<Begin Segment 49>

TI: I guess one question I have, in terms of, within the community, was there any resentment about being there? I mean, were there discussions of people who felt that --

HS: Yeah, there was a lot of discussion, and of course, at the time, there was continual pressure put on by the B.C. Security Commission to get people out of these camps, go east, or sign up to go to Japan. And to go back to Japan, they sort of put a little bait out there, they would pay everybody two hundred dollars plus the fact they would ship everything that they had out to Japan for them. And they, each individual would receive two hundred dollars. So this was a kind of a bait they put out to try and get them to sign up to go back to Japan. And, of course, majority of the people looked at that and said, "Why would I go -- " most of the younger people said, "Why? I'm not Japanese, I'm Canadian." And so they did get about, oh, eventually they got about, oh, seven or eight thousand people to sign up, and then about half of them said, no, they don't want to go after all.

TI: Oh, so roughly a third of the people signed up initially, and then half of those people --

HS: Initially, and then half of those --

TI: -- had second thoughts.

HS: -- set aside. And that was because the war ended. You see, the war ended by that time. The initial people who signed up, who were determined to go back to Japan, because they said, "They don't want us here in Canada, we'll go back to Japan." That's where I -- but those were, of course, the parents were making that decision, and so that the families that were going there, the younger members had no say as to where they were going to, whether they were gonna go or not. So a good, two or three thousand eventually got on the, actually got on the boat and went back to Japan, so there is a good portion of what you call Japanese citizens -- Canadian citizens living in Japan, of Japanese ancestry. And there is a, as a matter of fact, even to this day, they have a society of Japanese Canadians who are living -- and they are of Japanese descent, but all born in Canada.

TI: Did some of those Japanese Canadians, or Japanese that went back to Japan, after being in Japan, did they, did some of them decide that it wasn't for them and come back to Canada?

HS: A lot of them did. A good portion of them did come back...

TI: And how did the Canadian government treat that? Was that something that...

HS: Well, to begin with, that was... until, see, up until, they kept the War Measures Act and the restrictions on Japanese up going until 1949. In '49, they finally, after pressure, they had to allow Asians to become, Canadian-born Asians to become citizens. Prior to that point, the B.C. government were able to have some control over this by denying the local Japanese at that time -- even though you were, as my father was a naturalized Canadian, he was not allowed to vote. So he didn't have the vote, and as a result of local elections, not being allowed to vote in B.C. also negated the fact that he was not on the voter's list in the federal government, too. They also followed that rule that no Asian would be allowed to vote in the federal election, the government of Canada election. Well, that all went by the board, and so that, in 1949, they had to allow everyone, and even up, just before that, they had been, the Indians themselves, the aborigines had been denied the vote, and they had to give them the vote after World War II, because they couldn't justify saying that they were not Canadians, 'cause they were all born in Canada. So they had to give them the vote. It became an issue.

TI: And this was about -- I'm sorry, what year was this?

HS: Well, for Japanese, it was 1949. You know, four years after the end of the war, they finally said, "Yes, Japanese Canadians, people that were born in Canada have to be given the vote, and they're Canadians." So when that happened, took out all the restrictions that were, had been placed, and we could now move back to B.C. They could not prevent us from going back to B.C. if we wanted.

TI: That was four years, again, four years after the war, 1949?

HS: Yeah.

TI: So that's good.

<End Segment 49> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.