Japanese Canadian Redress: The Toronto Story

• Toronto NAJC

Chapter 1
The Roots of Our Struggle

By Roger Obata

Our experience of injustice did not begin with Pearl Harbor. We were obvious scapegoats long before December 1941. The struggle to achieve full recognition as citizens of this country can be traced to the early years of Japanese immigration and the intricate play between economics and racism. Decades before 1941, we were targeted by racists because of our growing success in British Columbia in three major industries: fishing, forestry and farming.

Through sheer hard work and determination, members of our community cleared thousands of acres of land in the Fraser Valley, transforming stump-ridden fields into beautiful, fertile gardens, producing fruit and vegetables that were in high demand in Vancouver’s produce markets. These “Japanese” farms were the envy of white farmers, many of whom were unable to match the quality of our produce.

Competition among fishermen was even more intense. My father, Sataro Obata, spent most of his life in Canada in the fishing industry. He told me that racial tensions were evident from the moment Japanese fishermen entered the scene because of our superior fishing skills. The fierce competition between the Japanese fishermen and all other fishermen grew steadily and erupted in the Fishermen’s Strike of 1900. Because many of our fishermen relied on the canneries for their rented boats and nets, as well as their livelihood, they agreed to act as strike breakers. This provocation soon brought racist sentiments to the surface, resulting in a strike that became so violent that the militia was called in to maintain order. Several more clashes followed, culminating in the ugly Anti-Asiatic Riot of 1907, aimed at both the Chinese and Japanese communities in Vancouver. It must have been pretty traumatic for those under attack to face a mob of 2,000 brick hurling, white supremacists, but it was just the beginning of what our issei pioneers had to endure.

Getting Rid of the Competition

The overwhelming fear of having a whole industry taken over by non-whites led to the enactment of a number of discriminatory laws designed to push Japanese fishermen out of the picture. The number of fishing licences granted to Asians was systematically reduced. And, of course, we received lower wages than whites. On the Skeena River, one of the main salmon fishing districts in B.C., we were not allowed to have engine powered boats. We were not permitted to hold trolling or seining licences in northern British Columbia. Since we were denied membership in the British Columbia Fishermen’s Union, we Japanese fishermen formed our own union, the Skeena River Japanese Fishermen’s Union. I remember it well since my father was actively involved as the union secretary. As a teenager helping my family out—first as a deckhand and then as a collector boat operator—I recall feeling puzzled by the racial double standard. It seemed so contrary to the notion of “British fair play” that I had been taught at school.

I also remember marvelling at the fact that, despite all the discriminatory policies working to diminish our participation, the Japanese Canadian fishermen still managed to surpass the white and native fishermen in the size of their catches. This fact, of course, frustrated the other fishermen, prompting them to clamour for tougher and tougher restrictions on their Japanese competitors. Their pleas were answered in 1942, as the bombing of Pearl Harbor provided the Canadian government with a convenient excuse to drive us out of the industry completely by confiscating and selling our fishing boats for next to nothing and expelling us from the coast.

Racially motivated laws were also put into place to keep the logging and lumber industries white. Under the B.C. Crown Timber Act of 1913, Asians were barred from working on Crown timberlands. Corporations employing Japanese and Chinese labourers were threatened with loss of their logging licences. Faced with these institutional barriers, some resourceful issei and nisei decided to go it on their own. By 1930, there were 14 independent logging and sawmill operations owned by businessmen of Japanese origin, “12 of which had invested a total of $1,948,000, each year producing some $1,185,000 worth of timber, mostly exported to Japan. The largest of the sawmills was Royston Lumber Company on Vancouver Island, bought in 1916 for $30,000 and worth ten times that amount two decades later.”¹

One issei businessman who became a legend in his own time was Eikichi Kagetsu. Through hard work and perseverance and very little knowledge of English, he became a successful lumber entrepreneur. He worked for three years as a labourer at various logging camps and managed to save $500 to purchase 160 acres of timber rights at Sechelt, British Columbia. After going bankrupt in 1912, he returned to work as a labourer and then began saving his earnings for another logging venture. In 1916 he purchased timber rights just above the intake at Seymour Creek in North Vancouver. Then in 1919 the B.C. Forestry Law was amended in order to bar Japanese Canadians from the logging industry. Mr. Kagetsu took his case to the Supreme Court of Canada and the Privy Council. The final ruling was that the racist restrictions were invalid and Eikichi Kagetsu was allowed to continue operating until the time of the expulsion. By that time he owned a logging enterprise worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. His company, the Fanny Bay Logging Company, employed about 70 workers. He even built his own railroad line to haul the logs from his 7,000 acres of prime timberland.

The success of Japanese owned operations, like Mr. Kagetsu’s and Royston Lumber Company, naturally stirred up the envy and resentment of the whites in this field. They retaliated by pushing for tighter and tighter legal restrictions against these competitors, taking advantage of the fact that Japanese Canadians were powerless since they did not have the right to vote.

Fighting for the Franchise

Perhaps the most significant impediment to the economic development of the Japanese Canadians in pre-war British Columbia was the lack of the franchise—a restriction dating back to 1895 when the existing law barring Chinese from voting in provincial elections was extended to include the Japanese. Without the right to vote, the doors to careers in medicine, pharmacy, teaching and the civil service were automatically closed. Therefore, many did not pursue a university degree. What was the point if racist legislation prevented us from getting adequate jobs in our field of study? The only employment open to us was in the logging camps and pulp and paper mills. We were not only paid lower wages than the whites, but doors were often slammed in our faces if we attempted to get “white collar” jobs.

As early as World War I, the issei realized that a brighter future for their children was contingent upon winning the right to vote. That simple right to mark a ballot carried so much symbolic weight. Naively believing that going to fight in Europe under the Union Jack would demonstrate their loyalty to Canada and somehow convince the government to grant them the franchise, about 200 issei signed up—and 54 of them died on the battlefields of France. Despite the fact that some members of our community were willing to risk their lives to prove their allegiance to Canada, the government continued to deny the franchise to Japanese Canadians. It was not until April 1931 that the right to vote was finally granted to World War I veterans of Japanese origin, but only to these veterans. The rest of us had to wait. However, we were not going to wait patiently for it meant too much to us. As Ken Adachi put it, “The denial of the franchise was to come to symbolize for the Japanese, especially the Canadian-born, the status of second class citizenship. The right of Canadian citizenship—the simple act of casting a ballot and participating in elections—was denied to them as it was denied to aliens.”²

By the middle of the 1930s, many of the nisei were young adults and they eagerly took up the challenge of fighting for the franchise. After several attempts at organizing an effective lobbying group, the Japanese Canadian Citizens’ League (JCCL) was formed in 1936. This organization, headed by Harry Naganobu, reflected the gradually diminishing role of the issei in the Japanese Canadian community. Its primary purpose was to fight for the right to vote. The nisei were emerging from their cocoons and ready to throw off the shackles of restraint imposed upon them by their parents.

Prior to the 1930s, nisei organizations were considered "namaiki"—too bold and brash—if they even suggested political activism as a democratic right. However, there were three issei men—Estsu Suzuki, Takaichi Umezuki and Ryuichi Yoshida—who stood out because of their efforts to gain rights for Japanese Canadian workers. They did not follow the old issei tradition of bowing blindly to government authority. They believed that if Japanese workers formed a union, they could win economic equality with white workers. They began publishing a paper called Minshu (or The Daily People) encouraging members of their community to unite to push for equality in the workplace. They formed The Camp and Mill Workers’ Union, Local 31 in 1927. This union and the Minshu were understandably not very popular with most issei because the majority of the JC community at that time were afraid of rocking the boat. Etsu Suzuki and his friends were labelled as radicals and accused of intensifying the hostility of the white Canadian community. The 1907 Anti-Asiatic Riot against the Chinese and Japanese was still fresh in the collective Japanese Canadian memory.

Finally, it was the nisei who took up the cause. Many nisei had sufficient education and knowledge of Canadian society to know that the only way to exercise our rights and make changes to improve our future was by being allowed to vote. We nisei were born in this country. Canada was the only home we knew, but we were treated as outsiders. We did not have a say in how our country was being run. This situation was intolerable to many of us. We could not stand by passively any longer.

Encouraged by Angus MacInnis, a prominent member of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in Vancouver,³ the Japanese Canadian Citizens League (JCCL) decided to send a delegation to Ottawa to appear before the Special Committee on Elections and Franchise Acts.

The initial delegation consisted of Hide Hyodo (a school teacher), Edward Banno (a dentist) and Dr. S.I. Hayakawa (a linguistics scholar from Montreal). I was also an original member of the delegation, but I was an engineering student at the time and final exams at the University of British Columbia prevented me from going to Ottawa. Fortunately, a replacement was found at the last minute, Minoru Kobayashi of Steveston.

As expected, many issei opposed the trip, even threatening violence to prevent the delegation from boarding the train to Ottawa. But Tom Yoshida and Harold Saita managed to calm them down and we eventually won their reluctant support. The scene at the CPR station on the evening of May 15, 1936 was an emotional one. One hundred friends and supporters came to see the delegates off. A large sign—JCCL NISEI DELEGATES—was hoisted in the air and Rev. Kosaburo Shimizu recited a short prayer.

The delegation appeared before the parliamentary committee on May 22, 1936. After setting off with high hopes, the delegates came back to B.C. to report that the meeting was a joke. They were treated in a patronizing manner, like visitors from another planet who could not speak English. Apparently, before the meeting began, the chairman of the committee turned to Angus MacInnis and asked if the members of the delegation needed interpreters. The government representatives seemed fascinated by the fact that these people with Japanese faces could speak English without the trace of a foreign accent. That was the extent of their ignorance about Japanese Canadians and their total inability to differentiate between race and nationality.

Obviously, the Government of Canada was more willing to listen to the arguments of B.C. politicians such as Tom Reid and A.W. Neill. A year later on March 16, 1937, these two members of the B.C. legislature appeared before the Special Committee and presented their opposition to granting us the franchise. Their presentation was an incredible record of racial animosity. At one point, Mr. Neill stated, “So they came here with the full knowledge of what conditions they were going to live under… They came to this country with the full knowledge that they would not be allowed to vote.” And later he said, in reference to the JCCL delegates, “They may represent a few people, but they do not represent the bulk of the people for whom they are seeking votes; they do not represent the condition of Orientals—Chinese, Japanese and East Indians. Remember again that when on page 42 they ask for the repeal of clause 11 that means the whole gate will open and that all Orientals will be given the vote.”⁴

Although the JCCL presentation in Ottawa did not accomplish our goal, it was a valuable lesson in political action and marked the end of issei control over Japanese Canadian organizations. The issei had been totally opposed to the idea of sending a delegation to Ottawa, claiming that it was too namaiki (i.e. bold and brash) to try to question the authority of the government. They had been raised to be subservient and obedient, while we nisei had been exposed to the “North American” ideals of democracy and human rights—at least theoretically.

The stereotypical generation gap was not the only area of tension between the issei and the nisei during this pre-expulsion period. The deeper conflict of loyalty to Japan versus loyalty to Canada created a more serious division in our community, a division that was an embarrassment to many nisei and proved harmful to our struggle for equal rights and recognition as loyal Canadian citizens. Like many first generation immigrants, the hearts of many issei were torn between their homeland of Japan and their adopted country, Canada. Despite the devastating publicity about the rape of Nanking,⁵ some issei decided to raise funds to send medical supplies and “comfort bags” to the Japanese soldiers in China. However, the nisei wanted to be dissociated from such efforts since it could be interpreted as support for the reprehensible actions of the Japanese army.

The Perfect Excuse

I recall the years of the Great Depression as dismal and turbulent ones in British Columbia. Many people were unemployed and faced long bread lines. It was inevitable during those “bad times” that massive unemployment and failed businesses would lead the dominant Canadian society to look for an ethnic minority group to blame for their economic woes. We Japanese Canadians were primary scapegoats. There we were becoming serious competitors, rather than cheap labour, in industries that were once almost exclusively white domains.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was just what many resentful whites in British Columbia had been waiting for—the perfect excuse. It created an unprecedented opportunity for the bigots in British Columbia to not only drive us out of the province and thus remove the economic competition, but also to have our property confiscated and our dignity stripped. They could ensure that there would be nothing left for us to return to in British Columbia. Thus, at the instigation of various B.C. politicians such as Halford Wilson, A.W. Neill, Tom Reid, Howard Green and Ian McKenzie, the federal government carried out its plans for our mass expulsion and dispersal. Canada’s declaration of war against Japan gave these politicians exactly what they had hoped for on a silver platter. It represented the culmination of many years of racial strife. Under the noble guise of protecting “national security”, the threat to white supremacy in British Columbia was removed overnight.

---

---

• Previous
• Home
• Next

Japanese Canadian Redress: The Toronto Story

CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA Main entry under title: Japanese Canadian Redress: The Toronto Story

ISBN 0-9699502-3-3

Copyright © 2000 Greater Toronto Chapter, National Association of Japanese Canadians (Toronto NAJC)

The Copyright was given to the TO NAJC by the Ad Hoc Committee for Japanese Canadian Redress: The Toronto Story.

Editor: Momoye Sugiman
Layout Artist: Xenofon Sugiman-Marangos
Cover Design: Sandy Usami
Cover Photo: John Flanders
Website design: Doodletronics

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, without written permission, except in the case of brief passages in a review. This book was produced by the collective effort of the Ad Hoc Committee for Japanese Canadian Redress: The Toronto Story. The Committee greatly acknowledges the financial support of the Japanese Canadian Redress Foundation.