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TI: So let's talk about the events that started unfolding sort of in the February/March timeframe.

HS: Well, in February, of course, that was when an exact date, I think, was about February 28 or something, but I'd have to go back to... but certainly late February, the government in Ottawa, which is the federal government, under Mackenzie King, had in his cabinet -- his cabinet was made up of people from all across Canada, of course. But he happened to have three fairly powerful cabinet ministers that were pretty anti-Japanese in terms of their, their feelings to begin with. But on top of that, they were very, they were very much white supremacy-type ideas. And B.C. had always been like that. They had denied the vote to, to anybody who was even Canadian-born, even Japanese. In fact, everybody who was, who was from the, from Asia, who was Canadian-born, was not given the same privilege as anybody who was white that was Canadian-born, but did not come from, even an Italian or German. If they were Canadian-born, still was a Canadian in their eyes. The reason being, there was, there'd been a lot of problems with Orientals, what they considered in the broad term, "Orientals," in the labor market, and agitation from people from B.C., mainly British Columbia. Because that's where they, the major part of the Asian population was in Canada at the time. And as a result, they caused, their presence caused many of the whites to view them with a great deal of suspicion, especially Chinese and Japanese, which they called at that time -- and that came, actually, from Los Angeles, the Hearst, the Hearst chain that said the "yellow peril" that was taking over the West Coast. That came way before World War, before Pearl Harbor. But that affected us as well.

TI: So you had these powerful cabinet ministers who were, were sort of anti-Japanese. I mean, from a community standpoint, how much were you aware of these, these things? I guess from your perspective, what was going on in this timeframe?

HS: Yeah, we had no idea, of course, what was going on. Because the thing about this was the cabinet could do what they, make decisions on their own without calling parliament, and it would not get in the newspaper. It was called Order in Council. By doing, and this is under the War Measures Act, they were given the privilege of making decisions that were considered emergency decisions. And this is, this whole idea, that this idea of registering Japanese as, as "enemy aliens," for instance, registering them as "enemy aliens," yet, like, they gave us, all of us that were Canadian-born, they did recognize that you were Canadian-born, but you were still not a citizen, you were an enemy, you were an alien. And then, so that you were an "enemy alien" when you were, because you were, your ancestry was in Japan. That idea pervaded a lot of the thinking of people in, in the West Coast. And in fact, in Victoria alone they had two rallies where they, where they, a couple of agitators put on big, big rallies to get the government in Ottawa that was sitting on its hands, to do something about this "enemy that was within us," and that was, they were, of course, pointing their fingers at Japanese.

TI: Were there similar things happening in Prince Rupert?

HS: Nothing that happened in Prince Rupert. Nothing like that happened. It happened to be in Victoria, mainly because of two reasons. There was quite a lot of the old-time British influence, the jingo, the British empire and how it, it was the leaders of the world, and they knew what was right for the world, they knew that, that this "yellow peril" was diluting what you might call the white supremacy that was going on. They were trying -- and there's no question because they were quite, the fishermen's association was then, people like that were very, very much concerned about the effect of Japanese fishermen. The market gardeners were, were being harassed by various grocery or food grower groups that began realizing that this might be a time to get rid of these people who are taking over our, our... they thought we were taking over their country, but we were, of course, just the West Coast, but they were, we were economically getting pretty powerful.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.