Government apologizes to Japanese Canadians in 1988

During the Second World War, 22,000 Japanese Canadians were uprooted from their homes, separated from their families and sent away to camps. Not one was ever charged with an act of disloyalty. In the wakeof the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, people of Japanese origin in both Canada and the UnitedStates were considered a threat.

The federal government confiscated and sold their property. Unlike prisoners of war, who are protected by the Geneva Convention, Japanese Canadians had to pay for their own internment. Their movements were restricted and their mail censored.

• AUDIO | Japanese Canadianrecalls refusing to comply with internment

Men were separated from their families and forced into work crews building roads and railways andlaboringon sugar beet farms. The women, children and older people were sent inland to internment camps in northern British Columbia.

After the war ended in 1945, Japanese Canadians were offered a choice: to either be deported to Japan, a defeated country unknown to most, or to re-settle in eastern Canada.

In 1949, four years after the war was over, Japanese Canadians were finally given back full citizenship rights, including the right to vote and the right to return to the west coast.

After almost40 years, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney formally apologizedto Japanese Canadian survivors and their families on Sept. 22, 1988. Art Miki, of the National Association of Japanese Canadians, calledthe apology and $300 million compensation package "a settlement that heals."

The $300-million compensation package included $21,000 for each of the 13,000 survivors, $12 million for a Japanese community fund, and $24 million to create a Canadian race relations foundation, to ensure such discrimination never happens again.

Internee remembers the relocation experience for Japanese Canadians in 1968

56 years ago

Duration 17:39

A Japanese woman recalls her isolation during the Second World War. Aired Dec. 10, 1968 on CBC's Hourglass News.