order-in-Council 2483, finalizing the details of the internment of 21,460 Japanese Canadians and the government seizure of nearly everything they owned. But Order 2483 also made a promise. It promised that the government would protect the property of Canadians of Japanese descent. It promised to return their property when the internment ended.
That isn’t what happened. Instead, the government abandoned the promise, and sold everything.
At a time when North America again confronts policies of discrimination driven by fear, it’s especially crucial to heed the lessons of the 75th anniversary of the internment and dispossession of Japanese Canadians. One of those lessons is the damage of a promise broken.
Internment generated administrative problems. Shortly after Canada announced the plan to uproot Japanese Canadians in February 1942, it confronted the dilemma of what to do with the property of thousands of innocent Canadians.
The government’s solution was to place that property under the control of a state agency: the Custodian of Enemy Property. Order 2483 granted the custodian the power to manage the property of Japanese Canadians, but stipulated that this power was “for the purpose of protecting the interests of the owner” and that the custodian “shall release such property” when it was appropriate to do so. In private letters, the deputy custodian explained that the government held the property of Japanese Canadians as a “trustee.”
In The New Canadian, the sole wartime newspaper of the Japanese Canadian community, the government published an announcement imploring property owners to ignore the “baseless rumours” of malicious intent on the part of the government and to “pay attention” to the “true facts.”
“This is not confiscation,” the government said.
Ten months later, on Jan. 19, 1943, the federal cabinet abandoned its promise. Order 469 confirmed the custodian’s power to sell, and sales of property began almost immediately. Families lost heirlooms, vibrant businesses and everyday possessions. They lost cars, boats, books, toys, tools and furniture. They lost homes and farms. They lost opportunities, neighbourhoods and communities. They lost retirements, livelihoods, educations and childhoods.
Interned members of the Japanese Canadian community pooled their scarce resources to bring a lawsuit challenging the government’s ability to sell their homes and possessions. After months of delay, the case Nakashima v. Canada was finally heard in May 1944.
Eikichi Nakashima, Tadao Wakabayashi and Jitaro Tanaka, having received government permission to leave their internment sites, travelled to Ottawa with their lawyer to present their case. They made a straightforward plea: Enforce the legal promise to protect and return property in Order 2483.
Justice Joseph Thorson of the Exchequer Court took more than three years to decide the case. During the delay, the government continued its property sales unabated.
When Thorson finally handed down his decision in 1947, he ruled the plaintiffs had no legal standing to challenge the government’s sales.
Having decided against them, Thorson ordered Nakashima, Wakabayashi and Tanaka to pay the government’s legal costs.
As we mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation, it’s important to recognize that Canada’s constitutional history has also been one of dispossession and discrimination, of legal promises made and abandoned.
The rule of law is also a promise, especially necessary in times of perceived emergency, to govern with good faith, non-discrimination and reason.