Ignorant Dumbfucks on Yahoo Canada who commented about Japanese Brutality and then proceeded to tar Canadians Interned in Interior and Ontario Internment Camps with the Same Brush
Even after 70 years and incarceration in Slocan/New Denver etc, etc...to white people, we're still "Japs". The whole goddamned Japanese apology to Canadian soldiers brought out a mountain of hatred towards Japanese of all nationalities, whether we were born in Canada or elsewhere. Things haven't changed worth shit. It doesn't matter that I've spent the entirety of my life in Canada (I was born in Edmonton), to most white Canadians, I'm still a JAP and when I get little ol' white ladies telling me how good I speak English, it makes my blood boil.
What white people don't seem to get is that we were Canadian citizens. It wasn't the fact that Canada interned Japanese...they interned Canadians. What the Japanese did in the Pacific, what Japanese did in Burma, China, Korea and the Philippines was reprehensible, but it has no bearing to what Canadians did to other Canadians whose only difference was that we had olive complexions and slant eyes. We Canadians had nothing to do with it. And people need to stop the comparisons. The only connection that we had to Japan's atrocities was that our ancestors came from that country and that's a pretty tenuous connection indeed.
The Americans of our extraction got a chance to prove their loyalty in the end. They had their 442nd Regimental Combat Team of the 100th Battalion. They rescued the Lost Battalion in Italy. They received 21 Medals of Honor (the single highest number for one battalion), won 52 Distinguished Service Crosses less the 19 that were upgraded to the MoH. 1 Distinguished Service Medal, 560 Silver Stars of which 28 had oak leaf clusters (2nd award), 22 Legion of Merit Medals, 15 Soldier`s Medals, 4000 Bronze Stars including one that was upgraded to the Medal of Honor) and of those 4000 Bronze Stars, there were 1200 Oak Leaf Clusters for a second award) - one Bronze Star was upgraded to a Silver Star, and 9486 Purple Hearts. They bled and died for the United States of America, all the while their families were being treated like criminals for the crime of looking like the "enemy".
The Canadian government didn't trust us one single bit. Do you think for a single moment that there wasn't anyone of the internees who didn't try to sign up and fight for their country and what I mean "their country" was Canada? Did you think that for one single second the anger and bitterness felt by those Canadians you called Japs wouldn't have resulted in a single battalion with so many Victoria Crosses that it would make your head spin? The 442nd RCT would have been eclipsed by a battalion with less manpower. But no. The Canadian Government didn't trust us Japs one bit. Better to stick 'em in tarpaper shacks with no heat and let 'em freeze to death. At least we weren't stuck in baking ovens and gas chambers.
The prime excuse that it was war, it was excuseable is a complete and utter copout. There were signs that said "No Japs from the Pacific to the 400 mile limit." When you have Conservative MPs like Charles Green spouting what amounts to white supremacist talk, there's an atmosphere of hatred that people like my relatives had to put up with every single day. It also dehumanized the people and made it easier to commit the wrong.
The other excuse that they didn't know what Japanese were faithful. Not one single case of espionage among Japanese ethnic Canadian Citizens was ever really accounted for. All it was, was an economic grab and the bare fact of it was that Pearl Harbor was just a convenient excuse to grab for themselves what the whites thought should be theirs. Sure, why not take their houses and their possessions, they're worth money and we're losing tons of money in the war effort and we can't determine if those slant-eyed Japs are trustworthy. Hell, the Japs were making money hand over fist and they were taking your jobs. Yeah, it was justified. Sure those slant-eyed sewer monkeys weren't human, let 'em die out there in the bush.
My grandfather, grandmother, uncles and mother were interned in the bush in Slocan. My uncle nearly died out there of pneumonia. My grandfather had to restart his life when he was 60. One of my Canadian realtor friends of my ethnicity also ended up with his family interned in New Denver. Each and every one of those families sacrificed their family and community unity. We're all spread out now. None of us are rich and we all get by and contribute to society, no matter how much society has wronged us.
I've tried to put the past behind me. I'm married to someone I care about who is the daughter of a Burma US Army WWII Veteran who despite having fought against the Japanese would have had the intelligence to determine that I wasn't the same as a Jap soldier and would have welcomed me with open arms. If there are veterans who can't and won't look at anyone who has the slightest hint of Japanese extraction without fear, loathing, and outright hatred, then that's their problem, not mine. But believe me, I will return their hate ounce for ounce, pound for pound. My relatives nearly paid with their lives when all they were trying to do were to be proper Canadian citizens and that I can never forgive. There is a distinct difference. To those who fought and picked up arms...you had the opportunity to fight. We Canadian citizens would have been shot like dogs if we had defended our property from seizure. So we went like faithful citizens, locked up and corralled like cattle in horse stalls at Pacific National Exhibition grounds, while people taunted us and called us "Dirty Japs". If it wasn't for the RCMP, they probably would have rounded us up and killed us.
And we have yet to learn from our lessons from WWII. The Americans are all ready to incarcerate all Arab-Americans because they look like the enemy, just like they incarcerated all Japanese-Americans in WWII. At least, I know that if they ever come for me again in a war against Japan, my wife will join me in incarceration and that would be an insult to her late father, a loyal veteran of the United States Army in WWII who fought so that freedoms could be enjoyed by all citizens, no matter what ethnicity. Frankly there is no such thing as true freedom. We're only allowed to think so, until the next round of atrocities is committed and then excuses will be used to turn around and revoke citizenship and freedom of mobility. We paid for that with our so called freedom after Pearl Harbor and some of the Japanese-Canadian internees paid with their lives.
Hear the grief in David Suzuki's voice when he says: "I thought I was just a Canadian Kid...but to see this...we were really Japanese..." This is the legacy of betrayal by a country that we Canadians thought that was their own.
And if you think for one single second that Canadians of Japanese extraction have to apologize for the atrocities that the Japanese committed during the war, you deserve to get told unapologetically "FUCK YOU!" Go to HELL!!! We were never Japs, We were faithful Canadians, we were wronged and as Canadians, we deserved compensation for those wrongs. The day that families of Canadian WWII veterans stop comparing us with the Japs who committed the crimes overseas is the day those wounds will finally start to heal. If not, then FUCK YOU TOO!!!
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