Zoom interview with Jordan Stanger-Ross, author of Landscape of Injustice: A New Perspective on the Internment and Dispossession of Japanese-Canadians (MQUP, 2020)

Draft podcast script for 3 Dec. 2020

Welcome to this instalment of “Witness to Yesterday” the podcast of the Champlain Society. My name is Greg Marchildon and today, we are going to talk to Jordan Stanger-Ross about his new edited book on the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War.

Jordan Stanger-Ross is an associate professor of history at the University of Victoria. He is also the Director of an initiative called Landscapes of Injustice, a seven-year research project dedicated to studying the mass displacement and uprooting and dispossession of 21,000 Japanese- Canadians from their homes in coastal . Professor Stanger- Ross led the consortium of researchers produce a major volume. Entitled Landscape of Injustice: A New Perspective on the Internment and Dispossession of Japanese-Canadians, the volume examines what happened between 1942 when the internment began and 1949 when the restrictions on Japanese-Canadians were finally lifted.

Jordan, welcome to Witness to Yesterday and thank you for joining us.

• What are the origins of this collective project and this new book?

• I know that this is a collected volume but I am always interested in what motivates an author to devote themselves for so long to one subject. You have devoted much of your academic life to the Landscapes of Injustice project. What brought you to this subject in the first place and why were you willing to invest so much time and energy in it?

• What were the sources you relied upon in this project?

• You and your colleagues posit that the origins of this internment policy long predated the Second World War, especially in British Columbia. Remind us of this history including the story of

1 Japanese emigration to British Columbia in the late 1800s and early 1900s and their treatment as residents of BC.

• As our witness to yesterday, describe to our listeners what happened to the typical Japanese Canadian family, most or all of whom were born in Canada, living in in 1942.

• Can you compare the Japanese internment (22,000) to the German (847), Italian (632) and other internments of thee Second World War?

• Associated with internment was the forced sale of assets, something that few Canadians are aware of (also, it was not the policy in the US). At the time, some in the Canadian government argued in favour of “benevolent trusteeship” but “forced sale” became the policy. Why?

• I know about some of the debates concerning the Japanese- Canadian internment through one main source. Elected towards the end of the war, the CCF government of hired a group of talented Japanese-Canadians including Thomas Shoyama who is referred to a number of times in the book. During the war, Shoyama was the editor of the Japanese Canadian weekly The New Canadian. What kind of newspaper was The New Canadian and how important was it to the Japanese Canadian community? And why was it allowed to continue by the Canadian government?

• There was a federal Royal Commission on Japanese Claims (1947- 51) established to investigate the economic losses of . Why was the Bird Commission set up? What was its formal mandate? What did it actually accomplish?

• Tell us about the history that led to the Government of Canada’s 1988 acknowledgment of wrongdoing and settlement for the surviving victims, and the country’s first public apology for what happened?

2 • What is the contemporary relevance, of any, to today’s Canada in light of the TRC and other efforts to deal with the wrongs of the past?

Jordan, thank you so much for joining us today.

My guest today was Jordan Stanger-Ross. He is the author of Landscape of Injustice: A New Perspective on the Internment and Dispossession of Japanese-Canadians published by McGill-Queen’s University Press in 2020.

You’ve been listening to Witness to Yesterday. Please visit our website at www.champlainsociety.ca where you can become a subscribing member and help support the preservation and publication of documentary history in Canada. If you like what you’ve heard, let your friends know by forwarding this podcast through the social media of your choice.

This podcast is made possible by the members of the Champlain Society who work hard to bring to life original documents in Canadian history. We want to thank the Hudson's Bay Company History Foundation, the LR Wilson Institute of History at McMaster University, and a consortium of Canadian Scholarly Book publishers that includes the University of Toronto Press, The University of British Columbia Press, and the University of Ottawa Press.

My name is Greg Marchildon. This interview was recorded on December 3, 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was produced by Jessica Schmidt.

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