Japanese Internment In Canada Essay

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The tendency to racially discriminate and victimise against certain minorities or a specific nationality was a long-lasting sting of racism which was a part of Canadian history. The discrimination by Canadians directed towards Japanese-Canadians during WWII was a significant historical event that needs to be addressed. After the Pearl Harbour attacks in Hawaii by the Japanese navy, 24,000 Japanese-Canadians were placed in internment camps, where they were stripped of their identity and freedom of rights based upon their racial origin. In the aftermath of the internment, many Japanese-Canadian natives were left without life savings, as all of their belongings were confiscated and never given back. This internment of the Japanese-Canadians occurred …show more content…

The internment of the Japanese-Canadians had a detrimental effect on their financial- being. The diminishment of valuables by the Canadian government including land, property, and fishing boats following the false assurance of the valuables being returned immediately after the war, left Japanese-Canadians completely abandoned. Mary Haraga, one of many children that experienced such harsh conditions during the time of the internment, was extremely devastated over the policies that families underwent and recalled “[m]y parents believed the government when it said that their...possessions would be held ‘in trust’. They did not imagine that once they were incarcerated, what they had taken a lifetime to build would all be sold or auctioned off.” The confiscated possessions were sold off to property managers without the owner’s permission, and they promised that the possessions would …show more content…

The fact that there was a need for the Canadian government to seize all of their property, itself shows how terribly they were treated and cared about. Likewise, if the Canadian government was suspecting Japanese-Canadians of being spies and reporting back to Japan for the war, the need to seize their property would be irrelevant and just another excuse to confiscate all of their property and torment them, which left them distraught. For this reason, the Canadian government may have purposely not revealed all of the information to the media. It is evident that Canadians did not want Japanese-Canadians in their midst since they were in a constant fear of disloyalty and fear as they were afraid of being sabotaged by Japanese-Canadians. The abolishment of possessions left Japanese-Canadians with little to no money to support their family. Additionally, the only source of income received was that of the men who worked. However, during this time, the fraction of the labour rates was very low and men made very little compared to what they deserved of $0.22-$0.25. Certainly, Japanese-Canadians had a drastically lower income in comparison to their white counterparts due to racism, which declared

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