Two children look into the window of a Japanese store, closed after the forced relocation of Japanese nationals. Credit: Jack Lindsay, Photo courtesy of City of Vancouver Archives. 1184-1537.
Co-curated by the Nikkei National Museum and the Royal British Columbia Museum in partnership with Landscapes of Injustice. This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada.
Grounded in research from Landscapes of Injustice – a 7-year multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional, community-engaged project, the Broken Promises exhibition explores the dispossession of Japanese Canadians in the 1940s. It illuminates the loss of home and the struggle for justice in one racially marginalized community. The story unfolds by following seven narrators. Learn about life for Japanese Canadians in Canada before the war, the administration of their lives during and after the war ended, and how legacies of dispossession continue to this day.
The exhibit announced today frames seven distinct stories out of thousands of family histories impacted for generations by forced displacement and dispossession of Japanese Canadians in the 1940s.
Canada declared war after Japan attacked British and American bases on December 7, 1941.
To the RCMP and Canadian generals, Japanese Canadians posed no threat. But politicians still decided to uproot all “persons of the Japanese race” from coastal British Columbia.
Between March and October 1942, thousands of Japanese Canadians were forced into camps in BC’s interior. Others were pushed into roadwork, farm labour, and prisoner - of - war camps across Canada.
Displaced Japanese Canadians leaving the Vancouver area (possibly Slocan Valley) after being prohibited by law from entering a “protected area” within 100 miles of the coast in BC.
Photo courtesy of Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre (NNMCC). NNM, 1994.69.4.29.1.
Winter came early in 1942. Temperatures fell to record lows. Japanese Canadians shivered in tents, makeshift shacks, and abandoned buildings. For the seven years that followed, they were barred from returning to coastal British Columbia. Living in hundreds of sites of internment, they struggled through years in which their basic rights were denied.
The end of the war with Japan did not bring a close to the ordeal. Instead, in 1946 government officials exiled almost 4,000 Japanese Canadians to Japan. Those who refused to go were told to move east of the Rockies, to places many of them had never been. On April 1, 1949, Japanese Canadians were granted full rights as citizens, but they never got back the homes, belongings, or opportunities stolen during the long years of internment.
Thank you to our partner institution, Landscapes of Injustice.
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