This is the third instalment in a six-part series, exclusive to the sa国际传媒, that examines the role of the provincial government in the uprooting, detention, dispossession and exile of Japanese Canadians, 1941-1949.
Yoshio John Madokoro had been a fisher as long as he could remember. He and his family lived and worked out of Tofino. A Canadian born in Steveston, he had taken up fishing at 15 after his dad died. His fishboat was impounded along with hundreds of others soon after Pearl Harbor.
In his recollection of those years, Madokoro recalled being forced to leave Tofino: 鈥淏y the time the Maquinna came in it was toward evening. We were all standing on the dock. It is vivid in my memory. I was saying goodbye to my white friends and watching the families. People would come up to me because I聽was the secretary and they would say: 鈥楥an I take my camera?鈥� And I would say: 鈥楬ow should I know? Sure, go ahead, take it.鈥�
鈥淚n Port Alberni, the provincial police were waiting for us at the docks,鈥� continued Madokoro. 鈥淭hey took us to the local police station. After they checked their lists, something that would become routine to us, we were loaded on the CN train to Nanaimo. We were becoming more known as anonymous numbers and less as individual members of a community. You know that is what really hurts even to this day: we were stripped of our identities and treated as 鈥榰ndesirables鈥� even though we had not committed any crime. Our crime was being Japanese Canadian! sa国际传媒 has a funny way of dealing with its own citizens.鈥�
As Madokoro recalled, the British Columbia Provincial Police (BCPP), a provincial agency, was involved from day one in the uprooting. Nor was the province鈥檚 involvement restricted to its police force 鈥� it was also a key player in the British Columbia Security Commission, set up to supervise the uprooting. And whenever necessary, the province intervened directly with the federal government to impose their policies.
The British Columbia Provincial聽Police
Founded when the province was still a British colony, the BCPP expanded to a force of more than 500 officers in 120聽detachments before it was disbanded in 1950. As recounted previously, the head of the BCPP, T.W. Parsons, had accompanied provincial labour minister George S. Pearson in early 1942 to Ottawa, where he backed the provincial government鈥檚 plan to clear the coast of Japanese Canadians.
Upon his return to Victoria, he wrote to the provincial attorney-general, R.L. Maitland, to press for the mass removal of Japanese Canadians, a message that Maitland then forwarded to Ottawa.
Shortly after the federal government acceded to the province鈥檚 campaign for mass uprooting, Maitland wrote to the RCMP, assuring them that provincial and municipal police forces would fully co-operate in forcibly removing Japanese Canadians from their homes.
According to Lynne Stonier-Newman, author of Policing a Pioneer Province: 鈥淭he uprooting proceeded methodically. The RCMP handled most of the work in Vancouver and New Westminster, and the BCPP organized the exodus from Vancouver Island and the Coast.鈥�
Yoshio Madokoro recalled: 鈥淲hen we got there, they took us to Hastings Park and what they gave us was a horse鈥檚 stall. You鈥檝e never seen anything like it, just a horse鈥檚 stall. We had to do our own cleaning up and everything. What a smell!鈥�
From Hastings Park, the BCPP 鈥渁ssumed almost all responsibility for policing the Japanese nationals and citizens as they were transferred to the interior.鈥� According to former BCPP officer Don. N. Brown, thousands 鈥渨ere interned in various camps in the interior of British Columbia 鈥� all under the control of the BCPP.鈥�
The BCPP, at the direction of the province, had become an integral part of the uprooting from start to finish. But the province鈥檚 role did not stop there.
The British Columbia Security聽Commission
Provincial appointees were key figures in the British Columbia Security Commission established in March 1942 to supervise the uprooting and establishment of the camps.
At the top, the province agreed to the appointment of sa国际传媒 Provincial Police assistant commissioner T.S. Shirras, one of a triumvirate of commissioners to head the Security Commission.
The Security Commission鈥檚 advisory committee included provincial attorney-general R.L. Maitland; minister of labour, George Pearson; and the leader of the CCF, Harold Winch.
The Security Commission鈥檚 plan to ship men out to work camps without their families generated resistance. Dozens of men, including Johnny Madokoro, formed what became known as the Nisei Mass Evacuation Group, demanding that families be kept together. A riot broke out in Vancouver鈥檚 Immigration Building, with protesters pitching the contents of rooms out of windows.
Even then, the Security Commission refused to allow husbands and wives to stay together. In scenes reminiscent of U.S.聽President Donald Trump鈥檚 border policies today, families were torn apart. Johnny Madokoro ended up in a work camp in Ontario, his wife Mary and the children in the Slocan detention centre in the Kootenays.
Those that continued to protest were shipped out to prisoner-of-war camps, as recounted by Robert K. Okazaki in The Nisei Mass Evacuation Group and P.O.W. Camp 101. Though Canadians, they were illegally detained in the camps for years, denied even basic rights under the War Measures Act.
Back in detention camps in sa国际传媒, travel outside of the designated sites was banned by the Security Commission under the War Measures Act: 鈥淣o person of Japanese origin at any work camp, village, farm, municipality or other area to and in which they have been duly authorized or directed to proceed shall leave such place without the authority of the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or Provincial Police delegated by the Commission to carry out such orders and supervision.鈥�
The sa国际传媒 Security Commission鈥檚 final report concluded that 鈥渢his Commission could hardly have functioned without the assistance of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the British Columbia Provincial Police,鈥� the latter under the control of the provincial government.
For many of those incarcerated in camps, it was impossible to make ends meet without working. Still, the provincial government refused to let detained Japanese Canadians work in the forests. Provincial secretary of state George S. Pearson wrote to the federal government: 鈥淩e Wire October twenty eighth reference to Japanese our government is not satisfied that it is wise to allow Japanese to work in lumber industry in British Columbia without police supervision.鈥�
Premier John Hart reiterated this in a telegram to Ottawa: 鈥淩eferring to our conversation regarding the proposal to employ Japanese in timber cutting, please be advised that this matter was caucused quite recently and was definitely turned down. The members were absolutely against the Japanese being employed for that purpose. I would appreciate your advising the Honourable C.D. Howe as to the result of this Caucus.鈥�
While detained in Slocan, Mary Madokoro struggled to get by, often using her last pennies to buy food for the family, including her young children. It took more than two years before the family eventually reunited, in Toronto, thousands of miles away from their beloved coast. By then, their Tofino home had been sold, without permission, as had Yoshio鈥檚 boat.
Like many Japanese Canadians, the Madokoro family survived the uprooting, but at what cost?
A decade would pass before Yoshio, Mary and the family could return to sa国际传媒 When they eventually got back, in 1953, Tofino refused to allow Japanese Canadians to return. So, the Madokoros bought a house in Port Alberni. Their daughter, Marlene, still lives there. She says: 鈥淎s a third-generation Canadian of Japanese descent, I am proud of my grandmothers, parents, aunts and uncles who showed integrity, strength and resilience during their uprooting and internment during [the Second World War].鈥�
The provincial government was deeply involved in what happened to Marlene鈥檚 family and thousands of other Japanese Canadians. Not only was it a main instigator in the uprooting, not only were its agencies and officials involving on a daily basis in overseeing the camps, it also denied education to thousands of children who remained in detention in camps in sa国际传媒
Next week: Part 4 鈥� Punishing the Children
John Price is professor emeritus (History) at the University of Victoria and the author of Orienting sa国际传媒: Race, Empire and the Transpacific and, more recently, A Woman in Between: Searching for Dr. Victoria Chung (with Ningping Yu).
