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Internment Camps
Some internment camps were set up in “ghost towns”– mostly abandoned old mining towns in old buildings in the Kootenay Lake and Slocan Valley areas — Slocan City, New Denver (including Harris and Nelson Ranch), Kaslo, Rosebery, Sandon, and Greenwood (including Grand Forks and Midway). The BC Security Commission (BCSC) leased the areas and renovated buildings to accommodate internees. When the BCSC realized they needed more housing, it leased farmland to build internment camps consisting of uninsulated wooden shacks without access to running water or electricity. Under such conditions, the cold winters in the Interior were particularly harsh with ice forming on the inside of cabins. In areas where the houses had not been completed, some even had to live in canvas tents over the winter. These purpose-built internment camps included Lemon Creek, Popoff, Bay Farm and Tashme. Click the map to see internment sites, self-supporting sites, and road camps.
Internment Camp Schools
Elementary Education
Education is a provincial responsibility, but in 1943, BCs Minister of Education tried to change the Public Schools Act so that the Province would not be responsible for educating Japanese Canadian children. The amendment was withdrawn when the federal government agreed to take over the responsibility of teaching the roughly 3,000 elementary-aged students in internment camps. Hide Hyodo was hired by the BC Security Commission to serve as director of education in the camps. Her second-in-command was trained teacher Teruko Hidaka who oversaw the education for children at Tashme, the second largest internment camp.
Other Japanese Canadians who had graduated from teacher training programs but had not yet received teaching certificates or been able to find jobs in public schools also stepped in to teach at schools at camps. Other volunteers were recent university graduates or even teenagers. Though initially volunteers, Hyodo was able to convince the government to pay these teachers $40 a month, which was a quarter of what regular teachers would make, and principals $60 a month.
Secondary Education
Secondary education for teenagers was almost completely neglected by both levels of government. As a result, high school-aged youth in the interior camps received no official government support for secondary schooling in the first years of internment, leaving thousands of Canadian-born Nisei without formal education during critical teenage years.
High school education, when it existed, was provided almost entirely through the initiative of the Japanese Canadian community and church organizations, particularly the Anglican Church of Canada and the Women’s Missionary Society of the United Church. In larger camps such as Tashme and the Slocan Valley centres (Lemon Creek, Bay Farm, New Denver, etc.), missionaries and qualified Nisei volunteers established and taught high school classes using the regular BC curriculum, often in makeshift buildings and during afternoon or evening hours so students could work to support their families. Despite severe shortages of textbooks, desks, and heating, these ad-hoc schools managed to keep education alive and enabled many former students to successfully resume or pursue post-secondary studies after the war.
Defiance
According to the Geneva Convention, Prisoners of War were incarcerated in a country that was not their own. Some nisei attempted to make a point by renouncing their British citizenship, though unsuccessfully. The Geneva convention also prohibits POW camps from forcing prisoners to work, so some inmates refused to perform camp jobs. Meanwhile, they intentionally wrote letters and postcards.
Canada arranged an exchange of prisoners of war with Japan in 1942. Given the choice to return to Japan, twenty-two Japanese nationals accepted, resulting in an exchange of civilians for Canadian soldiers. Later, the Canadian government gave the prisoners the choice to be released to do other work, which was accepted by three hundred of them. Of the remainder, some were Japanese nationals who still supported Japan, and some stayed as a form of protest against their treatment. When the war ended and Japanese Canadians had to choose between moving to Japan or east of the Rockies, most of the prisoners stayed east of the Rockies. Sixty-eight went to Japan. One hundred and twenty-eight in Angler refused to leave and were relocated to Saskatchewan, the only province that would agree to accept them.
Conditions at Sugar Beet Farms
The work on the sugar beet farms was long, hard, and low-paying. In the off-season, most could not find other work, so they had to take out advances on future contracts or receive government relief. The housing was generally designed for summer workers and not insulated for winter, without electricity or running water. Some families had to live in old granaries or even chicken coops that had not been designed for human habitation at all. The Japanese Canadians themselves had to make improvements to make them livable.
Although the federal government covered elementary education of children from families working on farms outside of BC, it did not cover secondary education. In parts of southern Alberta, supposedly public schools charged $70 a student, or roughly $1,000 if converted to 2023 dollars.
Resistance at Sugar Beet Farms
Though the Japanese Canadian families tended to be isolated from each other, some were able to make connections with others to push for improvements to conditions. Despite being forbidden from doing so they secretly formed organizations for collective bargaining, such as the Manitoba Japanese Joint Committee, the Shogo Endo Kai Beet Workers Association, and the Shinwa Kai Benefit Association. Issues they fought for included being able to leave after 1942, since their contracts had only been for that year; refusing to sign new contracts until they could negotiate more favourable terms; negotiating with local school boards for reducing or eliminating extra fees to attend secondary school; and changing local laws that prohibited Japanese Canadians from working in certain areas. Sometimes, labour organizers were able to connect with other marginalized groups. For example, they might meet in hotels run by Chinese Canadians or seek employment with Jewish Manitobans. Some Japanese Canadians who already lived in Alberta before the war were not relocated. Sometimes they helped newcomers with community resources, though they might also be fearful of being associated with Japanese Canadians from the coast.
Japanese Canadian Soldiers
Some Japanese Canadians enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces after Canada joined the war against Germany in 1939, but only outside of British Columbia. After 1942, however, no Japanese Canadians were allowed to enlist. In 1944, since Canada was the only place in the British Empire with a significant Japanese-speaking population, British and Australian military came to Canada in search of interpreters to help interrogate Japanese prisoners and translate documents. Twelve Japanese Canadians joined the British army. A year later, the Canadian government relented and allowed Japanese Canadians to join the Canadian Armed Forces. About 160 signed up, though about two-thirds were not fluent. About a third of the applicants were sent to Vancouver for intensive training at the army’s Japanese Language School. About sixty nisei were deployed to countries in Asia for military service. Some members of the Japanese Canadian community supported their decision to join the military, others wonder why they would enlist for a country that treated them as second-class citizens.
