Japanese Internment

Japanese Internment Essay

  To intern means to force a group of people to live in a certain area. In Canada, during the seconded world war, the War Measures act had allowed the government to do whatever was necessary to win the war, in ww2 this Act included internment. During the coarse of the war, Japanese, Italian, and German citizens had all been forced to live in internment camps thought out the war, but out of the three groups Japanese internment was the most unfair. Their internment was not justified dew to the growing discrimination in the western provinces before and during the war. Many things were taken away from the Japanese citizens, like immigration rights, fishing/logging rights, and even there own belongings. The war was an excuse for the government   to exclude Japanese citizens from the rest of Canada.

  The first sign of discrimination had occurred early in the 20th century, when the Canadian government limited the amount of Japanese immigrants allowed in Canada. In 1907, at Canada's insistence, Japan limited the migration of males to Canada to 400 per year (Japanese Canadians, Canadian encyclopaedia). Later in 1928, Canada further restricted Japanese immigration to 150 annually (Japanese Canadians, Canadian encyclopaedia) and then in 1940, one year since the beginning of the war, Japanese immigration stopped altogether until 1967 (Japanese Canadians, Canadian encyclopaedia). Therefore, during the early 20th century, Canada had sown more and more discrimination by limiting the amount of Japanese immigrants allowed to enter the country.

  After Canada’s limitations on the number of Japanese immigrants allowed to enter the country, the government started to limit Japanese fishing and logging licences. In the 1920s, the federal government tried to exclude Japanese Canadians from their traditional livelihood of fishing by limiting the number of their fishing licences (Japanese Canadians, Canadian encyclopaedia). During the Great Depression of...