Arthur Miki at The Forks
in Winnipeg, Manitoba

Arthur Miki is not quite the person I expected him to be. Sitting across from me in his office at the Canadian Department of Immigration in Winnipeg, Manitoba, this soft-spoken Japanese-Canadian doesn't look or act like the hard-nosed leader of the Redress movement of two decades ago.

His black hair is turning an iron gray, his frame is small, and his mood is light as he relates some of the history of his family in Canada. Though he's now a citizenship judge for the government of Canada, as a five year old child he remembers how his family was forcibly boarded onto a train in British Columbia, and how he first arrived in Manitoba, not long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

"When we first came here, you could not live in Winnipeg," said Miki. "You had to go on a farm. So we went to St. Agathe, Manitoba. The sugar beet farm that my family worked on was there. We were on the farm for two year, and then my father got a job in Winnipeg. He got special permission.

"We moved to the outskirts of Winnipeg, what is now Kildonan because we as a family could not live in Winnipeg. It wasn't until 1948 that Japanese families could live in Winnipeg. Most people lived on the outskirts, just outside the city boundaries. There were quite a number of Japanese families that lived there."

Miki's family was just one of the 22,000 Japanese-Canadian men, women and children that were forcibly uprooted from the west coast of British Columbia and categorized as "enemy aliens" in 1942, despite the fact that 75 per cent of them were naturalized or Canadian-born citizens. The same kinds of actions were being taken by the United States government of the time.

It was called, rather euphemistically by the Canadian government – and even by some Japanese – as the "evacuation", though the name bore no resemblance to the usual meaning of the word. Before being uprooted, 95 per cent of the Japanese-Canadians lived on the west coast.

These people were moved to three different kinds of places. Many of the more outspoken leaders of the Japanese communities, those who reacted to government policy, were sent to the internment camps in Ontario. German war prisoners were kept here as well. Others were in camps in B.C., but all of them closed in '45 at the end of the war.

The people at the end of the war in 1945, they began to move eastward. Many of them went to Ontario, Manitoba, and Quebec, though some were settled in the western provinces like Saskatchewan and Alberta. But they couldn't go back to the west coast.

The ones in Manitoba were made up mostly of people who came in 1942 to work on the sugar beet farms, though a number came to Manitoba after the camps were closed.

Understandably, it was wartime, and with the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941, the Canadian and American governments looked to secure their own soil by herding those of Japanese descent into internment camps. But the so-called Canadian 'evacuation' was not an isolated incident connected only to a wartime sentiment of security from the enemy state of Japan. Rather, it stemmed from discriminatory attitudes directed towards Japanese-Canadians from the very first years of immigration and settlement.

"The whole basis for the actions that the government took, we feel was a racist policy," explained Miki. "It was an economic issue. Japanese Canadians by the time the war began controlled the fishing industry, the farming industry, the Fraser Valley. Even prior to the war, there were a lot of politicians in B.C. who were saying that the Japanese were taking over certain segments of the economy and that 'we need to get rid of them'.

"When the war came, it was a good reason for them to do that."

The federal government had to get input from the politicians in B.C., and there was only one cabinet minister from B.C. at that time, and he was really opposed to Japanese living in his province. It was noted that on his election platform he said, 'if I get elected, I'll get rid of all the Japs'. When he eventually became the only B.C. politician in the cabinet, the federal government relied on him for advice on the right course of action.

"So naturally, he said let's get rid of them, and they instituted removal," noted Miki. "It isn't a question of whether this was national security or not. If it was national security, why didn't it happen to German people when Canada was at war with them as well?"

Many second generation men were separated from their families and sent to road and lumber camps. (Photo from the Vancouver Public Library, #1385)

Indeed, some German community leaders were interred, but the vast majority of those with a German heritage were relatively free. When the war ended, the camps that held Japanese Canadians were dissolved, but the restrictions placed on their movements were still enforced. In B.C., all their land, homes and possessions were sold by the Canadian government to pay for the cost of their internment and travel to other provinces.

Connie Matsuo was just newly married, and expecting her first child, when she and her community were declared enemy aliens. Years later, Matsuo would become part of the Redress movement, along with Miki and scores of others who wanted the Canadian government to recognize what they believed to be an injustice done to the Japanese-Canadians.

In a speech given during a Redress rally in the last 80s, Matsuo related her family's story.

"We could only watch helplessly as men such as my father were sent off to concentration camps or road camps. When news of the mass evacuation came, I remember my father-in-law's determination not to let such a thing happen to him. He dug a large hole that couldn't be seen from the main road in which he could hide, and he planned to remain behind and mind the farm.

"Sus, my husband, persuaded him to abandon his plan. Instead we packed our best dishes and utensils in a barrel and buried it in that hole. We were allowed to take only 40 lbs. per person and because we thought we would soon be permitted to go back, we left all our possessions behind believing that the Custodian would protect our property, but it wasn't so.

"After the war ended, we found out that everything was gone, our home, our property, our wedding gifts, everything. I was just devastated."

Now in her late 80s, though still maintaining the energy of a woman of 60, Matsuo says living in Manitoba has been good over the years. With her three children now spread out around Canada and Australia, she says life in Canada, and the attitudes of Canadians have improved. That said, she has no wish to move back to B.C, even though the climate is much more temperate than the harsh winters on the prairies. It just brings back too many bad memories.

In the 1970s, Canadian researchers began pouring over government records dealing with the treatment of Japanese-Canadians after a 30-year public access restriction expired. Thus began what was eventually called the Japanese Canadian Redress.

With the centennial anniversary of the Japanese coming to Canada in 1977, the National Japanese Canadian Citizens Association, (later called the National Association of Japanese Canadians), formed a Reparations Committee. The ultimate outcome of these moves was the enactment of three redress resolutions.

The NAJC Council wanted an official government acknowledgement of the injustices committed against Japanese Canadians, monetary compensation, and a review of the War Measures Act which was created and instituted during the Second World War, and circumvented civilian rights. Arthur Miki, who had been heavily involved with the redress movement in Manitoba, became the new NAJC president. But he had his work cut out for him.

"The government was quite reluctant to go into any form of individual compensation," said Miki. "They were prepared to give us a community fund, and yet many people in our community didn't accept that premise in the sense that it was the individuals in our community that really suffered losses. It was the individual that had their house taken away and sold. It was the individual whose job was taken away. To recognize that, many people in our community said that we should also be seeking individual compensation."

But the government would not recognize individual compensation, and negotiations which started in 1984 broke down in 1986. With this setback, the Japanese-Canadian community regrouped and organized the National Coalition for Japanese Canadian Redress. Rally upon rally was organized, and many well known Canadians added their names to a growing list of citizens who believed the Canadian government should rectify the situation.

"We also got the unions, the churches involved, and they supported us," said Miki, sitting back in his office chair. "This coalition became sort of a national representation of people from across the country. We thought we should raise this issue as a Canadian human rights issue.

"We held a rally in Ottawa in 1988, April, where we had many of our community members, especially the ones that went through the experience. By this time they were 70-80 years old, and they came to Ottawa and marched on Parliament Hill. And what that was able to do was put a face to the victims. It wasn't just people who passed away. These are people alive who had suffered the injustices."

With a new election pending, then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and his Progressive Conservative government decided to make good on their previous election promise to compensate Japanese-Canadians. It also helped that the United States was about to pass a bill that would compensate Japanese-Americans, something the Canadian Japanese community was watching closely. With the majority of Canadians fully behind the Japanese community, redress became reality on Sept. 22, 1988 with the signing of the Redress Agreement.

The redress document called for individual compensation of $21,000, an accumulative bond of $12 million, and the establishment of a Canadian race relations foundation which exists today in Toronto. That foundation is in recognition of Japanese Canadians, especially the ones who had already passed away.

"In essence we contributed $12 million, and the government contributed $12 million towards its establishment," noted Miki. "They used an endowment fund of $24 million to operate."

Today, Japanese Canadians make up a vital part of Canadian society, and the redress movement has gone a long way in changing people's attitudes towards their country's history. Miki too, in his job at the immigration office, tells every new Canadian he swears in about his family's history. The usual reaction he gets from people is one of surprise, but he sees it as his duty to keep people aware of their rights, so that the past doesn't repeat itself.

"It's an important story to tell, to show how even the concept of citizenship has evolved. I think it's good for them to know that was my parents. That was only one generation ago."

Other sources:

Justice In Our Time; The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement
by Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi

Who Was Who: Pioneer Japanese Families in Delta and Surrey
by Michael Hoshiko

The Japanese Canadian Redress Legacy; A Community Revitalized
by Arthur K. Miki

Teaching in Canadian Exile
by Frank Moritsugu and the Ghost Town Teachers Historial Society

In Justice; Canada, Minorities, and Human Rights
The National Association of Japanese Canadians