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Chinese Head Tax
Chinese workers had been instrumental to the construction of the trans-Canada railway, but in 1885, the BC government targeted Chinese immigrants with a $50 head tax, which continued to increase over time. In 1923, the Chinese Immigration Act, more accurately known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, replaced the head tax and required all Chinese persons living in Canada, even those born here, to register with the government or risk fines, detainment or deportation. For the 24 years in which it was in effect, Canada only allowed about 12 to 50 Chinese persons to immigrate in any given year.
The Komagata Maru Incident
Because many South Asians were British subjects, the Canadian government introduced the “Continuous Journey” regulation in 1908 to restrict immigrants from India without explicitly saying so. This legislation required immigrants to travel directly from their country of origin, but such a route was not available to most immigrants from India. When the Komagata Maru carrying many Indian passengers arrived in Vancouver in 1914, they challenged the regulation. The authorities detained the ship and its passengers in port for two months, until the Supreme Court of BC upheld the legislation, resulting in the Komagata Maru being escorted out of the harbour. Between 1910 and 1920, only 112 Indian immigrants were able to gain entry to Canada.
Loss of Provincial Voting Rights
British Columbia removed Japanese Canadians from provincial voting registries in 1885. Many provincial professional organizations such as law and pharmacy used the voter’s list to determine eligibility for practising. This also prevented Japanese Canadians from being elected to government positions or serving on juries.
In Maple Ridge, although most of the school-aged children in Maple Ridge were Japanese Canadian, they usually only hired white teachers. The exception was a young woman Teruko Hidaka, a Japanese Canadian graduate of a Maple Ridge teaching school. White parents protested by pulling their children from her class, so the school board changed their policies so that anyone not on the voters’ list would not be eligible to teach in the district, and Hidaka lost her job.
Loss of Federal Voting Rights
Even after losing their provincial voting rights, Japanese Canadians who had become British subjects (since Canadian citizenship would not exist until 1947) were still technically allowed to vote in federal elections.
In 1898, the federal government passed a law allowing Japanese Canadians living in BC to vote in federal elections if they contacted a federal election official to have their name added to the federal voters list. In practice, this provision was little known and seldom used. The Dominion Elections Act of 1920 prohibited anyone not on their Provincial voter’s list from voting in federal elections. This included Japanese Canadians in BC, who represented about 90% of the Japanese Canadian population.
Picture Brides
After the anti-Asian riots in 1907, Canada and Japan restricted the number of men who could travel to Canada. The new laws, however, allowed for wives to join their husbands in Canada. As a result, many single men in British Columbia sent for wives back home. Japan had a tradition of arranged marriages and the picture bride system evolved to meet the needs of trans-Pacific arrangements. Prospective husbands would send photos and letters to Japan and family members or matchmakers would find suitable matches. Women might accept such a marriage as the result of family struggles or financial pressures, being older or divorced, the desire for romance or adventure.
Once a match was approved by both sides, the husband’s family would add the bride’s name to the family register. Between 1908 and 1928, over 6,000 picture brides came to Canada, to meet their new husbands often for the first time. Upon arrival, they often headed straight to an official Canadian marriage ceremony. Not all arrangements worked out of course. Their partners might now be much older than their photographs, not be as wealthy as they had implied, or life might be much harsher than expected. If things did not work out, some women might leave to find ways to pay off the debt of the arrangement with the intended husband. Nonetheless, the influx of these picture brides led to the births of thousands of children, known as Nisei, the second generation and the growth of Japanese Canadian communities.
In 1928, however, Britain and Japan re-negotiated the so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement to further limit immigration to 150 per year, now including family members, which essentially shut down the picture bride system.
This period changed the nature of Japanese Canadian life in British Columbia. Before the 1908 restrictions, Japanese migration was largely “circular migration,” meaning workers, usually young men, who worked in British Columbia seasonally or temporarily, with the plan to return to Japan. The 1908 restrictions, and the picture bride era, made the community much more settled, with growing families who envisioned their future as Canadians.
Anti-Asian Riots
At the beginning of the 1900s, as destinations like Hawaii and California restricted entry to Japanese immigrants, arrivals in BC rose. By 1907, people of Japanese ancestry in BC had grown to over 18,000. In September of that year, following 1905 Anti-Asian riots in San Francisco and Bellingham, the Asiatic Exclusion League led an Anti-Asian riot in Vancouver, in which mobs attacked properties belonging to Chinese and Japanese residents in the Powell Street Area, breaking windows and causing significant property damage.
The targeted communities, with support from city police, armed themselves and resisted the rioters. This resistance, particularly from Japanese Canadian residents, caused casualties among the rioters.
Though the government provided some financial compensation to the communities for the thousands of dollars in damages and lost revenue, politicians turned their efforts toward restricting immigration from Asia, rather than addressing the racist attitudes.
Tomekichi Homma case
Tomekichi Homma was a leader of the Japanese Fishermen’s Benevolent Society. In 1900, he decided to challenge the provincial restriction from voting by trying to have his name added to the list.
Upon being denied, he filed a lawsuit against the BC government. He won the case in the local country court. The provincial government took the case to the Supreme Court of Canada, where Homma won again.
Finally, the Province took the case to the highest legal level at the time — the Privy Council in Britain. There, in 1902, the case was lost.
Tomekichi Homma died in 1945 in the Slocan City internment camp. He would never enjoy the franchise in his lifetime.
JCs volunteering for WWI
In 1914, at the onset of the Great War, now known as the First World War, Canada was still following the lead of Britain. The Canadian government wanted men to join the military but was reluctant to employ mandatory conscription. Yasushi Yamazaki organized a unit of volunteers to train under a commanding officer of a reserve unit as a demonstration of their loyalty. Yet Prime Minister Borden declined their officer of service in the army and refused to enlist Japanese Canadians in British Columbia.
Undeterred, the more than two hundred volunteer soldiers travelled to Alberta to enlist and join overseas battalions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Fifty-four were killed in action and one of war-related complications, with only six returning home uninjured. For their bravery, thirteen were awarded the Military Medal and two received the Russian Cross of St. George. Still, the surviving veterans were not granted the provincial franchise until 1931, with other Japanese Canadians in British Columbia still denied the vote.
Cenotaph in Stanley Park
A Japanese Canadian War Memorial in Stanley Park was dedicated on April 9, 1920, the third anniversary of the opening day of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The Canadian Japanese Association, who also funded the training of 227 soldiers in Vancouver from January to May 1916, erected the memorial in memory of the victory at Vimy Ridge, the loss of 54 men and the 168 surviving Japanese Canadian Veterans who returned to Canada.
The memorial was designed by James Anderson Benzie. On top of the memorial is a Japanese lantern that symbolizes unification between Canada and Japan.
Many ornamental cherry trees were planted over the years, the last in 1977, by two of the last surviving Japanese Canadian Veterans of the First World War.
Forestry laws
As the number of Japanese workers in the logging industry grew, racially motivated laws were passed. In 1913, the BC Crown Timber Act barred Asians from working on Crown timberlands and threatened to confiscate logging licenses from companies that hired Japanese or Chinese labourers. The B.C. Forestry Law set up in 1919 to bar Japanese Canadians from the logging industry, after logging company owner Eikichi Kagetsu took the case to the Supreme Court of Canada and then to the Privy Council, racial restrictions were found to be invalid.
Japanese Canadian Labour Unions
The Japanese Workers Union became the first Japanese Canadian labour union with the impetus of activist and journalist Etsu Suzuki. After a failed strike in 1920 of about 200 Chinese and Japanese Canadian workers against unfair wage cuts at Swanson Bay Mill, south of Prince Rupert, Suzuki met with about 30 Swanson Bay workers in Vancouver and encouraged them to unionize. By 1926, the union had been renamed the Japanese Camp and Mill Workers’ Union with more than a thousand members and was accepted by the Trades and Labour Council.
Fishing License Restrictions
As Japanese Canadian fishers became a significant force in the industry, white competitors lobbied politicians to find ways to limit their numbers. In Northern BC, around Port Essington, Japanese Canadian fishers owned three-quarters of the 1000 regional fishing licenses. In 1922, the number of fishing licenses available to Japanese Canadians was cut dramatically and the areas where they were allowed to fish became limited. By 1925, almost 1000 licenses were stripped from Japanese Canadians, comprising about a third of what they had previously held. Furthermore, a strict quota was enforced for salted fish and salteries were required to include at least 50% white and/or Indigenous workers. Most of the Japanese Canadians who settled on Salt Spring Island were involved in the fishing industry, but as the fishing licenses became scarcer, some turned to farming.
Social Restrictions
Recreational facilities often restricted access to non-white people. The Capitol Theatre in Nanaimo limited Japanese Canadians to the upper balcony. A bowling alley in Duncan did not allow “Orientals.” The Occidental Hotel in Nanaimo would not serve non-whites. These kinds of attitudes had consequences for employment. Teruko Hidaka, for example, was a qualified teacher who had been hired by the Maple Ridge School District where she had grown up, but was fired following racist complaints of white parents.
Did you know?
The White Lunch chain of restaurants opened in Vancouver in 1913, eventually expanding to several locations. The chain only employed white staff and served white customers. Asians and Indigenous people would not be served. The whites only policy was eventually rescinded and the last location closed in the early 1980s. EXPLORE MORE
JCCL delegation to Ottawa
By 1936, Japanese Canadians, many of whom had been born in Canada, were still not allowed to vote in British Columbia unless they were veterans of the First World War. So when the Canadian government formed a Special Committee on Elections and Franchise Acts, the Japanese Canadian Citizens’s League sent a delegation to Ottawa to argue their case. They chose dentist Dr. Edward Banno, English professor Dr. Samuel Hayakawa, schoolteacher Hideko Hyodo, and insurance agent Minoru Kobayashi.
The delegates presented well-researched statements, referencing government debates, statistics, community success stories, and survey results. They contrasted British Columbia with other provinces and American states where citizens of Japanese descent had the right to vote and appealed to “British principles of fair play” and the Christian desire for a “World Brotherhood.”
Committee members expressed surprise at the delegates’ fluency in English, failing to appreciate that they were all Canadian-born and that Dr. Hayakawa was even an English professor. Despite admitting that the delegates had made a “very excellent case,” the committee ultimately decided to continue denying Japanese Canadians in BC the right to vote.
