Japanese Internment Analysis

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“Parents and children innocent of any crime ushered from their homes, herded into a central depot and sent out by train to remote camps.” (Marsh, 2012). In 1941, Japan attacked both the Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and Hong Kong, killing 2,000 Canadians as a result. The Canadian government then gave the Royal Canadian Mounted Police the authority to send Japanese “aliens” to internment camps in British Columbia. Over 20,881 Japanese people in Canada were forced to leave their homes and were sent to internment camps; 13,309 of these people were born Canadian citizens (Marsh, 2012). Most of the other Japanese people that have immigrated to Canada have lived here for 25 to 40 years prior to this internment. In the process of relocation, it was common for families to be separated. The …show more content…
The Japanese Canadians did not have any advocates to represent them in both the provincial government in British Columbia and the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa, which contributed to why they were not allowed to vote until March 31, 1949 (Marsh 2012). The Japanese people living in Canada had their Canadian citizenship taken away from them. “Not only were the Japanese Canadians to be kept from returning to their home communities, but any eventual restoration of their rights was put off to the indefinite future.” (Cohn, 1985, p.14). It was unreasonable to expect Japanese Canadians to live freely even after they were released from the internment camps when they had so many restrictions placed on them. It was not until 1988, when Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had formally apologized for the hardship that this has caused, that Canadian citizenship was restored to those who had theirs revoked. This predicament had repercussions on not only the political side of the relationship between the Canadian government and the Japanese, but also on the economic side of