Reformulating Citizenship: The Nikkei in Canada and

Patrick Haid

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

School of History and Philosophy University of March 2011

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Originality Statement

“I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.”

Signed: ......

Date: ......

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Abstract

This thesis traces the experience of Japanese immigrants and their descendents (or

Nikkei) in Canada and Australia from their arrival in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, until after the deportation of substantial numbers of each community in 1946 and 1947. Using Bosniak, I argue that the pre-war position of the Nikkei within each nation exemplified the tension between concepts of universal rights, and the need for boundaries in liberal citizenship. At the end of the war, both Canada and Australia attempted to deal with the incoherence presented by these groups by deporting those that they could, and extending historic rights to those who remained. The temporal proximity of these actions to the formal creation of Canadian Citizenship in 1947 and

Australian Citizenship in 1949 suggests the historic importance of these events. At a time when national boundaries were being redefined, the deportations illustrated just where the limits of Canada and Australia lay.

Chapters 1 and 5 of this dissertation provide historical context for the thesis.

Chapter 1 presents an analysis of the pre-war development of racial-nationalism in

Canada and Australia in order to contextualise the position that “Japanese” subjects occupied within each nation. Chapter 5 examines post-war citizenship reform with respect to how the “foreignness” of Nikkei was accommodated and pre-war notions of citizenship were disturbed in the post-war period. Chapters 2 to 4 tell the story of deportation in Canada and Australia through three vital lenses – legislative action, judicial review and popular discourse – in order to examine how different aspects of national life interacted with Nikkei at a time of national crisis and reinterpretation. In short, this thesis sees the wartime treatment of Nikkei, particularly the deportations, as a historically important vantage point from which to view the racial nationalism of the first decades of the 20th century and the increasingly civic understandings iv

of each political community in the post-war era.

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Acknowledgements

I would not have started this thesis without Sally Cove and Grace Karskens, who supported and supervised my undergraduate work. The general direction of this work was suggested by Roger Bell, and sharpened by Sean Brawley’s wise suggestions.

However, I am most in debt to my supervisor Lisa Ford, who has been a generous and rigorous reader and mentor to me. Her knowledge, patience, and management taught me much about the discipline of history, and how I could interact with it.

I am also grateful to the UNSW School of History and Philosophy, and in particular to Sally Pearson, Paul Brown, Kama Maclean, Tony Corones and Peter

Schrijvers for assistance and encouragement at various stages of my candidature. Helen and John Milful, Stephen Parnaby, Agnes Heah, and the team in the Faculty Office have been a wonderful support. Yuriko Nagata, Mark Finnane, John Myrtle and Helen Harris unselfishly shared their skills and knowledge with me, to my great appreciation.

The School of History and Philosophy generously made possible research trips to

Ottawa and . Everyone at the Library and Archives, Canada, but particularly

Alix McEwen, Don Carter, Gabrielle Nishiguchi and George de Zwaan went above and beyond the call of duty. The staff from the National Archives of Australia in and Canberra, the National Library of Australia, the State Library, Fisher Library, the

Japan Foundation Library, and the research and Law Libraries at UNSW offered invaluable advice and assistance. My local libraries were the repositories of both knowledge and resources that did not exist elsewhere. Marrickville has been a wonderful place to work, and Kogarah nearly the equal of its football team.

Thank you to my families, Chris, Jocelyn and Neph Wake for their love and support throughout this process; and Maria O’Neill, Teri Haid, Caroline Haid and vi

Andrew Messer for hanging in there. I am especially grateful to Sarah Haid who, with the assistance of Campbell McKay, spent many nights editing after work.

Finally, thank you to my partner, Caroline Wake, for leading the way in ways too numerous to mention. Her constant belief sustained this project through good times and challenges to its successful end.

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Table of Contents

Introduction...... 1 Definitions and justifications: Nikkei and citizenship...... 5 Situating the thesis within Nikkei, citizenship and comparative historiography ...... 16 Structure and material...... 29 Conclusion...... 32 Chapter 1. Developing the outside within: residence and alienage before the war 35 Immigration policies and nation building...... 38 Anti-Chinese legislation ...... 42 The rise of Japan and the racialisation of restriction...... 48 Restrictions, concessions and the development of Nikkei communities...... 51 Internal exclusion ...... 60 Australian Nikkei...... 65 Canadian Nikkei ...... 71 Conclusion...... 76 Chapter 2. Legislating for the “repatriation” of the Nikkei...... 79 Introduction ...... 79 Canada ...... 82 Emergency legislation and early war action...... 82 Discrimination, intelligence and Canadian Nikkei...... 85 1941-42: The disruption and displacement of Nikkei life and community...... 90 1943-44: The idea of “repatriation” ...... 98 1944-45: American policy divergence and loyalty tests ...... 101 1946: Deportation and the meaning of citizenship...... 107 Australia...... 111 Emergency legislation and early war action...... 112 Discrimination, intelligence and Australian Nikkei ...... 115 1941-45: Australian Nikkei and universal internment ...... 119 General internment policy developments...... 123 1945-46: Deportation policy and the post-war position of Nikkei in Australia ...... 125 Conclusion...... 135 Chapter 3. The role of law in deportations and citizenship ...... 137 Canada ...... 141 The sale of Nikkei property and the struggle for judicial review...... 142 The Exchequer Court...... 146 Repatriation or exile, the Supreme Court and the dilution of executive power ...... 149 Privy Council review, executive vindication and the evolution of citizenship ...... 157 Australia...... 161 Aliens Tribunals ...... 163 The executive control of challenges ...... 170 Direct Ministerial contacts ...... 173 Kojiro Katsumata and the executive’s fear of the judiciary ...... 177 The Simpson Commission: Cases, recommendations, outcomes ...... 183 Conclusion...... 188 Chapter 4. Public campaigns, press and normative citizenship ...... 189 The “public sphere” and sources ...... 192 Canada ...... 194 viii

1941-44: The establishment of a national Nikkei presence...... 194 1944-45: Deportation policy, citizenship and mass resistance...... 202 1946 onwards: “Repatriation” vs. citizenship ...... 208 Australia...... 215 The public marginalisation of Australian Nikkei ...... 217 1944-45: The absence of Nikkei voices ...... 222 Cursory public examination of the outcomes of racial nationalism ...... 225 1946: Signs of a repressed discourse in defence of Nikkei ...... 228 Conclusion ...... 236 Chapter 5. Post-war Citizenship reform and the influence of Nikkei...... 240 The international argument for Citizenship reform...... 242 Nationality, Britishness and the Canadian break...... 244 The Citizenship legislation ...... 248 New Citizenship and everyday life...... 254 Conclusion...... 265 Conclusion...... 268 Bibliography ...... 276

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List of Abbreviations

A.L.P. Australian Labor Party B.C.S.C. British Columbia Security Commission C.C.F. Cooperative Commonwealth Federation C.C.J.C. Cooperative Committee on Japanese C.E.D.T. Certificate of Exemption from Dictation Test C.P.R. Canadian Pacific Railway J.C.C.A. Japanese Canadian Citizens Association L.A.C. Library and Archives, Canada N.A.A. National Archives of Australia P.C. Privy Council P.W.J.M. Prisoner of War, Japanese Merchant Seaman R.C.M.P. Royal Canadian Mounted Police 1

Introduction

But in the end, elimination of the unpalatable (from a liberal perspective) exclusionary commitments through ejection to the community’s geographic edges is simply not possible: exclusionary national boundaries are with us on the territorial inside as well. —Linda Bosniak1

They were both foreigners, Australian born, perhaps, but still with the black and antique seal of their ancestry upon them. —Ruth Park2

Ruth Park’s classic Australian novel The Harp in the South follows the lives of a working class family in mid-20th century Surry Hills, Sydney. First published in 1948, it presents a sympathetic portrait of a time and place that is worlds away from the gentrified, multicultural suburb that currently sits on the edge of Sydney’s CBD.3 Park’s passing mention of Australian born foreigners is telling of the way that national community membership was perceived before Australia’s multicultural turn.

Normatively foreign characters exist in the novel – the Chinese grocer Lick Jimmy, the

Jewish shopkeeper Joseph Mendel and his nephew Tommy, Mr Gunnarson, who “spoke with an accent that puzzled everybody”, and Charlie Rothe who “had a bit of tar in him”

– but they are marginal actors whose differences notably set them apart.4 This characterisation is a reflection of the pre-war identity that Australia shared with its fellow Dominions, infused with utopian historical and racial ideas.5 Residents who did

1 Linda Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 140. 2 Ruth Park, The Harp in the South (Vic: Penguin Books, 2009), 94-95. 3 Christopher Keating, Surry Hills: The City’s Backyard (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1992). 4 Park, The Harp in the South, 142, 163. 5 Jordens, Kelley, Trebilcock and Hawkins discuss Britain’s prestige and importance to Australian and Canadian national identity in the 19th and 20th centuries. Ann-Mari Jordens, “Promoting Australian Citizenship 1949-71,” Administration, Compliance and Governability Program Working Paper No. 22 (Australian National University, 1994); Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 107- 08; Freda Hawkins, Critical Years in Immigration: Canada and Australia Compared (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1989), 23. 2

not appear to be “white” and “British” at this time, even if they possessed other

“citizenship” qualifications (including natural-born status) retained a “foreign seal,” and were seen as less than full members of their national communities.

In 1941, the Australian and Canadian demographics broadly supported these perceptions. Canada had a population of 11.5 million people, and Australia, just over seven million.6 Australia’s first post-war Census measured its non-European population, other than Aboriginal and , at 0.25 percent, and about 90 percent of all were of Anglo-Celtic background.7 Canada’s European population was more diverse than Australia’s, largely due to its French speaking minority, but non-

Europeans also accounted for less than 0.25 percent of the total.8 These narrow ethnic demographics were built on long embraced immigration restrictions, and reinforced by exclusionary social policies that discouraged non-European migrants from becoming permanent settlers.

Notwithstanding the difficulties that they encountered, small communities of non-Europeans did live and work within Canada and Australia in the first part of the

20th century. This dissertation examines the history of Canadian and Australian residents of Japanese ancestry (or Nikkei), and the way that their presence and absence

6 In 1941, Canada’s national population was 11,506,655 and Australia’s population was 7,143,535. Figures from the 1941 Canadian Census, quoted in the Canada Yearbook 1957-58 (Ottawa: Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1958), 137 and the Commonwealth of Australia, Official Yearbook of the Commonwealth of Australia No. 37 (1946/7), 704. 7 Census figures quoted in James Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 9; Anglo figure from Charles A. Price, “Ethnic Groups in Australia,” in The Challenge of Diversity: Policy Options for a Multicultural Australia, ed. James Jupp, 6-19 (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1989). 8 Canada’s 1941 Census counted 5,715,904 British, 5,526,964 Other Europeans, 74,064 Asians and 189,723 Others (which included Natives, Negros and Others). From Canada Yearbook, 137. Canada’s “Other European” population consisted of a majority of its French speaking population, but also about two million people from other parts of Europe, many of whom migrated in the years between 1896 and 1914. This period is discussed in Kelley and Trebilcock, Making of the Mosaic, 111-163; Hawkins examines the role of Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior in the Laurier Government, in driving this liberalising boom between 1896 and 1905 in Hawkins, Critical Years in Immigration, 5-8. 3

aided in the articulation of national boundaries through the century’s first decades.9

Nikkei were granted entry into each state in the name of labour requirements and by diplomatic concessions, but were unable to vote, become naturalised (in Australia), or engage with the wider political communities as full or equal members. They existed as denizens, tolerable enough to maintain their troubled places within each nation, but unacceptable as “citizens” within the racial-national conceptual bounds being developed.

By 1941, there were 23,202 Nikkei in Canada and 1,139 in Australia.10 Most

Canadian Nikkei were born and educated in Canada, and a significant minority of

Australian Nikkei were either Australian born, long-term residents of Australia, or married to Australians. These individuals would satisfy contemporary requirements of

Canadian and Australian nationality, but the convergence of race and nation meant that absent the ability to stop being Asian, they could not satisfy those requirements in either pre-war nation. When Japan attacked Hong Kong and Pearl Harbor in early December

1941, the logic by which Nikkei were excluded from the formal national communities for decades allowed both Canada and Australia to act against them as internal foreigners in the name of national security.

A series of anti-Japanese measures, including mass internments, displacements, and the seizure of property culminated, in 1946, in the “repatriation” to Japan of about

821 of Australia’s Nikkei community, and 3,964 Canadian Nikkei.11 The deportations

9 Nikkei is a complex Japanese term, broadly referring to individuals of Japanese background or ethnicity who are not living in Japan. An extended definition and justification of the use of “Nikkei” is below. 10 Figures from Canada, Report on the Re-Establishment of Japanese in Canada, 1944-1946 (Ottawa: Department of Labour, 1947), 27; “Department of Defence Minute Paper” (July 28, 1941), Japanese Internment File Part 1, National Archives of Australia, MP729/6, 65/401/135. These populations and the accounting for them are further examined below. 11 Canada officially “repatriated” 3,964 Nikkei and I estimate that Australia deported 821 Nikkei at the end of the war. Australian figures are difficult to confirm because of the different way that “Japanese” were classified and transported (as ex-local or foreign, and as civilians, P.W.J.M.s, P.O.W.s, etc.,) and the different figures that are quoted in the archival records. I arrive at 821 by starting with the figure of 958 local internees that Australia claimed to be holding at the end of the war, then subtracting the 156 that the 4

and surrounding events were pivotal moments in citizenship development in both nations’ histories. They marked a point in time when the inconsistencies in pre-war notions of liberal citizenship were exposed, and resolutions to ideological incoherence were required through citizenship reform. The treatment of Nikkei before, during, and immediately after the war illustrates the evolutions in notional citizenship that occurred during the 1940s, and sit at the heart of this thesis’ examinations.

The importance of the deportation of Nikkei has been long overshadowed in the national history of Canada, and has been all but ignored in Australia.12 This is both understandable and unfortunate. It is understandable that political discourses focussed on the shocking events of the war, rebuilding efforts, immigration booms and national developments in the immediate post-war period before the plight of two relatively miniscule, normatively “foreign” communities.13 However, in demonstrating the importance of the wartime and post-war experiences of Nikkei, this thesis suggests these episodes present as telling periods of both nations’ histories. In the context of emerging wartime discourses of human rights prompted by Nazi and Japanese atrocities, I argue that wartime anti-Nikkei policies are best understood as artefacts of a political moment which can be seen as the high point of Canada’s and Australia’s long

Attorney General’s minute of 11 July 1946 claims were withheld from initial deportation, then adding 19 who were later deported. Figures from “Repatriation of Japanese Nationals” (February 17, 1947), Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1, National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72; “External Affairs memo” (November 15, 1945), Internees in Australia – Japanese – Repatriation, National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5; “Civilian Internees – Repatriation – Appointment of Mr. Justice Simpson as Commissioner to make recommendations thereon,” National Archives of Australia, A472, W29728 Parts 1 and 2; Canada, Report on the Re-Establishment of Japanese in Canada, 15. 12 The review below indicates how little has been written about Canadian and Australian Nikkei in the six decades since the deportations. I note that the place of Nikkei in Canadian history has been more forcefully asserted, particularly since the redress movement of the 1980s, but this thesis argues that the wartime experiences of Nikkei had a much greater influence on national and international developments in citizenship than has been acknowledged in much of the existing work, which focuses on social situations and history. 13 Canadian Nikkei made up 0.002 percent of the pre-war Canadian population, and Australian Nikkei 0.0002 percent of Australia. Based on Canada’s 1941 national population of 11,506,655, of which Nikkei made up 23,202, and Australia’s population of 7,143,535, of which 1,139 were Nikkei. National figures from the Canadian Census, 1941 and Australian Yearbook No 37. Nikkei populations taken from Canada, Report on the Re-Establishment of Japanese, 27; “Department of Defence Minute Paper” (July 28, 1941), Japanese Internment File Part 1, National Archives of Australia, MP729/6, 65/401/135. 5

embraced white policies from which they slowly retreated. Such a framework sees the deportation of Nikkei as a moment of importance, situated between the more overt racial nationalism of the first decades of the 20th century and the increasingly civic understandings of each political community in the post-war era.

Definitions and justifications: Nikkei and citizenship

This dissertation uses several terms and concepts which have been ascribed different meanings in various contexts. Among these are Nikkei and citizenship, both of which are central to the examinations conducted throughout the thesis and require a brief examination. I will begin with Nikkei, explaining why the “Japanese” communities are referred to in this way, and contextualising some of the political and intellectual decisions that its use implies. I note how the term has been defined elsewhere, where it is contestable, and pay particular emphasis to this thesis’ relatively original use of

Nikkei in an Australian context. I will then turn to citizenship, outlining its definition and use in this work, and how my theoretical application aids in examining the relationship between Nikkei and the wider Canadian and Australian nations. Along with the theoretical examinations, I will outline the size and formal legal statuses of the

Nikkei communities under consideration, in order to establish baseline empirical realities that these theories interact with throughout the dissertation.

Nikkei is a term used to describe Japanese emigrants and their descendents who are living or have lived outside of Japan.14 It has been used to encompass individuals

14 See Patricia E. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship: the Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2007), 15; Lane R. Hirabayashi, Akemi Kikumura-Yano and James A. Hirabayashi, eds., New Worlds, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002); Akemi Kikumura-Yano, ed., Encyclopedia of Japanese Descendants in the Americas: An Illustrated History of 6

with a range of formal citizenship statuses, across a range of unstable situations inadequately represented by formal non-Japanese terms. In the Canadian setting, Roy has noted the increasing tendency of scholars to use “Nikkei to refer to the collectively whether they be of the immigrant generation () or Canadian born (), Japanese nationals, or Canadian citizens.”15 The Japanese American

National Museum indicates that philosophically

[t]he term Nikkei has multiple and diverse meanings depending on situations, places, and environments… It is a symbolic, social, historical, and political construction. It involves a dynamic process of selection, reinterpretation, and synthesis of cultural elements set within the shifting and fluid contexts of contemporary realities and relationships.16

The examinations conducted herein suggest that Nikkei communities in early 20th century Canada and Australia were not really “Japanese”, “Canadian” or “Australian” in the full sense of any of these attributions. Many who were formally “Japanese” had not seen Japan for decades (if at all), and often those with formal claims to British subject status were denied full recognition as “citizens” within Canada and Australia.17 The use of the concept of Nikkei offers a way to explore the place that these individuals occupied in Canadian and Australian societies decoupled from historical, national or racial attributes that were inherently unstable and whose use was being reconsidered at the time.

In applying the concept of Nikkei, this thesis seeks to recast the national-racial assumptions which saw communities as naturally allied with Japan

Nikkei (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002); Nobuko Adachi, ed., Japanese Diasporas: Unsung pasts, conflicting presents and uncertain futures (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). 15 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 15. 16 Japanese American National Museum, “Discover Nikkei,” accessed November 12, 2010, www.discovernikkei.org. The project cites a transnational project encompassing over 100 scholars from ten countries as the basis for its definition. 17 By this I mean that even where Nikkei were acknowledged as Canadian or Australian, they were not full members of the political community able to exercise a franchise or otherwise engage in community life. This will be further examined in Chapter 1. 7

rather than the states in which they lived. It does not reject the importance of the different formal legal statuses, but while acknowledging that formal or perceived alienage often existed, it seeks to convey the shades of grey existent in many such situations. Nikkei were generally not hostile foreigners (even when they retained that formal status) but often British subjects, or long-term residents unable to become naturalised. This will be illustrated by the identification of the scope and statuses of the two communities below.

The conceptual application of the term Nikkei is not without complication, particularly in regards to the Australian community. Roy notes that Canadian scholars have increasingly used the term in reference to immigrant and post-immigrant generations, but the relatively sparse Australian scholarship in this field has not employed it similarly. Nagata’s groundbreaking Unwanted Aliens makes brief mention of the distinction between Issei and Nisei, but again neither term is widely applied across the literature.18 Most “Japanese” residents of Australia were Issei, or first generation immigrants, who were and are (legally) correctly referred to as Japanese by leading scholars in the field such as Nagata, Oliver, Meaney and Jones.19 Further, the small numbers of Australian Nikkei who remained beyond the war’s end did not self apply the term in the way that Canadians did. However, as the correspondence between some of these “Japanese” individuals and the Australian authorities during the war indicates, many had demonstrable connections with Australia that could not be adequately expressed by Australia’s formal and normative citizenship vocabulary at the time. This thesis’ attribution of Nikkei to Australian “Japanese” extends the framework

18 Yuriko Nagata, Unwanted Aliens: Japanese Internment in Australia (St Lucia: University of Press, 1996), 28-32. 19 See, for instance, ibid.; Pam Oliver, Empty North: The Japanese Presence and Australian Reactions, 1860s to 1942 (Darwin: Charles Darwin University, 2006); Neville Meaney, Towards a New Vision: Australia and Japan through 100 Years (NSW: Kangaroo Press, 1999); Noreen Jones, Number 2 Home: A Story of Japanese Pioneers in Australia (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2002). 8

used by Canadian scholars to the less developed Australian situation, and offers a sympathetic approach to a group long marginalised within national Australian history.

Addressing the empirical reality of the Nikkei communities around the war requires an acknowledgement that, notwithstanding the deficiencies in formal attributions or the fact that concepts of nationalism were in flux, different Nikkei still held a series of different formal statuses and claims to national membership through the 1940s. The

Canadian Government’s post-war report on its “Japanese” community states that of the

23,202 “Japanese in Canada” in 1941, 14,149 (or 58.7 percent) were Canadian born citizens, 3,159 (or 13.6 percent) were naturalised Canadians, and 5,924 (or 27.7 percent) were Japanese nationals.20 It also states that in 1947, 20,558 “Japanese” residents remained in the country, of whom 13,549 (65.9 percent) were Canadian born, 2,589

(12.6 percent) were naturalised Canadians and 4,420 (21.5 percent) were Japanese nationals.21 These figures are the official record of the size and formal status of Nikkei in Canada before and after the war which I use throughout this work.

A similar official account of the 1940s Nikkei community in Australia is more difficult to come by, both because of the paucity of official figures, and the tendency for such figures to differ where they do exist. In mid 1941, of Defence claimed to have prepared dossiers on all “Japanese” in Australia in preparation of internment operations, and accounted for 1,139 individuals.22 According to newspaper reports about 100 Japanese nationals then left Australia in August 1941, and a number of exceptions to the policy of universal internment have been documented.23

Immigration official Noel Lamidey subsequently claimed that 97 percent of all

20 Canada, Report on the Re-Establishment of Japanese, 27. 21 Ibid. 22 “Department of Defence Minute Paper” (July 28, 1941), Japanese Internment File Part 1, National Archives of Australia, MP729/6, 65/401/135. 23 Courier Mail, August 22, 1941, notes that 98 Japanese nationals were on the Kasima Maru heading to Japan; Nagata notes that Ichiko Takasuka, a well-regarded 65-year-old widow with a son in the AIF, Kazuko Fukushima, an Australian born boarder at school in , and Arthur Yamaguchi, a stockman from Burketown among the ethnic Japanese in Australia who were not interned: Unwanted Aliens, 56-58. 9

“Japanese” were interned for the duration of the war.24 Despite all this, the Army’s post- war review of internment operations claims that there were 1,141 “local Japanese” internees.25 These discrepancies were probably the result of the different information available to different departments, as well as the sort of unofficial exceptions illustrated by the cases of “Japanese” like Mario Takasuka and Arthur Yamaguchi who not only not avoided internment, but also enlisted in the Defence Forces despite a Military exclusion of non-Europeans.26 Australia’s approach to accounting for its “Japanese” was clearly somewhat fluid, and in the absence of an official population count, I will use Defence’s 1941 tally of 1,139 as Australia’s pre-war Nikkei population. Accounting for the official post-war Nikkei population of Australia is less problematic. In 1947 the

Australian Census counted 335 racial “Japanese” in the country, which is my post-war baseline figure.27

The exact formal statuses of Australian Nikkei are more difficult to establish again, on account of Australia’s ability to refuse formal acknowledgement of “citizenry” to racially undesirable residents in any number of ways.28 The Australian documents noted above merely establish Nikkei as “Japanese,” and are absent any mention of numbers of Australian born or naturalised. However, a review of several pieces of evidence leads to the estimate that about one-quarter of Australia’s pre-war Nikkei would have had a formal claim on British subject status, had Australia applied

24 Noel W. Lamidey, Aliens Control in Australia: 1939-46 (Sydney: N. Lamidey, 1974), 53. 25 “Report on the Directorate of Prisoners of War and Internees at Army Headquarters, . 1939- 1951,” National Archives of Australia, A7711, vol 1, 93 cites the figure 1,141. 26 Takasuka and Yamaguchi (and others) enlisted despite the policy of universal internment and Army regulations that excluded those “not substantially of European origin” from service. See Yuriko Nagata, “Certain Types of Aliens: The Japanese in Australia 1941-1952,” in Relationships: Japan and Australia, 1870s-1950s, ed. Vera Mackie and Paul Jones, 217-39 (Parkville, Vic: University of Melbourne, 2001), 227. 27 Table: “Population: Race, Australia, 1947 and 1954” in Official Yearbook of the Commonwealth of Australia No. 47 (1961), 316. 28 This is established in Chapter 1. Legislation such as the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 (Cth) and the Naturalization Act 1903 (Cth) explicitly denied the benefits of citizenship to non-whites, and a range of other legislation and regulation reinforced the active exclusion of these groups. 10

citizenship norms in a way similar to Canada.29 I arrive at this proportion by accepting

Nagata’s assertion that the 123 individuals among the post-war population who were not accounted for by wartime or post-war internment releases must have been “sons who were fighting for Australia or those not interned for various reasons.”30 Because of their special treatment, it is reasonable to assume that most of these individuals were acceptable members of the national community with birthright or other strong claims to national membership. To this number, I add 136 of the internees who were not deported at the war’s end (44 who were Australian born and 92 who had Australian spouses) and conclude that at least 259 post-war “Japanese” residents of Australia had some sort of claim on British subject status before the war.31 This number, which does not take into account the 69 wartime releases or the 230 deportees who the Director General of

Security noted had been resident in Australia for decades, indicates that there were many individuals with formal and normative connections to Australia that were ignored in official accounts.32

Formal statuses and other national connections did not necessarily alter perceptions of alienage in either nation. The fact that most Canadian Nikkei were recognised as British subjects, and most Australian Nikkei were not, did not affect

Australia’s desire to intern “all Japanese” in its territories when the war broke, or create exceptions within Canada’s restrictive legislation which was applied to all members of the “Japanese race.”33 These racial rather than national attributes served to designate a

29 That is to say, if Australia accepted birthright citizenship, the status of those married to Australians etc. This comparison is useful because citizenship norms were unstable and in a state of flux. Australia applied citizenship benefits unevenly and without transparency in many cases, and as assumption of clarity aids in establishing a baseline. 30 Nagata, “Certain Types of Aliens,” 226. 31 Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation, National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 32 Longfield Lloyd to Secretary of External Affairs (January 24, 1946), Internees in Australia – Japanese – Repatriation, National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 33 Australian policy from “War Cabinet minute no. 1029” (May 9, 1941) and “Memo to security commanders outlining policy” (May 26, 1941), both from Japanese Internment File Part 1, National 11

“foreignness” which was both reductive, and insufficient in accounting for the situations and loyalty of many individuals. Wartime Nikkei were liminal characters existing in nations which remained unable or unwilling to acknowledge them as members of their white British communities. The complex historical and political circumstances surrounding these communities is why I have chosen to refer to them as Nikkei – a dynamic, symbolic attribution able to sympathetically encompass a range of experience and circumstance – rather than the official national or racial descriptions so long applied in loaded political situations.

The national societies within which Nikkei lived before the war were perceived and constructed in ways foreign to contemporary multicultural Canada and Australia.

The structures and bounds of these societies will be examined with reference to theories of citizenship, themselves requiring brief examination on account of their diversity.

Reisman has noted that “[c]itizenship as a word is fraught with ambiguity,” and Joppke states that it “is a notoriously multivalent concept, with many meanings and applications.”34 A series of literatures continue to examine formal, substantive, and identity based notions of citizenship, in historical, political and sociological enquiry.35

This thesis uses two broadly accepted definitions – Citizenship as a hard, formal constitutional concept, and citizenship as a softer, sociological, concept – a division which roughly follows Kymlicka and Norman’s identification of “citizenship-as-legal-

Archives of Australia, MP729/6, 65/401/135; Canadian examples in Order-in-Council P.C. 9596 of December 7, 1941; Order-in-Council P.C. 9761 of December 16, 1941. All Orders-in-Council listed in Sources for the Study and Treatment of , rev. ed. (Library and Archives Canada: Ottawa, 1988); further information contained in RG2 Privy Council Office files by name. 34 David Reisman, Democracy and Exchange: Schumpeter, Galbraith, T.H. Marshall, Titmuss and Adam Smith (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2005), 174; Christian Joppke, Citizenship and Immigration (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010), 1. 35 Contemporary reviews in ibid.; Philip Cole, “‘Border Crossings’ – The Dimensions of Membership,” in Citizenship Acquisition and National Belonging: Migration, Membership and the Liberal Democratic State, ed. Gideon Calder, Philip Cole and Jonathan Seglow, 1-23 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010); Margaret R. Somers, Genealogies of Citizenship: Markets, Statelessness and the Right to Have Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 12

status” and “citizenship-as-desirable-activity.”36 It also accepts Somers’ assertion that notwithstanding the utility of such divisions, there exists a dialogue between such empirical and normative concepts which offers a fruitful terrain for study.37 In the context of this work, this dialogue is prominently examined through the interaction between pro-Nikkei agitation for citizenship rights and the formal developments of the post-war period. Nevertheless, dialogue implies separate identities, and the two broad concepts of citizenship are further examined below.

First, this thesis considers formal citizenship, which is defined in narrow terms as the legislative expression of national membership, primarily through the Citizenship

Acts of the late 1940s, and British subjecthood before this.38 Formal citizenship was officially given substance by associated legislation and regulation which outlined naturalisation and franchise provisions, as well as other goods bestowed on subjects by the state on account of national membership. But as will be illustrated in Chapter 1, pre- war formal citizenship was an interpretive and uneven concept. British subject status was applied differently in different dominions, and was associated with different rights and privileges depending on the desirability of the subject. Formal citizenship became more clearly articulated in the wake of the passage of Citizenship Acts by Canada in

1947 and Australia in 1949, and the existence of these acts illustrated the growing interest in, and importance of, citizenship to the wider national communities at the time.

Alongside formal citizenship, this thesis also considers notional concepts of community membership, examined in light of various interactions between states, subjects and groups, which formed popular understandings of Canadian and Australian

36 Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman, “Return of the Citizen: A Survey of Recent Work on Citizenship,” Ethics 104 (1994): 353. 37 Ibid.; Somers, Genealogies of Citizenship, 23. 38 Other legislative actions aided in the definition of and added substance to formal citizenship, particularly in the pre-war period, and these are noted in the body of the dissertation. For the clarity of the terminological definition at this stage, the focus here remains on the overarching Citizenship and British Nationality Acts. 13

“citizenry.” In circumstances where formal citizenship was often ill defined or unstable, theories of normative citizenship aid in assessing the strength of the claims that Nikkei made on community membership within both nations. The defining and enduringly influential work of T.H. Marshall is used as the basis for these examinations, indicating a range of actions and behaviours that serve as general requirements of modern citizenship, and were often satisfied by Nikkei. Along with Marshall, Bosniak’s more contemporary examination of the ethics of liberal citizenship is used in order to examine the ideological inconsistencies apparent at the conceptual margins of each national community.

T.H. Marshall’s 1949 publication “Citizenship and Social Class” is the basis for much of what has followed in the field of citizenship theory.39 Somers claims that it was

Marshall’s work which “established the very possibility of a sociology of citizenship and rights,” and contemporary work continues to respond to its ideas.40 At a time when national and international political developments began to focus more closely on the meaning and importance of citizenship, Marshall examined the development of the concept in modern Britain. He argued that an ideal substantive citizenship should embody a series of civil rights (the “freedom of speech, thought and faith”), political rights (“the right to participate in the exercise of political power”), and social rights

(“the right of a modicum of economic welfare [as well as] the right to share to the full in the social heritage and to live the life of a civilized being according to the standards prevailing in the society”).41 This theory gave a substance to citizenship divorced from top-down government attributions, and applied to the current examinations, it offers a

39 Geraint Parry, “Conclusion: Paths to Citizenship,” in The Frontiers of Citizenship, ed. Ursula Vogel and Michael Moran, 166-201 (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1991), 166-67; T.H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class and other essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950), 1-86. 40 Somers, Genealogies of Citizenship, 50; Extensive literature reviews and substantial analysis are contained in Kymlicka and Norman, “Return of the Citizen”; Linda Bosniak, “Universal Citizenship and the Problem of Alienage,” Northwestern University Law Review 94 (2000) and Parry, “Pathways to Citizenship,” 166-67. 41 Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, 10-11. 14

way to assess the position that Nikkei occupied in Canadian and Australian societies decoupled from formal status.

Applying Marshall’s broad concept of citizenship to the pre-war societies of

Canada and Australia illustrates the disconnection between formal status and the substantial practice of “citizenship.” Most Nikkei in Canada and some in Australia were

British subjects, but this formal status did not afford them the full rights of the modern citizen as imagined by Marshall. Underneath the façade of formal acceptance, undesirable subjects like Nikkei were clearly excluded from involvement in formal politics, and were not extended the same social opportunities available to more desirable subjects. Chapter 1 examines the cases of Tomey Homma and Jiro Muramatsu, who had their British subject status acknowledged in various Canadian, Australian and British courts, at the same time that they had their disenfranchisement reasserted.42 In light of

Marshall’s ideals of citizenship, prominent cases like these, as well as the group restrictions and exclusions that existed, illustrate the incomplete and inconsistent ways that formal citizenship was applied in pre-war Canada and Australia.

The work of Linda Bosniak aids in extending the critique begun with Marshall, within an ideological framework and an application of her ideas helps to examine structural issues within the developing nationalities.43 As demonstrated by Curthoys and

Lake, the racial-liberal nationalisms being perfected in the colonial dominions nurtured an internal tension in their twin desires for citizenship extension and the exclusion of unworthy subjects.44 It was at the borderline of these ideas that Nikkei existed in early

42 See Maryka Omatsu, Bittersweet Passage: Redress and the Japanese Canadian Experience (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1992), 58-60; Pam Oliver, “A Matter of Perspective: two Australian-Japanese families’ encounters with white Australia, 1888-1946,” in Unexpected Encounters: Neglected histories behind the Australia-Japan relationship, ed. Michael Ackland and Pam Oliver, 113-34 (Vic: Monash University Press, 2007), 119-26. 43 Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien; Bosniak, “Universal Citizenship,” 973; Linda Bosniak, “Citizenship Denationalized,” Indiana Journal of Global Law Studies 7 (2000). 44 See Ann Curthoys, “Liberalism and Exclusionism: A Prehistory of the ,” in Legacies of White Australia: Race, Culture and Nation, ed. Laksiri Jayasuriya, David Walker and Jan 15

20th century Canada and Australia as “outsiders within,” which is the domain of

Bosniak’s explorations. In developing a theoretical “citizenship of aliens,” Bosniak acknowledges the liberal state’s goals of universalism (the extension of rights to all) and particularism (the bounds within this can operate), but problematises these impulses by acknowledging their imperfection, and examining the real world experience of liminal subjects embodied by the category of alienage. She argues that once aliens have been admitted into the liberal state, and are living, working and otherwise exhibiting the behaviours of citizens, denying them a passage to citizenship is to “violate the fundamental moral commitments of democratic community life.”45

Bosniak’s nuanced examination of the tensions within liberal citizenship cast light on the struggle that Canada and Australia had in attempting to understand and accommodate Nikkei over a period of decades. The problematic status held by Nikkei and the tensions that this embodied were evident from the time of their first arrivals.

The small numbers of individuals who passed “through the great white walls” and established themselves in Canada and Australia courtesy of diplomatic concessions and economic engagement were never granted the full benefits of citizenship.46 They retained various elements of normative and/or formal alienage through the pre-war decades, and were eventually identified as a wartime threat on account of this. Their normative alienage was used as justification for the anti-Nikkei policies, and led to attempted resolutions of their “outsider within” status by way of the deportations and citizenship reform. By deporting those Nikkei that they could, and extending certain rights to those remaining, each state was seeking what Bosniak has identified as the

Gothard, 8-32 (Crawley: University of Press, 2003); Marilyn Lake, “Equality and Exclusion: The Racial Constitution of Colonial Liberalism,” Thesis Eleven 95 (2008). 45 Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien, 42. 46 This is Oliver’s phrase, via Marcus. Chapter 2 of Pam Oliver, Raids on Australia: 1942 and Japan’s Plans for Australia (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010) is entitled “Through the great white walls, 1901-22.” See also Charles A. Price, The Great White Walls Are Built: Restrictive Immigration to North America and Australasia 1836-1888 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1974). 16

liberal theorists’ “solution” to this ideological incoherence, with an extension of a

“hard-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside conception of citizenship.”47 In attempting to address the inconsistencies presented by the presence of Nikkei in this way, both nations were also acknowledging the ethically and structurally insufficient concepts of citizenship they had employed before the war.48

In an era when formal citizenship was ill defined and articulated in various ways, theoretical approaches offer a framework through which to critique the actions of both Governments and nations. Marshall and Bosniak’s theories inform this thesis’ analyses of the substance and ethics of citizenship in 20th century Canada and

Australia, as applied to the Nikkei populations of those states. Along with the formal

Citizenship defined in official legislative action, and considered throughout this thesis, these normative concepts broaden the scope of the examinations, and more clearly illustrate the importance of Nikkei and their treatment to the development of citizenship in the post-war period.

Situating the thesis within Nikkei, citizenship and comparative historiography

By way of situating this dissertation I will conduct an initial review of work in the fields of Nikkei history, citizenship, and comparative theory, illustrating the traditions that this work draws on and the contributions it makes. This will be augmented by a section within Chapter 1 reviewing the historiography of the white policies in each state. This

47 Attempts to balance universalist and particularist impulses along these lines in Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien, 124-26; See also Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 57; Mae Ngai, “Birthright Citizenship and the Alien Citizen,” Fordham Law Review 75 (2007): 2,521. 48 Attempts to balance universalist and particularist impulses with extensions of “hard-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside conception[s] of citizenship” are identified by Bosniak and Ngai. See Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien, 124-26; See also Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 57; Ngai, “Birthright Citizenship and the Alien Citizen,” 2,521. 17

separation is made for reasons of coherence, and the development of the historical events which parallel the evolving argument outlined in Chapter 1.

The historical works dealing with the wartime experiences of Canadian and

Australian Nikkei reflect the different political and social developments in each post- war nation. The Canadian field is more developed and ideologically progressive, often written by, or drawing upon the experiences of an enduring intergenerational Nikkei community, and linked to the redress movement of the 1980s. The Australian field is more youthful and exploratory, lacking the sort of community and political connections that existed in post-war Canada, and with notable exceptions, it relies largely on archival rather than personal sources.

This relative age and development of the two fields is reflected in the fact that

American sociologist La Violette published his important record of The Canadian

Japanese and World War II in 1948, while it was not until 1996 that Nagata produced the closest thing to an Australian equivalent with her work, Unwanted Aliens.49 D.C.S.

Sissons had published on Japanese-Australia relations and interactions prior to Nagata, but his work focussed on an earlier period, and did not deal with Nikkei and the wartime experience. Nagata herself produced two articles on the internment of “Japanese” in the late 1980s, but it was not until the mid-1990s that she had access to the archival material, and had conducted the extensive interview process, that allowed her to document the Australian events to an extent comparable with La Violette’s work of half a century earlier.50

49 Forrest E. La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II: A Sociological and Psychological Account (Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1948); Nagata, Unwanted Aliens; La Violette also published policy updates during and immediately after the war, for instance Forrest E. La Violette, “Two Years of Japanese Evacuation in Canada,” Far Eastern Survey 13(11) (May 31, 1944); Forrest E. La Violette, “The Canadian Japanese,” Far Eastern Survey 17(8) (April 21, 1948). 50 Yuriko Nagata, “Repatriating Japanese internees,” Journal of the Australian War Memorial 15 (1989); Yuriko Nagata, “Japanese Internees at Loveday, 1941-46,” Journal of Historical Society of South Australia 15 (1987). 18

The gap in the publication dates obviously meant that the two books drew on different source bases, which itself is telling of different historical situations. La

Violette largely relied on contemporaneous materials like press reports to create what is in many respects itself a primary source, useful in gauging the way that the Nikkei community and citizenship were perceived at the time. Nagata lacked similar materials

(Chapter 4 examines Australia’s censorship and its affect on wartime public reports of

Nikkei), but she did have access to sensitive political and archival sources released in the decades after the events in question. Both of these works are first generation productions in the fields of Canadian and Australian wartime Japanese/Nikkei history, and their respective times of publication means that Canadian scholarship has had several decades to develop a historiography that Australia has not.

Nikkei advocacy in Canada continued in the wake of the war, and in 1958 the

Japanese Canadian Citizens Association (J.C.C.A.) commissioned Ken Adachi to produce what Roy cites as “still the definitive history of the Japanese in Canada”.51

Research and funding complications delayed the publication of The Enemy That Never

Was until 1976, but its publication marked the beginning of a short prolific period, in which Ward and Sunahara are among those who published works which retain enduring importance to Canadian Nikkei history. Adachi’s work examines the Nikkei experience in Canada from the 19th century arrivals of Japanese emigrants, and it draws on interviews, memoirs and official publications as its source base, adding significant detail to the popular understanding of the Nikkei experience in Canada.52 In 1978, Barry

Broadfoot’s Years of Sorrow, Years of Shame used an oral history approach to further

51 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 11. 52 Ken Adachi, The Enemy that Never Was: A History of Japanese Canadians (Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1976). 19

add to the experiential understanding of Nikkei history.53 Broadfoot introduced each chapter, but then allowed individuals’ accounts to stand on their own, offering little scaffolding to either confuse or clarify and analyse the accounts.

In 1981, Sunahara produced one of the first accounts of the wartime policies able to draw on newly released archival material, and she conducted a critical analysis of the role that the Canadian Government and racial ideologies played in the wartime and post-war period. The Politics of Racism used government documents and memos to demonstrate that racial discrimination and political calculations drove leading figures in the anti-Nikkei movement, and were influential in many important decisions taken by the Federal government.54 Sunahara’s work was socially important, drawing attention to the unresolved trauma that many Nikkei experienced, and was subsequently used by the

J.C.C.A. in its agitation for redress in the 1980s.55

W. Peter Ward’s White Canada Forever, first published in 1978, and last updated in 2002, examines the longer term history of anti-Asianism in British

Columbia, stretching back to the formative years in the Province, and providing valuable context for this work.56 Looking at three waves of Asian migration (Chinese,

Indian and Japanese), he argues that the “social psychology of race relations” was a more important factor than rationalised economic grievances in the development of an exclusionary political culture which rejected non-whites. He demonstrates the importance of anti-Asian racism to the development of both British Columbian and

Canadian polities and identities.

53 Barry Broadfoot, Years of Sorrow, Years of Shame: The Story of Japanese Canadians in World War II (Toronto: Doubleday, 1977). 54 Ann Gomer Sunahara, The Politics of Racism: The Uprooting of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War (Toronto: James Lorimer and Co., 1981). 55 Sunahara’s introduction notes that comparisons had been made between the treatment of Nikkei and rape victims, where for a long time “they responded with silence, with an aversion to discussing their experiences.” Ibid., 1. 56 W. Peter Ward, White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy Towards Orientals in British Columbia, 3rd ed. (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002). 20

Finally, Roy offers a similar critique to Ward in a trilogy of historical works which deal with different stages of British Columbia’s history, and focus in the end on how wartime action reshaped citizenship in Canada. A White Man’s Province (1990),

The Oriental Question (2003) and particularly The Triumph of Citizenship (2007), inform this work’s understanding of many of the dynamics of the “Oriental” experience in British Columbia.57 The Triumph of Citizenship, in continuing its examination through the immediate post-war decades, indicates how the extension of rights to

“Japanese” and “Chinese” Canadians transformed the reality of citizenship, and encouraged a wider reimagination of the Canadian nation.

These works represent over half a century of major historiographical developments in the field of Canadian Japanese/Nikkei history that this dissertation draws upon. Each work illustrates the influence that the traumatic wartime events had on the Canadian nation as they were reviewed and reinterpreted at different stages of national history. The early accounts presented Nikkei as an immigrant population like many of the others that came to Canada and became part of the nation, aiding in the process of normalisation within the newly acknowledged multicultural mosaic of the

1970s. Sunahara’s work politicised the discourse, highlighting the unjust treatment of

Nikkei during the war, and the insufficient notional citizenship that allowed this. Ward and particularly Roy have offered accounts with the breadth and depth to present and analyse the histories of Nikkei in parallel to the developing political systems, indicating the important dynamic relationships between the two.

This dissertation builds upon this historiography through its comparison of the

Canadian events with the less examined Australian situation. This comparison will

57 Patricia E. Roy, A White Man’s Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1858–1914 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1990); Patricia E. Roy, The Oriental Question: Consolidating a White Man’s Province 1914-1941 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003); Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship. 21

indicate that despite the many justified criticisms of the Canadian Government, society, and political system, the Canadian developments present well and retain an enduring importance within a comparative framework. Canada’s “triumph of citizenship” rippled across the Anglophone world, and was of constitutive importance to the redefinition of citizenship in Australia. My examinations also suggest that Australian politics was influenced by accounts from Canada in subtle but important ways in the lead up to the deportations. The different decisions taken and outcomes achieved in Australia, along with its interpretations of citizenship, indicate the importance of Canada’s actions in the embryonic stages of an increasingly internationalist world.

There are obvious reasons for the differences between the quantity and historiographical development of work on Canadian and Australian Nikkei. The

Australian post-war Nikkei community of 335 did not have the size or political organisation that Canadian Nikkei did, and according to Nagata, “most of those who remained in Australia kept silent about their wartime experiences and their racial origins,” owing to the ongoing anti-Japanese hostility.58 This meant that the social developments like the advocacy and redress movements which drove an expanding literature in Canada over the decades were non-existent in Australia. The majority of the

Australian work cited below has been produced within the previous two decades, and much important work, including Oliver’s output, and Jones’ Number 2 Home have only been published in the past few years.59 These works did not emerge without context, however, and the following review draws not only on the wartime, internment and deportation experiences of Japanese and Nikkei in Australia, but also more generally conceived migration and internment histories.

58 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 236. 59 Oliver’s work, including the 2010 monograph Raids on Australia are examined below. Number 2 Home was published in 2002. 22

Nagata’s Unwanted Aliens and a series of subsequent articles she has produced examining various aspects of Nikkei life have been vital to the study of the internment of “Japanese” civilians in Australia.60 Through archival research and extensive interviews conducted with some of the last living ex-internees in Australia and Japan,

Nagata’s work has been invaluable because of its reconstruction of what had previously been an obscured episode in Australia’s wartime history. Works like “‘A Little Colony on Our Own’: Life in Detention Camps in Australia in World War Two,” and “Lost in space: ethnicity and identity of Japanese-Australians, 1945 to the 1960s” examine life in the camps and the immediate post-war circumstances of Nikkei, and have established experiential baselines which have allowed the sort of comparative analysis conducted in this thesis.61 Unwanted Aliens and several of the cited articles illustrate that at critical moments in the period under examination, Nikkei were not the monolithic or hostile

“foreign” presence that Australia’s actions assumed them to be. Rather they were a collection of individuals forming complex immigrant and post-immigrant communities which did not sit comfortably within formal concepts of citizenship at the time.

Preceding Nagata’s work, at around the same time as Adachi and Broadfoot were giving voice to the wartime experiences of Canadian Nikkei, D.C.S. Sissons largely drew on archival sources to present some of the first recreations of early

Japanese communities in Australia. He noted the transitory nature of much early migration, and the experiences of Japanese in various places and professions, including

60 In addition to Unwanted Aliens, this thesis draws on Nagata, “Certain Types of Aliens”; Yuriko Nagata, “The Japanese in Torres Strait,” in Navigating Boundaries: The Asian Diaspora in Torres Strait, ed. Anna Shnukal, Guy Ramsay and Yuriko Nagata, 138-59 (Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2004); Yuriko Nagata, “Lost in space: ethnicity and identity of Japanese-Australians, 1945 to the 1960s,” in Changing histories: Australia and Japan, ed. P. Jones and Pam Oliver, 85-90 (Clayton: Monash University Press, 2001); Yuriko Nagata, “Naïve Patriotism: the internment of Moshi Inagaki in Australia during the Second World War,” in Under Suspicion: Citizenship and Internment in Australia during the Second World War, ed. Joan Beaumont, Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien and Mathew Trinca, 112-24 (Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2008); Yuriko Nagata, “‘A Little Colony on Our Own’: Life in Detention Camps in Australia in World War Two,” in Alien Justice: Wartime Internment in Australia and North America, ed. Kay Saunders and Roger Daniels, 185-204 (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2000). 61 Nagata, “A Little Colony on Our Own”; Nagata, “Lost in space.” 23

pearling and prostitution.62 Sissons illustrated that some degree of interaction existed in a variety of settings, and for a long period, before the deportations were carried out.

Decades before the popularisation of this theme, Sissons began to complicate the idea that history of Japanese-Australian relations was one of exceptions, and suggested that these interactions may have an importance not widely understood.63

Jones and Oliver have thematically continued the work of Sissons and Nagata, drawing on both interviews and archival material to expand the social historiography of

Japanese migrant and post-migrant communities in Australia. Jones has written of community interactions in a variety of previously unrecorded industries and situations in Western Australia, illustrating that populist ideas about “prostitutes, pimps and pearlers” are unjustly narrow.64 She argues that the pre-war history of “Japanese” in

Australia should be seen in terms of a pioneering immigrant community of central importance to national development. Oliver focuses her examinations on Australia’s east coast, and the business and social interactions in Sydney, in addition to the more widely examined terrain in Australia’s north. 65 She demonstrates that although there

62 For example D.C.S. Sissons, Australian-Japanese Relations: the first phase, 1859-1891 (Canberra: Australian National University, 1971); D.C.S. Sissons, “The Japanese in the Australian Pearling Industry,” Queensland Heritage 3(10) (1979); D.C.S. Sissons, “Karayuki-san: Japanese prostitutes in Australia,” Historical Studies 17 (1977). 63 Two nuanced and sympathetic texts released in the 1960s which problematised the white Australia policy indicate the lack of presence that “Japanese” as human individuals had in Australian discourse at the time. London’s Non-White Immigration of 1964 mentions in passing that between the wars, Broome had a large Japanese population, but “relations between non-Europeans and Australians were notably harmonious” (at 57). Other than this, “Japan” appears mainly throughout the book as a structural figure influencing the construction of the white Australia policy, rather than the national home of potential migrants. Yarwood’s Attitudes to Non-European Immigration is a volume of documents whose Japanese section looks at attitudes towards actual and possible interactions and the strategic policy implementations of these (at 102-23). See H.I. London, Non-White Immigration and the “White Australia” Policy (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1970); A.T. Yarwood, Attitudes to Non-European Immigration (North Melbourne, Vic: Cassell Australia Ltd, 1968). 64 Jones, Number 2 Home. 65 Oliver’s work includes Oliver, Raids on Australia; Pam Oliver, “Who Is One of Us? (Re)discovering the Inside-out of Australia's Japanese Immigrant Communities, 1901-1957,” Japanese Studies 22 (2002); Pam Oliver, “Citizens without certificates or enemy aliens? Japanese residents before 1947,” in Under Suspicion, ed. Beaumont, Martinuzzi O’Brien and Trinca, 125-41; Pam Oliver, “Japanese Relationships in White Australia: The Sydney Experience to 1941,” History Australia 4 (2007), accessed October 20, 2010, http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/pdf/10.2104/ha070005; Oliver, “A Matter of Perspective.” 24

was an amorphous fear of “Japan” in the Australian community which ebbed and flowed from the late 19th century to the beginning of the war, white Australians accepted and interacted with the “Japanese” who travelled in their own circles in a series of financial and personal relationships from marriage to work and study.66 One theme running throughout Oliver’s work is her conclusion that “despite the ambiguities of the law, Japanese in Australia were regarded as ‘good citizens’ by neighbours, business associates and many bureaucrats between 1901 and 1941.”67

Nagata, Sissons, Jones and Oliver all illustrate the extent to which the

“Japanese” in Australia existed in the very societies that the formal politics of the time, and popular myth since, has assumed them to be incompatible with. Where this dissertation builds upon Australian-Japanese history is again in the political realm, again thanks to its comparative structure. The above-mentioned works suggest that the place that “Japanese” migrants and their descendents occupied in historical Australian societies was more complex than formal (and certainly popular) accounts have often acknowledged, and this thesis’ application of the Canadian frame of “Nikkei” offers new analytical tools with which to examine these realities. It conceptualises the subjects at the centre of a significantly important but under-examined episode in Australian history in a way that previous accounts have not. As already noted, it also acknowledges the importance of Canadian reform to the Australian situation.

In both Canada and Australia, Nikkei were not the only groups to face mass discrimination. Canada interned 2,500 mainly Germans and Italians suspected of being

Nazis, Fascists and Communists.68 The abuses in this process are examined elsewhere, and most of these individuals were released in 1942 and 1943 after a series of Allied

66 Several exceptional cases are noted in Chapter 1. 67 Oliver, “Citizens without certificates or enemy aliens?” 125. 68 Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 279-281. 25

military victories in Europe.69 Australia, despite having much smaller communities of

Germans and Italians than Canada, interned almost 7,000 ex-Germans and Italians, in addition to overseas internees of various locations and backgrounds.70 The more substantial internment operations in Australia have been the subject of examinations which guide this work’s understanding of Australian internment policy in a general sense. Bevege, Beaumont, Neumann and Saunders have variously written of the ideological aspects of internment policies generally; O’Brien and Keohane have examined how European enemy aliens were treated in Australia; and Fischer’s work offers the context in the cases of German internment in World War I.71 All of these accounts acknowledge the heightened racial and ethnic elements within conceptions of

Australian nationalism at times of national emergency. They also illuminate just how exceptional the universal treatment of Nikkei was, compared to the internments of less than one percent of ex-European Canadians, and even the approximately 30 percent of ex-.72

Recent political theory has examined the similarity between the wartime treatment of “Japanese” residents and contemporary paradoxes of liberal citizenship,

69 Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 279-81 70 Australia held 4,754 “local Italian internees” and 2,013 “local Germans” according to “Report on the Directorate of Prisoners of War and Internees at Army Headquarters, Melbourne. 1939-1951,” National Archives of Australia, A7711, vol. 1, 91. 71 Margaret Bevege, Behind Barbed Wire: Internment in Australia During World War Two (St Lucia: Queensland University Press, 1993); Beaumont, Martinuzzi O’Brien and Trinca, eds., Under Suspicion; Klaus Neumann, In the Interest of National Security: Civilian Internment in Australia During World War Two (Canberra: National Archives of Australia, 2006); Kay Saunders, “A Difficult Reconciliation: Civil Liberties and Internment Policy in Australia During World War Two,” in Alien Justice, ed. Saunders and Daniels, 114-137; Kay Saunders and Helen Taylor, “The Enemy Within? The Process of Internment of Enemy Aliens in Queensland 1939-45,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 34 (1998); Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien, “Ubi bene, ibi patria: the Second World War and citizenship in a country town,” in Under Suspicion, ed. Beaumont, Martinuzzi O’Brien and Trinca, 16-34; Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien, “Internments in Australia During World War Two: Life Histories of Citizenship and Exclusion,” in Enemy Aliens: The Internment of Italian Migrants during the Second World War, ed. Cate Elkner et al., 15-34 (Bacchus Marsh: Connor Court Publishing, 2005); Samuel Keohane, “Refusing to leave: perceptions of German national identity during internment in Australia, 1941-45,” in Under Suspicion, ed. Beaumont, Martinuzzi O’Brien and Trinca, 67-83; Gerhard Fischer, Enemy Aliens: Internment and the Homefront Experience in Australia 1914-1920 (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1989); Gerhard Fischer, “Integration, ‘Negative Integration’, Disintegration: The Destruction of the German Australian Community During the First World War,” in Alien Justice, ed. Saunders and Daniels, 1-27. 72 Lamidey, Aliens Control in Australia, 53. 26

which have been borrowed by this dissertation for context and theoretical approach.

Mae Ngai has illustrated the tensions in the ongoing existence of national outsiders in the “reality” but also the “legal impossibility” of the ‘“unassimilable” Chinese, “enemy- race” Japanese, Mexican “illegal aliens,” and Muslim “terrorists”’ in the Americas.73 In

Australia, Mary Crock has similarly looked at the concept of the national outsider, and questioned whether the existence of such outsiders, “inevitably contaminate[s] the basic principles of equal citizenship: inclusion and equality?”74 Friedman, Kennedy,

Neumann and Daniels are among those to have examined parallels between the behaviour of governments in the so-called “war on terror” and the anti-Japanese wartime policies, through their work on national security policies, real and abstract wars and an increased focus on immigration and border control around the world.75 These works reflect the fact that Anglophone nations are still struggling to deal with questions of their borders and liminal subjects, reflecting questions posed by Nikkei within

Canadian and Australian societies of the 1940s. These contemporary theoretical examinations suggest both the value and relevance of a re-examination of wartime and post-war societies for current politics.

This is a comparative examination of events in Canada and Australia. As such it contributes to a growing literature on Anglophone settler polities that routinely treat

Canada and Australia (with the United States and New Zealand) as a unit of analysis, borrowing methods and ideas from several important accounts. Price’s study into the early formative causes of white societies in each continent, Hawkins’ work focussing

73 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 57; Ngai, “Birthright Citizenship and the Alien Citizen,” 252. 74 Mary Crock, “Defining Strangers: Human Rights, Immigrants and the Foundations of a Just Society,” Melbourne University Law Review 31(3) (2007). 75 Max Paul Friedman, “Trading Civil Liberties for National Security: Warnings from a World War II Internment Program,” The Journal of Policy History 17 (2005); Ellen Clare Kennedy, “The Japanese- American Renunciants: Due Process and the Danger of Making Laws During Times of Fear,” Japanese Policy Research Institute Working Paper No. 110 (October 2006); Neumann, National Security; Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004). 27

largely on post-war immigration policy, and Brawley’s examination of national policies and international conferences between 1919 and 1978 all provide important comparative analyses of legislative and political developments.76 These long range histories focus on aspects of the two national and international developments that occurred in dialogue over a period stretching beyond the life of the white policies of Australia and Canada.

Inglis, Birch and Sherrington examine the centrality of immigration to national political developments in Canada and Australia in a way that suggests the two ex-British dominions-cum-multicultural nations present as ideal candidates for analysis.77

The examination of Canadian and Australian Nikkei, and the absence of the more remarked upon case of U.S. Nikkei in this thesis is a provocative but purposefully constructed comparison. The size of the U.S. Nikkei community and the extent of the literature in the field present a case for inclusion, and indeed thematic approaches used in U.S. examinations are useful guides to approaching Canada and Australia.78 This account is indebted to Lake and Reynolds’ powerfully dynamic account of the development of a world wide community of “white men’s countries” through a series of

76 Price, The Great White Walls Are Built; Hawkins, Critical Years in Immigration; Sean Brawley, The White Peril: Foreign Relations and Asian immigration to Australasia and North America 1919-1978 (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1995). 77 Christine Inglis, Anthony Birch and Geoffrey Sherington, “An Overview of Australian and Canadian Migration Patterns and Policies,” in Immigration and Refugee Policy: Australia and Canada Compared, vol. 1, ed. Howard Adelman et al., 3-30 (Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press, 1994). 78 United States scholarship preceded Canadian work and led a re-examination of Nikkei history. Early works include Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps USA: and World War II (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971); Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of American Concentration Camps (New York: William Morrow, 1976); Maisie Conrat, Executive Order 9066: the internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press for the California Historical Society, 1972). Hundreds of titles are listed in the Japanese American Museum’s select bibliography of Nikkei. Three recent publications on the situation of American Nikkei which have thematically influenced this thesis’ approach are Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History and Transnationalism in Japanese America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), which indicates the transnational experiences of U.S. Nikkei and the liminal way in which their existence was often imagined; Eric L. Muller, American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World War II (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007) which indicates the important role that the central Government played in presenting U.S. Nikkei as a nationally unsound presence and Emily Roxworthy, The Spectacle of Japanese American Trauma: Racial Performativity and World War II (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008) which examines the delayed and ongoing affects of wartime action. 28

inter-connected events in the Americas, Australia and beyond.79 It also borrows from

Daniels’ examination of the incarceration of Canadian and U.S. Nikkei, Markus’ documentation of the parallel development of white policies in Australia and the United

States in the 19th century, and Bangarth’s demonstration of the interaction between the two citizens rights movements in defence of Canadian and U.S. Nikkei.80 However, post-war political developments in America, while influential throughout the

Anglophone world, do not have direct relevance to the central arguments of this thesis.

The U.S., unlike Canada and Australia, was not a British nation, and its politics were not relevant to the ultimate reform of British subject status and Commonwealth

Citizenship. The pro-British discourses and legislation existent in pre-war Canada and

Australia, the fact that both these dominions followed Britain into war in 1939 and developed aliens policies years before the U.S. entered the war, and the fact that Canada and Australia attended conferences and created formal Citizenship in the immediate post-war period indicate that there is a certain symmetry in these national experiences that was not shared by the United States.

Finally, and in order to complete the circle, I note that it was at the theoretical suggestion of Fredrickson, Kocka and Grew that this work initially embarked on a comparison that excluded the United States, in order to de-exceptionalise its national influence.81 Once this decision was taken, Australian and Canadian case studies engaged in increasingly intense dialogue, which amplified the less examined Australian

79 Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Framing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the Question of Racial Equality (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2008). 80 Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps North America: Japanese in the United States and Canada During World War II (Malabar: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Co., 1981); Roger Daniels, “On the Comparative Study of Immigrant and Ethnic Groups in the New World: A Note,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 25(2) (1983); Andrew Markus, Fear and Hatred: Purifying Australia and California 1850-1901 (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1979). 81 George M. Fredrickson, “From Exceptionalism to Variability: Recent Developments in Cross-National Comparative History,” The Journal of American History 82(2) (1995); Jurgen Kocka, “Comparison and Beyond,” History and Theory 42 (2003): 39. Such an approach is also counselled Raymond Grew, “The Comparative weakness of American History,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 16 (1985). 29

cases, and contextualised the immensely important actions undertaken in Canada as an impetus for Commonwealth reform. The effects of this are illustrated particularly through Chapters 2 to 4, where curious events and important political decisions in

Australia are contextualised by Canadian action that was influential throughout the

British world. Removing the history of U.S. Nikkei from its central position as the exceptional case allowed the development of both of these themes in ways that otherwise would have been constrained or directed by its presence.

Structure and material

This dissertation develops its argument through five chapters that examine different aspects of the relationships between the Canadian and Australian nations and their

Nikkei populations. Chapters 1 and 5 of this dissertation provide historical context.

Chapter 1 presents an analysis of the pre-war development of racial-nationalism in

Canada and Australia in order to contextualise the position that “Japanese” subjects occupied within each nation. Chapter 5 examines post-war citizenship reform with respect to how the “foreignness” of Nikkei was accommodated and pre-war notions of citizenship were disturbed in the post-war period. Chapters 2 to 4 tell the story of deportation in Canada and Australia through three vital lenses – legislative action, judicial review and popular discourse – in order to examine how three different spheres of governance (broadly construed) interacted with Nikkei at a time of national crisis and reinterpretation.

Chapter 1 traces the longer term development of “white” policies in Australia and Canada. Extending the literature review conducted above, this chapter illustrates the normative perceptions of alienage that Asian residents encountered from their earliest 30

arrivals. Turning to Japanese and Nikkei, it demonstrates the evolution of a complex relationship, whereby individuals (and even the Japanese nation) were afforded a respect that at times was genuine and others fearful, and allowed Nikkei to assume unique positions within each national community. Although often perceived as “good citizens” in a variety of quotidian interactions, underlying notions of racial-nationalism prevented Nikkei from engaging as full and equal citizens in Canada or Australia. This chapter suggests that it was the inconsistencies and confusions nurtured throughout the pre-war period which encouraged each to seek resolution after the war.

The primary materials required in order to construct a trans-national comparison require brief explanation. The Library and Archives in Ottawa, Canada, and the

National Archives of Australia in Canberra were the major repositories accessed for federal government records, individuals’ papers and, in the case of Canada, press clippings as well. In Australia, the UNSW, State and Fisher libraries were also sources of political and press materials. These accounts were used in combination with formal political and legislative documents and records. Materials relevant to each section are briefly acknowledged at the beginning of each section. While locating much of this material was suggested by the direction that other secondary sources have taken, this work has also uncovered previously unaccessed files and cases (Kojiro Katsumata) and constructed comparisons in original ways.

Chapter 2 is the first of three chapters which draw on this primary material to examine the wartime anti-Nikkei policies which both Canada and Australia pursued. In extended parallel sections, this chapter examines the bodies of legislation and regulation passed by the respective War Cabinets that affected the situations of Canada and

Australia’s Nikkei communities, mandating their registration, internment, displacement, dispossession and deportation. It notes that Government Officials and documents 31

regularly cited concepts of citizenship that rejected the national claim of Nikkei in defence of their action. I argue that these formal actions present as philosophical extensions of much pre-war exclusion, taken to their extreme but logical conclusions. I also suggest that their failure to resolve the incoherence within their white notional citizenries brought each nation closer to inevitable reform.

Chapter 3 utilises primary sources and a similar parallel structure to Chapter 2, but extends its examinations beyond each state’s executive government apparatus to the processes by which Nikkei could legally challenge their treatment. It examines a body of documentary evidence that is either unexamined or underused in academic work, including proceedings of court challenges in Canada (at the Exchequer and Supreme

Courts, as well as the Privy Council), transcripts of Aliens Tribunals and a rare High

Court challenge in Australia, and letters to Commissioners and Ministers in both states.

Legal systems were more sensitive to citizenship abuse than executive actors, and unsurprisingly, the more substantial judicial access that Canadian Nikkei received allowed them to articulate their citizenship concerns more adequately than was the case in Australia. In both states, the process of judicial review enunciated problematic aspects of notional citizenship, and in Canada this was important to an evolving resistance.

Chapter 4 turns to the “popular sphere,” examining the contributions of media outlets, civil libertarians, welfare and nationalist organisations to national discourses and citizenship development through the 1940s. The primary evidence presented for each state indicates a marked difference in the popular discourses, illustrating a major divergence between the two case studies which was central to the divergent developments with regards to resistance to deportation and citizenship reform. This chapter illustrates how, through a slow process of demonstration and negotiation, 32

Canadian Nikkei were able to reframe their grievances in terms of citizenship rights rather than wartime security. Australian Nikkei, on the other hand, were largely excluded from any wider social interactions or representation during the war, negating opportunities to present claims to normative citizenship. Nevertheless, the Australian documents do present evidence of a repressed discourse which was sympathetic to

Nikkei and other non-Europeans at several moments, suggesting the developing unease with Australia’s racial-nationalism which was built upon in the post-war period.

Chapter 5 returns to the interconnected structure used in Chapter 1, to examine issues surrounding the establishment of formal citizenship and how these developments related to wartime anti-Nikkei policies in each state. It argues that following the inability of each nation to expel Nikkei, they were forced to seek a resolution to their incoherent notions of citizenship by expanding their internal scope, and extending new rights to previously undesirable subjects. It examines the text and politics surrounding the Canadian Citizenship Act 1946, and Australia’s Citizenship Act 1948, and the

British Nationality Act 1948, which linked Nikkei agitation and Canadian reform, with the reconstitution of citizenship throughout the Commonwealth.

Conclusion

This dissertation tells the story of two relatively small groups of people who had a disproportionate influence on citizenship definition and development in Canada and

Australia throughout the first half of the 20th century. The popular account, which presents “the Japanese” as a fearful presence resisted for decades and then confronted during the war avoids much important nuance. Roy and Oliver have indicated the important and dynamic roles that Nikkei played throughout Canadian and Australian 33

history, as they engaged with various parts of each national society, and developed their own communities.82 Nikkei did, nevertheless, encounter formal resistance to their full involvement in national life, and so retained the perception of alienage in spite of their other claims on national membership. At the war’s conclusion, each nation made a last great exclusionary push, in the form of the deportations, which laid bare growing tensions in the notions of liberal citizenship that each state had nurtured through the century’s first decades.

When each state attempted to resolve this incoherence by deporting its undesirable Nikkei, the logical conclusion of liberal exclusionism was presented with a new clarity in the immediate aftermath of World War II. In Canada, this incoherence was harnessed by Nikkei and civil liberties activists, and in 1947, Canada abandoned deportation and notably acknowledged Nikkei at the same time that its Citizenship Act came into force. In Australia, there was no popular movement, but several hundred

Nikkei with particular claims to national membership were officially accepted within the post-war nation in ways that they had not been previously. The expansion of citizenship discourses meant that the national boundaries had to move, and pre-war

Canada and Australia required reform.

Both Canada and Australia attempted to address the incoherence of their approach to Japanese and Nikkei by enacting formal Citizenship, and redrawing their national borders more definitely. In all, 3,964 Canadian Nikkei, and 821 Australian

Nikkei were deported, and those remaining were acknowledged in an exemplary process of “hard-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside” citizenship. These recognitions did not offer a coherent structural solution to either concept of citizenship, but they did constitute a new public acknowledgement of the acceptability of certain Nikkei within each nation.

82 Oliver and Roy are cited extensively in the following chapter, which expands on this idea. Oliver, Raids on Australia; Roy, The Oriental Question. 34

The normalisation of a group who had long embodied the concept of alienage in each state – and certainly during much of the war – required a reformulation of citizenship which was extended throughout the post-war period as racial concerns were reconsidered and Canada and Australia moved towards their multicultural futures. 35

Chapter 1 Developing the outside within: residence and alienage before the war

A child of Japanese parentage born in Vancouver city is a natural-born subject of the King and would be equally excluded from the possession of the franchise. The extent to which naturalization will confer privileges has varied…1 —Privy Council, 1902

A person resident in the Commonwealth, not being a British subject, and not being an aboriginal native of Asia, Africa or the Islands of the Pacific…may apply to the Governor General for a certificate of naturalisation. —Naturalization Act 19032

Around the turn of the 20th century, Australian and Canadian courts and parliaments signified the undesirable nature of Nikkei and other non-European residents in a series of prominent actions, which included the Tomey Homma case and the Australian

Naturalization Act noted above.3 These examples show that Australia and Canada were willing to acknowledge the presence of non-European residents within their territories, but equally determined to ensure their exclusion from the respective political communities. This partial acknowledgement, with its associated restrictive bundle of rights, underpinned lingering perceptions of alienage despite other claims to formal membership that many individuals possessed. In Canada, pre-war Nikkei often had formal citizenship status but not the vote, and in Australia they had residence but not citizenship. In both cases, this meant they were excluded from a range of social opportunities that signified community membership. They were outsiders within, occupying complicated liminal positions that were inherently unstable.

1 The Collector of Voter for the Electoral District of Vancouver City and the Attorney General for the Province of British Columbia v Tomey Homma and the Attorney General for the Dominions of Canada (British Columbia) [1902] UKPC 60 (17 December 1902). 2 Naturalization Act 1903 (Cth). 3 John Chesterman and Brian Galligan, Defining Australian Citizenship: Selected Documents (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 1999), 48-50; Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 141-142. Chesterman and Galligan have illustrated that discussions took place within Australian Parliament about the ethics of withholding “citizenship” rights from residents at the time of Federation, and a series of cases in Canada similarly examined whether Asian residents and citizens were entitled to the franchise and other rights enjoyed by the majority of citizens. 36

This chapter examines the marginal spaces that Nikkei occupied in pre-war Australia and Canada, which developed in tandem with nationally formative immigration restrictions and internal political and social exclusions. It begins with a brief overview of early national migration policies, and the Chinese immigration restrictions that were enacted through the 19th century. It then examines the rise of Japan and its attempts to engage diplomatically with Britain and the Dominions, and notes how this was met with an extension of Chinese immigration restriction to other east Asians. Turning its gaze inwards, it sees the same restrictive urge present in the political and social exclusion applied to those who managed to traverse Australia and Canada’s physical borders.

Finally, it examines the Nikkei communities that did develop in each nation in spite of ongoing formal resistance, noting examples of individual and group interactions that unsettled their perceived or formal status as aliens. These examples illustrate that the normative citizenry which many Nikkei displayed (and were seen as possessing within their immediate communities) clashed with the alienage that they continued to be ascribed in formal situations and through official channels.

Recent scholarship has indicated many examples of quotidian interactions between Asian residents and other subjects in pre-war Australia and Canada. Ganter,

Oliver, Jones and Brawley are among those to examine nuanced interactions between

Nikkei/Japanese and the wider communities in Australia, and Fiest, Nomura and Roy have done the same in the Canadian setting.4 These works are illustrative of the

4 For example, Regina Ganter, Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2006); Pam Oliver, Raids on Australia: 1942 and Japan’s Plans for Australia (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010), 23-184; Pam Oliver, “Citizens without certificates or enemy aliens? Japanese residents before 1947,” in Under Suspicion: Citizenship and Internment in Australia during the Second World War, ed. Joan Beaumont, Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien and Mathew Trinca, 125-41 (Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2008); Noreen Jones, Number 2 Home: A Story of Japanese Pioneers in Australia (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2002); Sean Brawley, “‘They came, they saw, they conquered’: The Takaishi/Saito tour of 1926/27 and Australian perceptions of Japan,” Sporting Traditions 26(2) (2009); Louis Fiset and Gail M. Nomura, eds., Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 37

complex and dynamic interactions which troubled the ideas underpinning formal exclusion. However, the examples and situations cited also reinforce the tenacity with which such exclusion was maintained over decades, remaining in formal discourse and legislation in spite of its flawed utopianism. The inability of each nation to resolve the status of Nikkei in the pre-war period led to the reassertion of their alienage in a moment of national crisis.

In light of the context presented herein, I suggest that the wartime anti-Nikkei policies enacted between 1941 and 1947 present as extensions of long nurtured restrictive “citizenships” rather than anything radically new. The ultimate outcomes of the wartime policies were more radical and coercive than previous anti-Asian policies, but the ideas and justifications for action were not. So in 1941 and 1942, when

Australians and Canadians heard that Nikkei were “a menace to the safety of Canada”, and that Australia needed to act because the “well known fanaticism” of Australian

Nikkei guaranteed an undying allegiance to the emperor of Japan, the ground for such arguments had been well prepared.5 This logic extended itself during the war to justify the mass deportation of Nikkei who, in Australia, averaged over 20 years residence, and in Canada, were in the main formally acknowledged British subjects.6 In a time of heightened national definition and populist fear, the long term formal marginalisation of

2005); Patricia E. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship: the Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2007). 5 La Violette cites the “crescendo of demands for the removal of the Japanese” because of this “menace” in B.C.: Forrest E. La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II: A Sociological and Psychological Account (Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1948), 40; Internment policy of July 9, 1941 quoted and discussed in Yuriko Nagata, Unwanted Aliens: Japanese Internment in Australia (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1996), 49-50. 6 O’Brien notes that the wartime “Japanese” population in Australia averaged over 20 years residence and included many pre-Federation arrivals who were “well integrated into their local communities.” Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien, “Citizenship, Rights and Emergency Powers in Second World War Australia,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 53(2) (2007): 221; Canada, Report on the Re-Establishment of Japanese in Canada, 1944-1946 (Ottawa: Department of Labour, 1947) at 28 cites 1941 census figures for Nikkei of or 58.7 percent Canadian born, or 13.6 percent naturalised Canadians, and 27.7 percent Japanese nationals. 38

Nikkei not only allowed, but also encouraged each nation to extend their exclusionary practices to guard against prospective disloyalty.

Immigration policies and nation building

Immigration was (obviously) central to the early development of European Canada and

Australia, as each state built their populations through various waves of controlled arrivals. Jupp argues that Australia’s tight control of its immigration policy formed perhaps the most comprehensive social engineering project in the modern world.7 Its founders sought to create a utopian white Britain in the southern hemisphere, and the extent of their success is reflected in the fact that by 1947 Australia’s non-European population (excluding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who as non-citizens were not counted in the census) measured only 0.25 percent, and about 90 percent of all

Australians were of Anglo-Celtic background.8 Canada’s early immigration was drawn from a similarly narrow base (differentiated by its biculturalism) and only 8 percent of the Canadian population did not claim English or French heritage at the time of

Confederation in 1867.9 Throughout the 19th century, Canada offered generous incentives to Britons, Northern Europeans and Americans, while it first ignored, then legislated against non-Europeans.10 In immigration nations which had not come to terms

7 James Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 5; See also Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World (New York: Guilford Press, 1993), 86-87; Mark Lopez, The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics: 1945-1975 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000), 43. 8 Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera, 9; Charles A. Price, “Ethnic Groups in Australia,” in The Challenge of Diversity: Policy Options for a Multicultural Australia, ed. James Jupp, 6-19 (Australian Government Publishing Service, 1989). 9 See Will Kymlicka, Finding Our Way: Rethinking Ethnocultural Relations in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998), 7; Figures quoted in Augie Fleras and Jean Leonard Elliot, Multiculturalism in Canada: The Challenge of Diversity (Scarborough, : Nelson Canada, 1992), 44. 10 Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 61-65, 107-10; Robert J.C. Stead, “Canada’s Immigration Policy,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 107 (1923). 39

with their native populations and were building their populations through migration, these narrow sources created a reality where the desirable, and in most cases the actual, subject was a white European.

One of the first challenges to the creation of white ex-European nations was presented by developing industry in the 19th century, as economic interests pressed for migration from increasingly diverse sources. The end of convict transportation to

Australia from the 1840s removed its historical flow of cheap labour, and employers sourced replacements from China, India and the Pacific Islands.11 Employers in Canada similarly sought Asian labour from China, Japan and India to work on the Canadian

Pacific Railway and other large scale projects from the 1880s onwards.12 Australia, and to a lesser extent British Columbia, also possessed attractive pull factors with the discovery of gold from the 1850s.13 During this time, both nations encountered their first substantial wave of non-European migration, and elements of each resisted this development in ideologically formative ways.

A range of Australian, Canadian and international scholars have examined the events of this time, offering a range of explanations for the Canadian and Australian responses. Lockwood has argued that an evangelical Christianity that idealised white

Britain underpinned Australian officials’ desire to resist coloured (non-Christian)

11 Convict transportation was first suspended in New South Wales in 1840, then finally abolished in the straggling Norfolk Island in 1846 and Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) in 1853: see Michael Bogle, Convicts: Transportation and Australia (Sydney: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 1999), 95; New migration at this time discussed in Laksiri Jayasuriya, David Walker and Jan Gothard, eds., Legacies of White Australia: Race Culture and Nation (Crawley: Western Australia University Press, 2003), 9-11; See also Castles and Miller, The Age of Migration, 86; Lopez, The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics, 43. 12 Roger Daniels, “The Japanese Diaspora in the New World: Its Asian predecessors and origins,” in Japanese Diasporas: Unsung pasts, conflicting presents and uncertain futures, ed. Nobuko Adachi, 25-34 (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 29-30. 13 See A.T. Yarwood, Attitudes to Non-European Immigration (Melbourne: Cassell Australia, 1968), 19- 33; Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Framing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the Question of Racial Equality (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2008), 15-45; Peter Li, The Chinese in Canada, 1st ed. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988), 16. 40

migrants in the 1840s.14 Price and others note the labour movement’s objection to the importation of non-European workers with the ability to undercut wages and conditions.15 Willard’s work expressed the fears that Australians had of allowing “large numbers” of “Asiatics” into its colonies, and the ill-defined but negative cultural and social affects that this would have on the development of white Australia.16 Walker notes that Australia began to assert its national identity at this time, concurrently with

“the growing power of the East [which] was arousing increasing concern.”17 The

Canadian literature largely focuses on the parallel development of racial agitation and

British Columbian politics, which entrenched discrimination against a small population that had been admitted into the nation. Li has argued that the “institutional racism against the Chinese was a structural imperative,” in order to exploit a cheap source of labour in a developing Canada.18 Ward has traced the populist and politically useful

“anti-Orientalism” in British Columbia alongside the arrival of Chinese, Japanese and

Indian migrants from the late 1850s.19 Kelley and Trebilcock, Triadafilopoulos and

McDonald have all noted legislative developments from the 19th century which sought to exclude or marginalise Asian migrants from the time of the arrival of Chinese labourers, because of the fear of their economic impact.20 All of these accounts illustrate

14 R. Lockwood, “British Imperial Influences in the Foundation of the White Australia Policy,” Labour History 7 (1964): 25-26. 15 Charles Price, “‘White’ Restrictions on ‘Coloured’ Immigration,” Race and Class 7(3) (1966). Any number of texts could be cited as examinations of the labour movement’s resistance to coloured labour at this time; for a recent discussion see Ann Curthoys, “Liberalism and Exclusionism: A Prehistory of the White Australia Policy,” in Legacies of White Australia, ed. Jayasuriya, Walker and Gothard, 8-32. 16 Myra Willard, History of the White Australia Policy to 1920 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1923), 17-37. 17 David Walker, Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1999), 4. 18 Li, The Chinese in Canada, xiii. 19 W. Peter Ward, White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy Toward Orientals in British Columbia (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990), 12-22. 20 Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 95-98; Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos, “Building Walls, Bounding Nations: Migration and Exclusion in Canada and Germany 1870-1939,” Journal of Historical Sociology 17 (2004): 393-96; P.V. McDonald, “Race Relations and Canadian Law,” Faculty of Law Review (University of Toronto) 18 (1960). 41

an immediate desire to resist or marginalise the new non-European elements from the mid-19th century.

Other longer view historical and comparative accounts previously noted contextualise the importance of the first Chinese arrivals in the mid-19th century to subsequent developments. Curthoys has argued that the exclusionary actions of the

Australian states in the last decades of the 19th century were nationally defining, embedding a formative exclusionary edge in Australia’s liberalism.21 Rubenstein has examined the role that legislative restrictions played in “the beginnings of citizenship” definition, long before Australia considered formally codifying the idea.22 Roy has shown how, after a mixed beginning, Chinese residents were strenuously resisted as

British Columbia developed its identity as a “white man’s province” through the downturns of the mid-to-late 19th century.23 Tarnopolosky has illustrated the place that

Chinese immigration restriction occupies in a longer history of legal discriminations in

Canada.24 Hawkins, Price, Inglis, Markus and Lee are among those who have identified the parallel developments in anti-Asian politics on both sides of the Pacific, and Lake and Reynolds have demonstrated the internationalisation of a “whiteness” discourse at the time that the Chinese reached Australia and the United States (travelling later to

British Columbia), as a series of historical, intellectual and nationalist forces combined to promote a narrative of racial destiny.25

21 Curthoys, “Liberalism and Exclusionism,” in Legacies of White Australia, ed. Jayasuriya, Walker and Gothard, 8-32. 22 Kim Rubenstein, “Citizenship and the Centenary – Inclusion and Exclusion in 20th Century Australia,” Melbourne University Law Review 24 (2000): 578-83. 23 Patricia E. Roy, A White Man’s Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1858–1914 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1990). 24 T.S. Tarnopolsky, “Discrimination and the Law in Canada,” University of New Brunswick Law Journal 41 (1992). 25 Freda Hawkins, Critical Years in Immigration: Canada and Australia Compared (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989), 3-42; Charles A. Price, The Great White Walls Are Built: Restrictive Immigration to North America and Australasia 1836-1888 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1974); Christine Inglis, Anthony Birch and Geoffrey Sherington, “An Overview of Australian and Canadian Migration Patterns and Policies,” in Immigration and Refugee Policy: Australia and Canada Compared, vol. 1, ed. Howard Adelman et al., 3-30 (Carlton, : 42

This literature is noted here in acknowledgement of the anti-Asian discourses, widely examined since, which preceded the entry of any substantial Japanese migration into

Australia and Canada. These discourses emerged around the time that the first Chinese migrants arrived in each state, and justified the establishment of a suite of restrictive legislation on the basis of racial and cultural difference. Concerns based on difference set precedents that were easily transferred to new, non-European migrants at the time of their later arrivals. For this reason, the racial arguments and legislation that developed with the arrival of the Chinese are structurally important to the developing white policies in both Canada and Australia.

Anti-Chinese legislation

If the formative causes for the first non-European immigration restrictions have been interpreted differently, the legislation which mandated this action, and the political justifications and outcomes were remarkably similar in both Australia and Canada. As

Lake and Reynolds show, the internationalist nature of the goldmining communities allowed for the movement of politics and ideas from country to country along with the transitory workers, and the populist anti-Chinese sentiments that developed in

California were soon present in Canada and Australia.26 A few years after the arrival of

Chinese miners in Victoria, a Commission of Enquiry identified them as a “pagan and inferior race” governed by “degrading customs” and “vicious tendencies.”27 Marie

Melbourne University Press, 1994); Andrew Markus, Fear and Hatred: Purifying Australia and California 1850-1901 (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1979); Erika Lee, “Orientalisms in the Americas: A Hemispheric Approach to Asian American History,” Journal of Asian American Studies 8(3) (2005); Pierre L. Van den Berghe, “Australia, Canada and the United States: Ethnic Melting Pots or Plural Societies,” in Multicultural Studies: A Comparative Reader, ed. Roger Bell, 37-44 (Sydney: Sable Publishing, 1997); Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 15-45. 26 Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 18. 27 Victorian Commission of Enquiry of 1854 quoted in ibid., 20. Large numbers of Chinese miners did not begin arriving in Australia until the gold rushes of 1851. 43

indicates that an anti-Chinese populism was evident in British Columbia from the late

1850s, and this was reflected in formal politics as the B.C. legislature developed and arrivals increased.28 Shortly after the large scale influx of the early 1880s, British

Columbia enshrined in legislation its opinion that the Chinese race were “governed by pestilential habits…useless in instances of emergency… [and] are inclined to habits subversive to the comfort and well-being of the community.”29 These formal reflections signified the prominent undesirability of Chinese migrants, and each preceded the enactment of restrictive immigration legislation by a matter of months.30

Anti-Chinese immigration restriction developed in Australia in two waves before the 19th century. From 1855 to 1859, Victoria, South Australia and New South

Wales introduced legislation which variously levied entry and residence taxes, restricted the number of Chinese passengers that ships entering Australia were permitted to carry, and barred Chinese migrants from naturalising.31 The aim of financially compromising the viability of ongoing Chinese residence was aided by diminishing gold yields, and encouraged many transitory migrants to return to China within years.32 This fact, along with British pressure to minimise discriminatory legislation for the purposes of trade, saw all states repeal their laws throughout the 1860s, concluding with New South

28 Gillian Marie, “Attitudes Towards Chinese Immigrants to British Columbia, 1858-1885” (MA Thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1976). Marie quotes extensively from the British Columbian and other local press, indicating that in spite of the lack of political action, popular resistance to the Chinese existed early and grew through the 1870s. 29 An Act to Prevent the Immigration of Chinese 1884 (B.C.) quoted in Joseph Lee, “Anti-Chinese Legislation in British America,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 3 (1889): 363-64. 30 Victoria was the first Australian state to enact immigration restriction in 1855, and although the above mentioned B.C. Statute was struck down by the Federal Government, Canada introduced its own Chinese restrictions in 1885. 31 Joseph Lee, “Anti-Chinese Legislation in Australasia,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 3 (1889). Lee notes that Victoria was the first Australian State to act against the Chinese, passing a law in 1855 which levied an entry tax of ten pounds on each migrant, and restricted ships entering Australia to one Chinese passenger for every ten tons of carrying capacity. In 1857, South Australia and New South Wales enacted similar provisions, with New South Wales also barring Chinese from naturalising. In the same year, Victoria strengthened its restrictions, requiring all Chinese to obtain a residence license every two months at a cost of one pound (adjusted to four pounds annually in 1859) alongside a £40 entrance fee. 32 Fitzgerald estimates that about half of early Chinese migrants to Australia returned to China after a short stint on the goldfields. John Fitzgerald, The Big White Lie: in White Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007), 52. 44

Wales’ repeal in 1867.33 For the next ten years, Australia had no legal restriction on the entry of non-Europeans, but an important precedent had been established.

When Chinese miners dominated a gold rush in Queensland in the 1870s, a second wave of restrictive legislation was enacted, this time spreading to all colonies on the continent and effectively becoming a pre-white Australia policy.34 Immigration Acts were passed in Queensland in 1877, South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales in

1881, Western Australia in 1886, Tasmania in 1887, and by South Australia on behalf of the Northern Territory in 1888.35 All were directed at persons of the “Chinese race” who were subjected to entry fees of ten pounds everywhere other than Queensland, where the fee was £30.36 In addition, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania permitted ships to carry only one Chinese passenger per one 100 tons, Western

Australia and Queensland allowed one per 50 tons and the others one per 10 tons of carrying capacity. These laws were progressively strengthened by clauses which increased entry fees, denied the franchise to Chinese residents and made ship masters liable for any transgressions, thereby co-opting industry into a role of enforcing the restrictions.37 At the same time, flashpoints like the arrival of 268 Chinese passengers on the ship the Afghan and rumours of large numbers of arrivals in various states led to populist marches and rallies.38 Curthoys argues that the actions of this time were

33 South Australia repealed its laws in 1861, Victoria repealed its residence fees in 1862, suspended its entry fee in 1863, reimposed it in 1864, then abolished it in 1865, and New South Wales repealed its laws in 1867: Lee, “Anti-Chinese Legislation in Australasia.” 34 Keith Willey, “Australia’s Population,” in “Who Are our Enemies? Racism and the Working Class in Australia,” special issue, Labour History 35 (1978) states at 1 that the Chinese population of Australia rose again to 50,000 out of 2,500,000 by 1881. Of 17,903 gold miners in Queensland, 13,269 were Chinese according to Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 34; Curthoys argues that this time presents the birth of the white Australia policy which would become reflected in federal legislation in 1901: Curthoys, “Liberalism and Exclusionism,” 31. 35 Lee, “Anti-Chinese Legislation in Australasia,” 220. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Curthoys, “Liberalism and Exclusionism,” 30-31; See also Gwenda Tavan, The long, slow death of white Australia (Carlton North: Scribe Publications, 2005), 8-9; Don Gibb, The Making of ‘White Australia’ (West Melbourne: Victorian Historical Association, 1973), 36-85. Gibb indicates the growth of a public anti-Chinese campaign in Victoria in 1887-88. 45

foundational expressions of the national “desires for racial homogeneity, exclusion and assimilation,” upon which the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 and subsequent national politics drew.39

Across the Pacific, Canada acted similarly if not as early as Australia, on account of the later arrival of Chinese and the utility of their labour in mid-19th century

British Columbia. When the Chinese first arrived in 1858, Governor James Douglas remarked that they were “certainly not a desirable class of people as a permanent part of the population, but for the present, are useful as labourers and as consumers.”40 Before the 1880s, Chinese migrants in Canada numbered between 1,000 and 4,000 at various times, a number which comprised a substantial part of the sparsely populated western

Canada.41 The importance of the Chinese was noted in a number of B.C. publications through the 1860s, and although negative opinion was more prominent in the 1870s, politicians were unwilling to act for their removal while their financial importance remained.42 As late as 1883, Prime Minister Macdonald told the House of Commons that

It will be all very well to exclude Chinese labour, when we can replace it with white labour, but until that is done, it is better to have Chinese labour than no labour at all.43

In the interim however, the new British Columbian legislature had moved to marginalise resident Chinese within the internal political community by

39 Curthoys, “Liberalism and Exclusionism,” 31. 40 Douglas quoted in Green, Valerie, Upstarts and outcasts: Victoria’s not-so-proper past (Victoria: Horsdal & Schubart Publishers Ltd., 2000) 51. 41 Roy, A White Man’s Province, x; Li, The Chinese in Canada, 16; the British Columbian, September 20, 1865, estimated the population of B.C. to be 8,000 “white” and 3,000 “Chinese” alongside the 50,000 “Indian”: cited in Marie, “Attitudes Towards Chinese Immigrants to British Columbia,” 50. 42 Li, The Chinese in Canada, 27-28. 43 Prime Minister MacDonald speaking to Commons in 1883, quoted in Bruce Ryder, “Racism and the Constitution: The Constitutional Fate of British Columbia anti-Asian Immigration Legislation, 1884- 1909,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 29 (1991): 647. 46

disenfranchising them and banning their employment on provincial works.44 This set a precedent for Canada’s treatment of its Asian residents over the following decades, where superficial civility masked a discriminatory reality. While quietly permissive of an Asian presence for utilitarian reasons, Canadian legislators (led by those in British

Columbia) ensured they were marked as undesirable, and unable to engage as equals within the communities in which they lived.

The discrimination faced by the Chinese in Canada was more prominently expressed as the 1880s wore on. The developing nativist lobby in the British Columbia

Parliament coincided with the immigration of between 15,000 and 17,000 Chinese labourers (about 8 percent of the B.C. population) to work on the Canadian Pacific

Railway in the first years of the decade.45 The increased populist and political resistance noted by Roy, Li and others was evident in presentations at a Royal Commission into

Chinese immigration in 1884, and then the British Columbian legislature’s passage of

An Act to Prevent the Immigration of Chinese in the same year.46 This was one of the first of many immigration restriction acts passed by British Columbia then disallowed by the Federal Government on the grounds that it infringed on federal immigration powers.47 In explanation for overriding British Columbia, Prime Minister Macdonald familiarly cited labour needs, telling the House that there were “certain contracts connected with the Canadian Pacific Railway which are to be finished, I suppose, next

44 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 13; Tarnopolsky, “Discrimination and the Law in Canada,” 218-19. 45 Roy, A White Man’s Province, xi; Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 93-96; Daniels notes that B.C.’s 15,000 Japanese was proportionally a bigger part of the community than California’s 45,000 (which made up 3 percent) at the same time, in “The Japanese Diaspora in the New World,” at 30. 46 See ibid.; Patricia E. Roy, “The Preservation of the Peace in Vancouver: The Aftermath of the Anti- Chinese Riot of 1887,” B.C. Studies 31 (1976); Patricia E. Roy, “Not all were welcome: Canada and the dilemma of immigration” in Canada and Japan in the Twentieth Century, ed. John Schultz and Kimitada Miwa, 2-16 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1991), 3. 47 Ryder, “Racism and the Constitution,” 658-67. 47

year” after which time the issue of Chinese exclusion might be revisited.48 In March

1885 the British Columbian Legislature made another attempt to enact restrictive legislation, which was again overridden, but it was placated later that year by the passage of the Federal Chinese Immigration Act 1885. This Act put a head tax of $50 on all Chinese immigrants, and limited vessels entering Canada to one Chinese passenger per 50 tonnes of capacity.49 The enactment of Canada’s Chinese Immigration Act, alongside the re-emergence of Chinese restriction by the Australian states in the 1870s and 1880s meant that by the late 19th century, both territories were presiding over similar anti-Chinese restrictive legislative regimes.

As Bosniak has shown, the mere act of admitting a subject into a given national territory implies some degree of claim to community membership.50 It follows on from this that the prominent restriction of a group from a national territory signifies their undesirability as subjects within that nation. Given the importance of immigration to the practice of nation building in the histories of Australia and Canada, the rejection of the first attempted engagement by non-Europeans was defining, formally identifying the cultural and racial undesirability of certain migrants and establishing methods of structural restriction. In doing so at vital moments in the development of the British

Columbian and Australian political systems, these actions took on a foundational importance that was reinforced by further expressions of racial politics and exclusionary legislation.

48 Ryder, “Racism and the Constitution,” 652; Henry F. Angus, “Canadian Immigration: The Law and its Administration,” The American Journal of International Law 28 (1934): 74. 49 Ryder, “Racism and the Constitution,” 653; Lee, “Anti-Chinese Legislation in British America,” 359. 50 Linda Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). 48

The rise of Japan and the racialisation of restriction

Chinese immigration restrictions proved to be a useful framework in light of two developments in the late 19th century which heightened racial insecurities throughout the Anglophone world, and suggested the logical extension of restrictions. The first was the emergence of theories of racial destiny, which as Walker and Lake and Reynolds have illustrated, had a growing influence on Anglophone politics at the time.51 A number of international statesmen (including two of the Australian Commonwealth’s founding fathers Edmund Barton and Alfred Deakin, as well as Theodore Roosevelt and

William Gladstone) were sympathetic to the work of Victorian Parliamentarian and

Chinese restriction advocate Charles Pearson, whose bestseller National Life and

Character, argued that the rise of “coloured” races would inevitably compromise the prospects of white nations and cultures within a zero sum game.52 Pearson’s work aided politicians attempting to understand and contextualise the second development: the extraordinary emergence of Japan, which in the space of 50 years had transformed itself from a secluded Asian nation into a world power, heightening fears of an “awakening”

Asia.53

By the 1890s, as the Chinese restriction regimes were being perfected, Japan had begun assisting the emigration of its nationals to Hawaii, the United States, Canada and

51 Discussions in Walker, Anxious Nation, 47-49; Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 75-94; Marilyn Lake, “Equality and Exclusion: The Racial Constitution of Colonial Liberalism,” Thesis Eleven 95 (2008). 52 Charles H. Pearson, National Life and Character: a Forecast (London and New York: Macmillan, 1893) was the central text of this movement, and argued that non-white races, driven by their populations and developing industries, were emerging global forces that could not be subjugated indefinitely, and their rise would alter international relations and pose an increasing threat to white nations and culture. 53 See Marilyn Lake, “The White Man Under Siege: New Histories of Race in the Nineteenth Century and the Advent of White Australia,” History Workshop Journal 58 (2004). Across the Pacific in B.C. race theory was used with less sophistication, however, Ward notes that it was “a comparatively blunt instrument,” used by politicians who found in it “a useful set of categories with which to express their fears and hostilities,” in Ward, White Canada Forever, 169; An account of Japan’s transformation and the pressures this engendered is in James Stanlaw, “Japanese emigration and immigration: From the Meiji to the modern,” in Japanese Diasporas, ed. Adachi, 35-51; Akira Iriye notes the theoretical importance of “the awakening of Asia,” quoted in Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 77. 49

Australia in the interest of diplomatic engagement and the retention of some control over inevitable movements.54 In parallel with this early migration, Japan continued its diplomatic advance, concluding two major treaties with Britain – the Anglo-Japanese

Treaty of Commerce and Navigation in 1894 and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in

1902.55 According to Bennett, the British Dominions were universally “horrified” by the reciprocal rights of travel and residence embodied in the Treaty of Commerce and

Navigation, and refused to be a party to it in defiance of Britain’s wishes.56 Canada negotiated a clause restricting Japanese immigration, but then refused to sign on until

1907, when other restrictive measures were in place, and Queensland was the only

Australian state to accede, signing on in 1897, after negotiating the sole retention of rights in immigration matters.57 At a time when the numbers of Japanese migrants in

Canada and Australia were nominal, political leaders in each country signalled their intention to resist legitimising the presence of any Japanese migrants in each nation.

The small numbers of Japanese migrants who did arrive in each state by private agreements in the late 19th century were vetted to varying extents by the Japanese

Government (rather than arriving ad hoc from areas of grinding poverty like their

54 See Yosaburo Yoshida, “Sources and Causes of Japanese Emigration,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 34(2) (1909): 157; Douglas S. Massey, “The social and economic origins of immigration,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 510 (1990); D.C.S. Sissons, “Immigration in Australian Japanese Relations,” in Japan and Australia in the Seventies, ed. J.A.A. Stockwin, 193-210 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1972), 193; Neville Bennett, “Japanese Emigration Policy,” in Asians in Australia: The Dynamics of Migration and Settlement, ed. Christine Inglis et al., 23-44 (St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1992), 27; Jonathan Dresner, “Instructions to emigrant labourers, 1885-94: ‘Return in Triumph’ or ‘Wander on the verge of starvation,’” in Japanese Diasporas, ed. Adachi, 52-68. 55 Bennett, “Japanese Emigration Policy”; There are also discussions of the importance of these treaties for Japanese status in Neville Meaney, “The end of ‘white Australia’ and Australia’s changing perception of Asia, 1945-1990,” Australian Journal of International Affairs 42(2) (1995): 175; Hugh Cortazzi, “Britain and Japan: did the diplomats make any difference?” Asian Affairs 36 (2005): 59-60. 56 Neville Bennett, “White Discrimination Against Japan: Britain, The Dominions and The United States, 1908-1928,” New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 3(2) (2001): 93. 57 Raymond Leslie Buell, “Japanese Immigration” (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1924), 335. An order in council accepting the provisions of the treaty was passed in 1905, but parliament did not assent until 1907; D.C.S. Sissons, “Immigration in Australian Japanese Relations,” 197. 50

counterparts from China).58 These selected arrivals encountered an interesting response.

In contrast to the disdainful formal rhetoric directed at Chinese migrants (eg., “vicious” and “pestilential”), there was a similarly constituted respectful fear in early responses to

Japanese on both sides of the Pacific. A Queensland M.P. argued that “the Jap…is a very capable man who will not only compete with the white labourer but eventually must drive out not only the labourer but the artisan and trader as well.”59 A Canadian

Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese immigration argued that the Japanese were

“more dangerous” than the Chinese to the “welfare of the [white] working man.”60

Australia’s Strait Times noted that “Japanese are indeed looked upon as more dangerous

[than Chinese] from their highly insinuating ways and greater intellectual powers,” and the Victoria (B.C) Colonist claimed that the “virile, civilized and intellectual Japanese is even a more dangerous rival than the Chinese.”61

The different responses to the Japanese migrants were rooted in Japan’s perceived advancement, its diplomatic power and its historic military victories over

China and Russia that bookended the turn of the century. Tavan notes that Japan’s

“economic modernity, military power, cultural sophistication and obvious national pride contradicted the assertion that Asiatics represented a ‘degraded’ race.”62 Walker, Oliver, and Roy are among those who noted curious exchanges at the time of this early contact, illustrated by an interest in Japanese goods and trade, and the enthusiastic reception of

58 Li notes that early Chinese emigrants came from a limited number of provinces, generally spoke no English and had little formal education. Li, The Chinese in Canada, 23-24; Dresner points out that the Japanese government “strove to protect its citizens as well as its own international image by carefully managing the migrants and the migration system.” Migrants were chosen from “‘successful’ rural communities, [and were subject to] stringent participation limitations.” From Dresner, “Instructions to emigrant labourers,” 52. 59 Queensland, Parliamentary Debates, vol. 70 (June 28, 1893), 144 (Henry Turley), from Sissons, “Immigration in Australian Japanese Relations,” 197. 60 Ryder, “Racism and the Constitution,” 661. 61 Strait Times, November 15, 1895, quoted in Henry P. Frei, Japan’s Southward Advance and Australia: From the Sixteenth Century to World War II (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1991), 77; Colonist, April 23, 1905 quoted in Roy, “Not all were welcome,” 6. 62 Tavan, The long, slow death of white Australia, 21. 51

visiting Japanese fleets.63 However, these interactions were balanced by a nationalist fear which formally expressed itself in the extension of immigration restrictions and social exclusions along anti-Oriental lines in Canada and anti-coloured lines in

Australia.64 In 1895, British Columbia’s Provincial Voters Act further restricted the province’s franchise, so that “no Chinaman, Japanese or Indian shall have his name placed on the Register of Voters for any Electoral District,” and in 1901 Australia’s

Immigration Restriction Act essentially barred non-white migrants from entering the

Commonwealth.65 This occurred before Japanese migrants were anywhere near as numerous as Chinese in Canada, and before they were able to develop to a similar level in Australia.

Restrictions, concessions and the development of Nikkei communities

Despite Japan’s efforts at creating an acceptable migrant presence, its first emigrants were resisted within general anti-Asian frameworks. This concerned Japanese officials, who accepted the idea of a racial hierarchy, but objected to being placed “on the same level of morality and civilization as Chinese and other less advanced populations of

Asia.”66 Japan’s influence meant that its objections were heard, and Joseph

Chamberlain, British Secretary of State for the colonies, suggested at Imperial

Conferences in 1897 and 1898 that discriminating via more ambiguous mechanisms

63 Walker, Anxious Nation, 68-78; Oliver, Raids on Australia, 61-74; Roy, A White Man’s Province, 153- 70. 64 Discussions in Buell, “Japanese Immigration,” 332; A.T. Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia: The Background to Exclusion (Parkville: Melbourne University Press, 1964), 9-11; Geoffrey S. Smith, “The Japanese Canadians and World War II,” in Alien Justice: Wartime Internment in Australia and North America, ed. Kay Saunders and Roger Daniels, 93-113 (Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 2000), 93. 65 Stephanie Bangarth, Voices Raised in Protest: Defending North American Citizens of Japanese Ancestry, 1942-49 (Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press, 2008), 18. 66 Baron Kato quoted in Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 14; Frei, Japan’s Southward Advance, 57 also examines the restrictions in Australia, noting journalist Mishima Kazuo’s reflection that “[t]he Japanese actually feel more rejected in Australia than they do in America.” 52

would be more diplomatic.67 The Dominions acknowledged this, and negotiated a series of concessions within more substantial restrictive policies, which led to the development of small Nikkei communities created at the borderline of what was acceptable in each state. As Yarwood and Ward have illustrated, the relationships that Australia and

Canada had with communities such as these became increasingly important parts of national definition throughout the 20th century.68

As with responses to Chinese migration, Australia led Canada in legislating to restrict Japanese migrants. Meaney notes that at the Australian intercolonial conference of 1896, state leaders decided to adopt uniform anti-coloured immigration restriction, and little effort was made to hide the fact that “the immediate cause for the adoption…was fear of Japan.”69 In 1901, the new Commonwealth of Australia gave national legislative expression to this desire by passing the Immigration Restriction Act, which used the mechanism of a dictation test requiring prospective entrants to write out

“a passage of fifty words in length in an European language” in order to exclude the undesirable.70 The test could be set numerous times in numerous languages, and officials were privately informed that it was to be set for “[a]ll aboriginal inhabitants of

Africa, Asia and Polynesia.”71

67 Chamberlain told colonial officials at Imperial Conferences in 1897 and 1898 that discriminatory legislation was “extremely repugnant” to the Japanese, and asked that ambiguous mechanisms, such as educational tests, be used in future legislation. See Ryder, “Racism and the Constitution,” 657. 68 Yarwood argues that it was “in terms of Japan that Australia conducted their identity as an outpost of white civilisation,” and Ward argues that between “the 1890s and 1940s [anti-Japanese stereotypes] dominated white British Columbia’s perceptions of Japanese immigrant society…[and] profoundly shaped the course of race relations in the community.” See A.T. Yarwood and M.J. Knowling, Race Relations in Australia: A History (North Ryde: Methuen Australia, 1982), 242; Ward, White Canada Forever, 169. 69 Neville Meaney, Towards a New Vision: Australia and Japan through 100 Years (NSW: Kangaroo Press, 1999), 58. 70 Immigration Restriction Act 1901 (Cth). 71 Immigration instructions in Ronald Norris, The emergent Commonwealth: Australian federation, expectation and fulfilment: 1889-1910 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1975), 91-92. 53

Notwithstanding the “diplomacy” of such a mechanism, Australia’s leaders were open about its real aims. Prime Minister Barton noted that the Immigration Restriction Act sought to prevent “the influx of that class and race of persons who ought to be kept without the limits of a white Australia”, and Attorney-General Deakin underlined its centrality to the new Commonwealth, claiming that “[t]he unity of Australia is nothing if that does not imply a united race.”72 Before the Act became law, the Japanese Acting

Consul General in Australia approached the Prime Minister in May 1901 seeking a gentlemen’s agreement “by which all that Australia seeks so far as the Japanese are concerned, would at once be conceded” in return for exemptions for bona fide travellers, and an acknowledgement that Japan was not bound by the general restriction.73 This approach, and another made through Britain were both ignored, and the Act received royal assent on 23 December 1901.74

The Canadian Federal Government was more circumspect than Australia, but

British Columbia, where Asian migrants both landed and in the main resided, acted in parallel with Australia. The British Columbian legislature undertook a frenzied program, passing immigration restriction acts in 1900, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1907 and 1908.75 All of these were variations of the Act of 1900, which refused entry to individuals unable to fill out an application “in the characters of some language of

Europe.”76 Canada’s Federal Government resisted these moves on account of Britain’s request that the Dominions do nothing “to impair existing relations with Japan,” but also, according to Daniels its “lower level of democracy” made it less concerned with

72 Barton and Deakin quoted from August and September 1901 parliamentary debates in Gibb, The Making of ‘White Australia’, 101, 104. 73 Quoted in Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 40. 74 Ibid. 75 Ryder, “Racism and the Constitution,” 658-67. 76 Ibid., 658. 54

B.C.’s racial populism.77 Canada’s “diplomacy” extended to engaging in a series of legislative skirmishes with British Columbia, whereby the province periodically passed restrictive acts that were disallowed in a tardy fashion by the Federal Government.78

Between 1901 and 1905, British Columbia’s immigration restrictions remained in force more often than not, and aided by the fact that Japan restricted emigration due to the

Russo-Japanese war, only 500 Japanese migrants entered the country during these years.79

The initial strength of Australia and British Columbia’s restrictive urge did not lessen Japan’s desire to negotiate in the interests of diplomatic solutions, which it did with some success. In 1904, at the behest of Japanese and British lobbying, Australia made passport arrangements for Japanese and Indian tourists, merchants and students, and in 1905, it substituted “prescribed” for “European” as the language option for the dictation test. 80 Beyond the one year visa obtainable, individuals could apply for a

Certificate of Exemption from the Dictation Test (C.E.D.T.), which was issued for a period between three months and three years, allowing movement and facilitating trade.81 While this tightly administered system offered no long term certainty to any individual, it effectively allowed a small number of Nikkei to become quasi-permanent residents of Australia through continued renewals.82 But it also worked in such a way as to keep this community from establishing a long term intergenerational presence by refusing permission for the workers (almost exclusively men) to bring their wives and children to join them.83 Garter and Oliver have demonstrated that there were some unions between Japanese men and European or Aboriginal women, but married

77 Ryder, “Racism and the Constitution,” 658; Daniels, “The Japanese Diaspora in the New World,” 30. 78 Ryder, “Racism and the Constitution,” 659-64. 79 Roy, “Not all were welcome,” 6. 80 Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 88. 81 Ibid.; Oliver, Raids on Australia, 64. 82 Oliver, Raids on Australia, 64-65. 83 Ibid., 164. 55

Japanese migrants (de facto or de jure) were in a minority, and the community did not grow, develop and integrate in the way that Canadian Nikkei were able to, as illustrated below.84

Australia’s refusal to formally acknowledge its Japanese residents internally was reflected in international relations which tended to reinforce the alienage of those

“Japanese” in Australia.85 Oliver notes that there was a public sense of relief when

Britain and Japan renewed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1911, but Australia did not become a party to this renewal, and instead expressed a need to prepare for its expiration in 1921.86 In 1915, Japan approached Australia directly and through Britain seeking its accession, but both approaches were rejected.87 Brawley has illustrated how this rejection continued at the end of World War I, when Japan’s quest to have anti- racist principles included in the League of Nations Covenant was opposed by Australian

Prime Minister Billy Hughes, who claimed that such a development would infringe upon Australia’s sovereign right to discriminate.88 In the 1920s, former Director of

Military Intelligence and Prime Ministerial advisor E.L. Piesse argued that it was in

Australia’s interest to negotiate with Japan, but he was countered by the more fearfully confrontational Hughes who popularised his long held distrust of Japan, and ensured that a distance remained between the two nations.89 A growing trade relationship during the 1920s and 1930s was not paralleled by closer diplomatic ties, and with the economic

84 Garter, Mixed Relations; Oliver, Raids on Australia, 64-65. 85 Robin Gollan, “Australian populism and nationalism before the second world war,” in Australia and Japan: Two societies and their interaction, ed. Peter Drysdale and Hironobu Kitaoji, 32-48 (Canberra: Australian University Press, 1981). 86 Oliver, Raids on Australia, 99. 87 Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 94. 88 Sean Brawley, The White Peril: Foreign Relations and Asian Immigration to Australasia and North America 1919-78 (Sydney: UNSW Press), 13-27. 89 Neville Meaney, Fears and Phobias: E.L. Piesse and the Problem of Japan (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1996), 21-36. 56

downturn, Japanese aggression in Asia and the approach of war in Europe, the question of a relaxation of Japanese restriction was not seriously revisited before the war.90

A lack of formal engagement, along with the economic interests of each nation, meant that the C.E.D.T. arrangements and the reforms of 1904-5 were not greatly altered for better or worse throughout the first decades of the century.91 York’s analysis of “Asiatics” admitted into white Australia indicates the annual numbers of Japanese

Visa entrants was relatively steady between 1902 and 1940.92 He also indicates that during these years, only 42 Japanese were excluded by the dictation test, illustrating that those who did arrive generally did so with the approval of Australian immigration authorities.93 Many of these were short term economic migrants, however as the average length of residence of those remaining in 1941 and the personal situations of those examined in the following sections attest, there were a substantial number of “Japanese” who had been in Australia for decades, were born in or married to Australians, or had

Australian born children.94 The examples below will indicate that despite the many claims to national membership that these individuals possessed, they continued to encounter formal political and social situations which discriminated against them on the basis of race. These circumstances conspired to constrict the Australian Nikkei population, which did not increase in size through the early 1900s, and instead fell from a highpoint of 3,593 in 1901 to 2,740 in 1921, and then to 1,139 by 1941.95

90 Meaney, Fears and Phobias, 37-57. 91 Oliver, Raids on Australia, 64. 92 Barry York, Admissions and Exclusions: “Asiatics” and “Other Coloured Races” in Australia: 1901 to 1946 (Canberra: Australian National University, 1995), 5-9. Numbers range from a low of 155 in the depression year 1931, to a high of 1,089 in 1916. In 24 of the 39 years the number of entrants fell in the median bracket of between 300 and 600. 93 Figures by year in ibid., 65-85; Ganter also points to an agreement struck in Queensland in 1902 – at the time the home to the largest Japanese migrant population – whereby the baseline numbers of the coloured workforce at that time could be maintained. See Ganter, Mixed Relations, 66. 94 See Introduction for an analysis of nominal claims to community membership, further examined in Chapter 2. 95 Census figures from Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 163. 57

Canada’s federal immigration restriction was less decisive than Australia’s had been in 1901, leaving more room for negotiation by Japan and Japanese migrants, and leading to the development of a larger and more permanent Nikkei community. While

British Columbia’s on-again-off-again immigration restriction shut most Japanese out of the nation in the first half of the decade, a gentlemen’s agreement between Japan and the U.S. in 1907 greatly restricted Japanese emigrants’ access to their preferred destination, and briefly increased the flow to Canada. In the nine months to March

1907, 2,042 Japanese migrants arrived and 7,601 more followed in the next year.96 This created unrest in British Columbia which led to the Vancouver riots.

Roy suggests that a combination of historic racism and economic fears heightened tensions in the Province through the first half of 1907.97 Ward notes that a meeting of the Asiatic Exclusion League on 7 September spilled out of City Hall and swept through Chinatown and the Japanese quarter. The mob began throwing stones and bottles through the windows of Asian business premises and residences causing thousands of dollars of damage.98 This caused the federal government to intervene, and begin to take more direct control of the immigration policy.

Canada sent Labour Minister to Japan to secure its own gentlemen’s agreement and this restricted Japanese migration to no more than 400 domestic and agricultural labourers per annum, in addition to the wives and children of those already present.99 Between 1909 and 1923 inclusive, Japanese arrivals to Canada averaged 622 per annum, the majority of whom were female.100 This short period

96 Figures from Superintendant of Immigration, Department of the Interior, Annual Reports, 1909-1917 and Dominion Department of Immigration and Colonization, Annual Reports, 1918-1923; from W.A. Carrothers, “Oriental Standards of Living,” in The Japanese Canadians, ed. H.A. Innes, 201-292 (New York: Arno Press, 1978); explanation in Charles H. Young and Helen R.Y. Reid, “The Japanese Canadians,” in The Japanese Canadians, ed. Innes, 3-198, 8-9. 97 Roy, A White Man’s Province, 1990, 185-192 98 Ward, White Canada Forever, 68-9 99 Young and Reid, The Japanese Canadians, 9-12, 202. 100 Figures from ibid., 17, 202-3. 58

allowed the development of a Canadian Nikkei community different to Australia’s in one vitally important aspect – it consisted of men, women and children, and developed a self replacing intergenerational presence. This was increasingly important both formally and in terms of popular perception, as native born generations automatically became

British subjects, many of whom knew no home other than Canada, and this troubled the notional alienage applied to Canadian Nikkei before the war.

Japanese migration to Canada was halted part-way through the 20th century in line with a more general closing of Canada in the wake of its first true immigration boom.101 Between 1896 and 1914, Canada admitted over 3,000,000 migrants, a development which encountered some resistance, and preceded a tightening of immigration law.102 In 1906 Canada’s Immigration Act was updated with the aim, according to Interior Minister Frank Oliver, of giving Cabinet discretionary power “to deal with undesirable immigrants.”103 The Immigration Act 1910 introduced race into the legislation, requiring immigrants to possess a minimum amount of money which

“may vary according to the[ir] race,” and prohibiting the landing of immigrants

“belonging to any race deemed unsuited to the climate or requirements of Canada.”104

Another update in 1919 brought Canada into line with the Australian model, requiring migrants to take a literacy test to in English, French, “or some other language or dialect.”105 It also, almost incomprehensibly, restricted the landing of

101 Canada averaged 200,000 migrants per annum between 1903 and 1913, with a high of 400,870 in 1913: figures from Ryder, “Racism and the Constitution,” 668; Hawkins puts the number of non-French continental European immigrants allowed into Canada between 1896 and 1914 at about 500,000: Hawkins, Critical Years in Immigration, 4. 102 Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 109. 103 The Immigration Act (1906) (Can.); Oliver quoted in Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 135. 104 The Immigration Act (1910) (Can.); provisions 37 and 38(c). 105 An Act to amend The Immigration Act (1919) (Can.); Colonial Government Journals, Library and Archives Canada, 97. Viewed at Early Canadiana Online, accessed 11 December 2007, http://www.canadiana.org/ECO/PageView/9_08048/0002?id=53cdaab353693ce4. 59

Immigrants belonging to any nationality or race or of immigrants of any specified class or occupation, by reasons of any economic, industrial or other condition temporarily existing in Canada or because such immigrants are deemed unsuitable having regard to the climatic, industrial, social, educational, labour or other conditions or requirements of Canada or because such immigrants are deemed undesirable owing to their peculiar customs, habits, modes of life and methods of holding property, and because of their probable inability to become readily assimilated or to assume the duties and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship within a reasonable time after their entry.106

Restrictive policy was further defined by the Chinese Immigration Act 1923 (popularly known as the Chinese Exclusion Act) which ended immigration from China, and was soon followed by Order in Council P.C. 182 of 1923, which excluded “any immigrant of any Asiatic race” although there were some exceptions.107 Renegotiated gentlemen’s agreements in 1923 and 1928 first reduced, then almost halted Japanese migration until after the war.108

Canada and Japan also kept a formal diplomatic distance in the first decades of the 20th century, which aside from the gentlemen’s agreements, bore a similarity to the pre-war Australia-Japan relationship.109 As in Australia, trade developed between

Canada and Japan, but this was not paralleled by any notable diplomatic advance.

Canada lobbied against an extension of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1921, and apart from a brief period between the exchange of diplomats in 1928, and Japan’s increasing

106 Immigration Act 1919; Hawkins, Critical Years in Immigration, 17, 29. A modification to the gentlemen’s agreement with Japan continued to allow the immigration of 150 Japanese labourers (plus their families) from 1923, but this was capped at a total of 150 including family in 1928, and this number was not reached until after the war. 107 Hawkins, Critical Years in Immigration, 20 108 Yuko Ohara, “J.W. Dafoe and Japanese-Canadian Relations during the 1920s,” trans. Peter Currie, in Canada and Japan in the Twentieth Century, ed. John Schultz and Kimitada Miwa, 60-74 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1991). 109 Canada advised against extending the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1921, and although the two countries exchanged ambassadors in 1928, relations soured after Japan’s attacks on China in the early 1930s, and distrust grew as war approached. See Gregory A. Johnson, “Canada and the Far East During the 1930s,” in Canada and Japan in the Twentieth Century, ed. Schultz and Miwa, 111-125; ibid., 70-71; On Canadian diplomatic relations with Japan see John D Meehan, The Dominion and the Rising Sun: Canada Encounters Japan, 1929-41 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004) 60

aggression in Asia in the early 1930s, diplomatic relations were cool.110 Nevertheless, the Canadian Nikkei community was undergoing internal developments in parallel to these formal politics, which became increasingly important. The entry of women led to the creation of stable family units, and by the 1930s, the Nikkei community included many native born Canadians who were arguing for social inclusion.111 This community continued to grow by immigration and natural increase through the first decades of the

20th century, from 8,587 in 1911, to 15,006 in 1921, and 22,205 in 1931, at which number it roughly remained until the outbreak of the war.112

The relationships between Australia, Canada and the Japanese within the development of non-European immigration restriction were complicated affairs informed by respect and fear. In Australia, Japan and the Japanese were afforded the concessions of passport reform, the removal of offending legislative language, and the

C.E.D.T system. This allowed for the development of a small Nikkei community, which nevertheless retained some of the attributes of a transitory migrant presence, comprised largely of working men. In Canada, Japanese migration was governed by gentlemen’s agreements, which allowed for the creation of a very different sort of community, having a gender balance and developing an intergenerational presence. In both cases, this treatment reflected Japan’s diplomatic power, military strength, and (although this was not necessarily respected in the Dominions) its status as an ally of Britain in the first decades of the 20th century.

Internal exclusion

110 Johnson, “Canada and the Far East During the 1930s”, 111-125 111 Toyo Takata, Nikkei Legacy: The Story of Japanese Canadians from Settlement to Today (Toronto: NC Press Limited, 1983), 21-24. 112 Figures in Ward, White Canada Forever, 171. 61

Despite Japan’s ability to win concessions on behalf of its migrants enabling the establishment of Nikkei communities, Australia and Canada remained resistant to attempts that these groups made to integrate. In denying non-Europeans access to important aspects of national civic life, Australia and Canada created a second tier of citizens who were not able to engage with wider national communities in the way that more desirable subjects were. This section will examine the substantive rights that

Nikkei possessed and were denied in pre-war Australia and Canada, examining how this affected claims to national membership.

Galligan, Roberts and Trifiletti indicate that Australian nationhood was

“evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and Australian citizenship [was] developmental.”113 The new Australian Commonwealth had avoided direct mention of citizenship and rights at the in its Constitution, deliberately leaving substantive measures for the parliament to determine.114 A range of proscriptive and rights based pieces of legislation passed by the new Commonwealth began to define the scope of the national community. In addition to the Immigration Restriction Act, which guarded the nation’s borders, several centrally important acts began to define the Australian community in terms of colour, and restrict the participatory citizenship of non-whites.

The influence of racial labour agitation on early federal legislation has been noted elsewhere, and this influence in reflected in early laws like the Post and

Telegraph Act 1901, which permitted only “white labour” to carry Australian mail, and the Pacific Islander Labourers Act 1901, which legislated for the deportation of Pacific

Islanders.115 In 1902 the Commonwealth Franchise Act historically gave white women the vote, but disenfranchised aboriginal natives of Australia, Asia, Africa, and the

113 Brian Galligan, Winsome Roberts and Gabriella Trifiletti, Australians and Globalisation: The Experience of Two Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 35. 114 Ibid., 75. 115 Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 155; Tavan, The long, slow death of white Australia, 18-19. 62

Islands of the Pacific except New Zealand.116 The Naturalization Act 1903 (Cth) barred the same groups from naturalisation, with parliamentary debates indicating a desire to prevent “80,000 coloured aliens” resident in the Commonwealth from becoming British subjects.117 The Invalid and Old Age Pensioner Act 1908 denied state benefits to non- whites with the interesting exception of New Zealanders and “Asiatics…born in

Australia.”118 This unusual concession was made at a time that Bennett has identified as one of particular diplomatic tension in the aftermath of Japan’s military victory over

Russia, and was enacted around the time that the U.S. and Canada signed gentlemen’s agreements.119 In 1912 the Maternity Allowance Act did not extend its provisions to

Aboriginal or Asiatic women.120

This body of legislation provides examples of the prominent exclusion of non-

Europeans from Australian political life. Their history also indicates that even where concessions were made (like in the pensions act above) these were balanced by executive administration which retained an extraordinarily tight grasp over all migration policy and Australia’s approach to its non-Europeans.121 For example, in the same year that Australia acknowledged the possibility that Australian born “Asiatics” had a claim to the pension, it also sought to curtail the development of a native born community. In

1908 the Japanese Consul asked the Secretary of External Affairs, Atlee Hunt, whether

Australia would consent to allowing Japanese working in Australia to bring their wives to the country. Hunt was adamant they could not, responding that

116 Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 (Cth), in National Archives of Australia, Documenting a Democracy, accessed January 18, 2008, http://foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/cth5i_doc_1902.pdf. 117 Senator Higgs quoted in Chesterman and Galligan, Defining Australian Citizenship, 49. 118 From Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 156; James Walter and Margaret MacLeod, The Citizenship Bargain (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2002), 91. 119 Bennett, “Japanese Emigration Policy,” 25. 120 Chesterman and Galligan, Defining Australian Citizenship, 210. 121 Ibid. 63

If the Japanese or people of any other race comment upon the inhumanity of separating husband and wife, the answer is easy. We have no wish for them to be separated, and in fact we would prefer to see them united…but in their own country, not ours.122

Hunt claimed that as any children born from such unions in Australia would be British subjects, such exclusion was necessary for “our very existence.”123 Yarwood indicates the strictness with which this policy was administered, citing figures that indicate that about 95 percent of the “Chinese,” “Japanese” and “Indian” populations resident in

Australia before the war were male.124

Within a few short years of the establishment of the Commonwealth, the

Australian Government ensured that those non-Europeans who had gained entry into the country were unable to become naturalised, vote, draw a pension, or work in certain industries. Racial attributes dictated that they did not possess the basic political currency that would enable them to engage with political communities or access welfare, and made the development of family units difficult. Applied to Nikkei, these policies meant that by the time the war broke out, the community comprised of a just 1,139 individuals, of whom only 132 were women, and, it is estimated, about 100 were Australian-born.125

In Canada, provincial and federal anti-Oriental legislation similarly excluded

Canadian Nikkei from national life, but again, the demographics of this community

122 Hunt quoted in Chesterman and Galligan, Defining Australian Citizenship, 35. 123 Ibid. 124 Yarwood and Knowling cite populations of 30,542 Chinese (98 percent male), 3,554 Japanese (94 percent male) and 4,681 Indian (99 percent male) in 1901; 22,753 Chinese (96 percent male), 3,489 Japanese (94 percent male), 3653 Indian (96 percent male) in 1911 and 17,157 Chinese (93 percent male), 2,740 Japanese (93 percent male), 3,150 Indian (94 percent male) in 1921. Yarwood and Knowling, Race Relations in Australia, 237. 125 This is the estimate among the interned population offered by Nagata, but O’Brien has identified 45 Australian born internees, and as acknowledged elsewhere, Nagata notes that up to a further 123 individuals may have been Australian born. See Yuriko Nagata, “Certain Types of Aliens: The Japanese in Australia 1941-1952,” in Relationships: Japan and Australia, 1870s-1950s, ed. Vera Mackie and Paul Jones, 217-39 (Parkville: University of Melbourne, 2001), 220, 223; O’Brien has only identified 45 Australian born among a total of 1,114 of “Japanese origin” interned, in “Citizenship, Rights and Emergency Powers,” 216. 64

allowed it opportunities to resist that Australian Nikkei did not enjoy.126 British

Columbia’s disenfranchising law was challenged by Tomey Homma, who unsuccessfully applied to have his name put on the electoral roll, then challenged his rejection through the courts.127 He won an appeal at the Canadian Supreme Court but lost when the Privy Council subsequently found that being a British subject did not imply a right to the franchise.128 In 1909 Saskatchewan also denied the franchise to

“Asiatics,” although few Nikkei lived in the province at the time. In 1920, the Federal

Dominions Election Act barred anyone who could not vote in provincial elections because of race from voting federally.129 The exclusion from voting rolls meant that

Asian Canadians were also barred from activities which held enrolment as a prerequisite, such as voting in municipal elections, voting for school boards, and serving on juries.130 Exclusion from the voting rolls also prevented Asian Canadians from obtaining a liquor license, being a member of the B.C. Law Society, practicing pharmacy or being employed on B.C. public works.131 Additionally, the elderly could not apply for admission to B.C. retirement homes.132 Nikkei were not granted the franchise until 1949, meaning that all of these restrictions and exclusions to community engagement remained in place for several years after the Canadian government

126 It should be noted that several hundred Nikkei lived in Alberta at the outbreak of the war and were not subject to B.C.’s provincial discriminations. But 95% of all Nikkei did live in B.C. which left them disenfranchised, and closely collocated. Anne and David Sunahara, “The Japanese in Alberta”, in Peoples of Alberta: Portraits of Cultural Diversity, eds. David and Tamara Palmer. (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1985) 127 Takata, Nikkei Legacy, 63-64; Geiger-Adams, Andrea. ‘Writing Racial Barriers into Law: Upholding B.C.’s Denial of the Vote to its Japanese Citizens, Homma v. Cunningham, 1902’ Louis Fiset and Gail M. Nomura, eds., Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005): 20-43 128 Ward, White Canada Forever, 55; Peter Prince, “We Are Australian – The Constitution and Deportation of Australian Born Children,” Law and Bills Digest Group, Department of the Parliamentary Library, Research Paper no. 3 200304 (November 24, 2003). 129 Tarnopolsky, “Discrimination and the Law in Canada,” 221; Dominions Election Act (1920) (Can.). 130 Tarnopolsky, “Discrimination and the Law in Canada,” 222-23. 131 Ibid. 132 Ibid. 65

acknowledged the citizenship claims of Canadian Nikkei, and two years after this was officially acknowledged in the Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947.

In Canada and Australia, federal legislation curtailed the ability of Nikkei and other non-white residents to behave as citizens. After allowing several thousand individuals entry into their territory, they refused to grant them permission to engage in the acts of participatory citizenship which signified national membership. In both states, denial of the franchise was a central strategy, reinforced by associated regulation. In

Australia, this was underpinned by the ongoing reach of the C.E.D.T. system, and associated racial legislation. In Canada, it was reinforced by regulations which excluded individuals from social opportunity on the basis of disenfranchisement. The racial basis of the exclusions meant that even where other connections were established, or native born generations emerged, the underlying causes of these exclusions remained.

Australian Nikkei

Behind stark exclusionary legislation, however, lay a much more complex reality.

Nagata, Oliver, Meaney and Jones indicate that in spite of formal exclusions faced by

Australian Nikkei, their behaviours and interactions often demonstrate an acceptance on local levels, presenting the conflict between their quotidian realities and formal status.133 Oliver argues that Australian Nikkei are better characterised as “citizens without certificates” than “enemy aliens” in the years before 1947, and Jones sees early

Nikkei as pioneering migrants whose presence was integral to the development of

133 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 15-32; Pam Oliver, “A Matter of Perspective: two Australian-Japanese families’ encounters with white Australia, 1888-1946,” in Unexpected Encounters: Neglected histories behind the Australia-Japan relationship, ed. Michael Ackland and Pam Oliver, 113-34 (Victoria: Monash University Press, 2007); Meaney, Towards a New Vision, 80-82; Jones, Number 2 Home. 66

Australia.134 Although the Australian Nikkei community largely comprised of working males when the war broke out, it did contain many long term residents, and others connected to Australia by marriage, birth or family.135 The small amounts of information available about this community do not paint a picture of the foreign allied

“Japanese” community that the Australian government formally resisted before the war, and acted against during it, but rather an immigrant community attempting to establish itself in Australia.

Australia’s pre-war Nikkei community worked in dozens of industries, but the major employers were the pearling and diving industries in Broome and Thursday

Island, the cane fields in Queensland, and importing/exporting in Sydney, and

Melbourne.136 The dominance of Japanese workers in the pearling industry was established in the late part of the 19th century, and the industry had gotten around the states’ attempts to restrict Japanese labour by parking ownership in the names of

Europeans and staffing their operations with Japanese workers.137 Pearling masters’ determination to use Japanese labour either in or outside Australia, to access beds at the edge of Australia’s territorial waters led to the issuance of many C.E.D.T.s and the

134 Oliver, “Citizens without certificates or enemy aliens?”; Jones, Number 2 Home, 196. 135 Nagata has claimed that the 335 “Japanese” counted by the Australian census of 1947 included 69 individuals released during the war (most of whom were long term residents released because of old age and infirmity), 134 who were allowed to remain after security examination (primarily Australian born or married to Australians) and “sons who were fighting for Australia or those not interned for various reasons.” In addition there were a number of Japanese migrants (230, in the estimation of Director General of Security Longfield Lloyd) who had been resident in Australia for decades who were deported in 1946, and other Australian born Nikkei who were sent to Japan by their parents in the years preceding the war. See Nagata, “Certain Types of Aliens,” 226; Longfield Lloyd to Secretary of External Affairs (January 24, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5; Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 28. 136 Jones lists 78 known professions as occupations in which Japanese in Western Australia were involved before 1942 in Number 2 Home, 199 (appendix 3). Other information and accounts of the work and occupations of Nikkei is contained in D.C.S. Sissons, Australian-Japanese Relations: the first phase, 1859-1891 (Canberra: Australian National University, 1971), 8-22; Oliver, “A Matter of Perspective,” 117-18; Yuriko Nagata, “Lost in space: ethnicity and identity of Japanese-Australians, 1945 to the 1960s,” in Changing histories: Australia and Japan, ed. P. Jones and Pam Oliver (Clayton: Monash University Press, 2001), 85-90. 137 Ganter, Mixed Relations, 64. 67

continued dominance of Japanese migrants in the industry post-Federation.138 Large numbers of Japanese migrants also worked on the sugar cane fields in Queensland, this population arising on account of racial theories that thought whites incapable of working in the tropics, and the discouragement of the use of Pacific Islander slave labour.139 While these were the most popular occupations, Oliver argues that the “centre of power” of the Australian Nikkei community was in Sydney.140 She notes that by the

1920s, Sydney was home to more than 40 Japanese-Australian firms who traded throughout Australasia.141 The importance of these industries, and the expertise of the

Japanese migrants and Nikkei central to them gave opportunities to individuals to establish a range of connections within Australia through the first decades of the 20th century.

The lack of institutionally developed communities, and organs like Australian-

Japanese newspapers, make it difficult to offer a structural overview of how the

Australian Nikkei community perceived itself or its relationship with Australia. Nagata has made the point that unlike in Canada and other destinations, the Australian Nikkei community

was small and widely distributed, so Japanese schools, newspapers and other formal trappings of community life did not exist in Australia.142

Japanese labour was used in individual industries and remote places, and a wider community understanding of the role that the small Japanese population played in

138 Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 96-98; Yarwood and Knowling, Race Relations in Australia, 245; also Yuriko Nagata, “The Japanese in Torres Strait,” in Navigating Boundaries: The Asian Diaspora in Torres Strait, ed. Anna Shnukal, Guy Ramsay and Yuriko Nagata, 138–159 (Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2004), 138. 139 Ibid., 21. 140 Pam Oliver, “Japanese Relationships in White Australia: The Sydney Experience to 1941,” History Australia 4 (2007): 05.3, accessed October 20, 2009, http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/pdf/10.2104/ha070005. 141 Oliver, Raids on Australia, 83. 142 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 28-29. 68

Australia never developed. Nevertheless, the work of Oliver and Jones indicates that the relationships established were varied and complicated, and not adequately reflected by either the formal exclusions of the time, or the popular narratives of the post-war period.143 In Jones’ words, these people were not the “prostitutes, pearlers and pimps of popular fiction,” but rather “pioneers who made a significant contribution to the development [of a nation that was]…only too willing to accept their expertise and labour.”144 The examples cited by Oliver and Jones indicate the lengths to which some

“Japanese” went in order to demonstrate their connections to Australia, and the ways in which these attempts at inclusion were received.

Jones presents the social histories of dozens of “families, farmers and fishermen, entrepreneurs and itinerants” who made up the early Australian Nikkei.145 She cites the varied occupations (including laundry work, housekeeping, dressmaking and storekeeping) of some 260 women resident in Australia through the first decades of the

20th century.146 She writes of Australian born and educated subjects like Rita Fukuda, who left for Japan in 1941 with her husband to find work during a downturn in Broome, and was subsequently excluded from Australia until the 1950s.147 She notes the history of the respected Japanese doctors in Broome from 1910 to 1923 who provided a vital service to the community and were accepted by everyone, it would seem, other than one white doctor who complained about losing business.148 She notes marriages between

Japanese men and women, as well as unions between Japanese men and European or

Aboriginal women.149 Through these and many other examples, Jones’ work indicates that early Japanese migration comprised of not just economic mercenaries seeking to

143 The works I primarily refer to here are Oliver’s Raids on Australia; “Japanese Relationships in White Australia” and “A Matter of Perspective” and Jones’ Number 2 Home. 144 Jones, Number 2 Home, 196. 145 Ibid., 195. 146 Ibid., 61-62. 147 Ibid., 65-71. 148 Ibid., 76-84. 149 Ibid., 155-74. 69

engage in short term working holidays, but enterprising and interested individuals who engaged with Australia to the extent that they were able under its formal exclusionary policies.

Several of Oliver’s more expansive examinations, while arguably focussing on exceptional individuals, indicate the extent to which some Nikkei were able to establish connections to Australia, but also the strength of Australia’s desire to ignore these connections. Oliver tells the story of Jiro Muramatsu, the son of one of Australia’s earliest Japanese pearlers, who was one of the few Japanese migrants to obtain naturalisation in pre-Federation Victoria, and how (in a parallel to the cases of naturalised Canadian Nikkei) this formal status did not correspond with an extension of full citizenship rights and status.150 Muramatsu arrived in Broome in 1893, aged 14, to work with his father. Eighteen months later he was sent to Melbourne to attend St

Francis Xavier College, where he was a popular and successful student. He applied for naturalisation in 1899, was initially rebuffed, then accepted on 17 June 1899 after

Alexander Marks, Honorary Consul for Japan, intervened on his behalf.

In 1901 Western Australia withdrew his franchise, which Jones interprets as a virtual loss of citizenship.151 Muramatsu nevertheless continued to seek acceptance as a

British subject, distancing himself from Japanese companies, choosing to trade through

British and German interests, and doing his banking with the Union Bank of Australia.

In 1923, he managed to have his name reinstated on the Western Australian electoral roll, then took a challenge to the High Court to attempt to gain access to the

Commonwealth franchise. The law by which he was denied restricted voting by

“aboriginal natives of Australia, Asia, Africa or Islands of the Pacific,” and Muramatsu

150 Oliver, “A Matter of Perspective,” 119-26. Information on Muramatsu is taken from this source unless otherwise noted. 151 Jones, Number 2 Home, 28. 70

argued that as he was not Ainu, he was not an aboriginal inhabitant of Japan.152 This enterprising challenge was dismissed by the Court, which responded that “aboriginal native” was intended from a “European perspective”, reinforcing the racial basis of the exclusionary law.153 In 1932, Muramatsu complained about the discriminatory treatment meted out to him when seeking to transfer permits for his workers to move from one ship to another, which appeared to be a simple process for white applicants.154 He pressed his case logically and legally, asking why the government chose to “make distinctions between white British race and naturalised British subjects.”155 A successful man, resident in Australia for over half a century, Muramatsu lobbied and legally fought for acceptance as a British subject, in a way that few Australians have ever had to. His business interests were stymied, his national identity removed, and his vote taken away from him. When the war broke out he was interned – as a “Japanese” in Australia over

16 years of age – and he died in camp within two years.156

Oliver also recounts the lives of Hirokichi Nakamura, Kenji Hirodo and Thomas

Nagai.157 Nakamura was another pre-Federation immigrant, who married an Australian, had three Australian daughters and was admittedly a “good citizen.” Hirodo was an

Australian born boy who went to Japan in 1938, greeted the Australian Occupation force with an Australian accent, and was allowed back into the country of his birth in

1949. Nagai had been Dame Nellie Melba’s butler, married an Australian woman, and attempted to naturalise in 1915 and again in 1931. Oliver’s accounts indicate that a range of personal and social relationships existed between Nikkei and other Australian subjects before the war, but also that these were not supported by any formal

152 Ibid., 28-29. 153 Oliver, “A Matter of Perspective,” 125. 154 Correspondence indicates that the Secretary of Home Affairs’ position was “to refuse this present application and give [Muramatsu] as much trouble as possible.” Oliver, “A Matter of Perspective,” 122. 155 Jiro quoted in ibid. 156 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 238. 157 These and other examples in Oliver, Raids on Australia, 162-83. 71

acknowledgement or evolution in the blanket exclusions and restrictions applied to them. They did not have the weight of numbers, geographical concentration, or social and political organisation to be able to alter their formal alienage before the war,

While there was local support for individual Japanese over the years, the fact that the national policy was so restrictive meant that communities and their supportive infrastructure could not develop. Australia’s monoculturalism meant that individual exceptions and day-to-day understandings remained just that, and the hundreds of individuals who were long term residents, Australian born, or married to Australians were not formally accepted as Australians. The most exceptional among this number were unable to exercise the franchise or otherwise engage the political community. This situation was acceptable (or at least tolerable) to many individuals between the wars, and did not greatly exercise the minds of policymakers who indicated the undesirability of these communities and watched their numbers slowly dwindle. But when the war broke, and Japan became a feared enemy, the perceived alliance of many Nikkei to

Japan meant that their status as outsiders within had become untenable.

Canadian Nikkei

The Canadian Nikkei community was able to establish itself relatively more securely than its counterpart in Australia throughout the early years of the 20th century, despite the continued existence of exclusionary legislation. The basis for much of this was demographic differences. Young and Reid split the pre-war arrival of Japanese immigration into three stages.158 The first, from 1885 to 1910, was characterised by the preponderance of males (about 90 percent of the total) who were primarily seasonal

158 Young and Reid, “The Japanese Canadians,” 16-17. 72

labourers. The second, over the following decade, saw the arrival of wives and “picture brides” – a practice by which single Japanese men sent home for wives that they met and corresponded with by pictures and letters – and the gender ratio was more balanced.

In the third period, between 1921 and 1931, women immigrants outnumbered men by almost two-to-one. By 1931, when pre-war Japanese immigration all but ceased, the ratio of Japanese women to men in Canada was about seven to ten, marking a differentiation from other Asian migrant groups in Canada (and Australia) which remained largely comprised of single male labourers.159 The creation of more socially acceptable family units and a higher than average birth rate differentiated Canadian

Nikkei, creating the perception that they were “bona fide immigrants…with the intention of remaining in the country.”160

The children of Japanese migrants presented new opportunities for integration.

As Takata notes, a critical mass of stable family settlements led to the formation of

Japanese schools in Canada, assembly halls and religious organisations, creating the possibility for cultural continuity outside of Japan.161 Japanese children also enrolled in public schools, where they reportedly had good relationships with teachers and pupils at the local level.162 As Japanese children got older, however, they encountered diminishing educational opportunities and returns, reflecting the decades of legislation and social regulation that locked them out of many professions. By 1942, only 72 male and 14 female Canadian Nikkei had graduated from the University of B.C, but even these few were not guaranteed any professional recognition.163 Thomas Shoyama, who

159 Young and Reid, “The Japanese Canadians,” 17, 204. In 1931, there were 24,624 “Chinese” males in B.C. and 2,264 females. At the same time there were 13,262 “Japanese” males and 9,448 females. 160 Ibid., 31; Ward quotes an annual birth rate for Japanese Canadians during the 1920s and 1930s between two and four times the norms in B.C.: Ward, White Canada Forever, 110; Roy notes the different way that Chinese and Japanese migrant communities were seen in Canada from before World War I. See Roy, A White Man’s Province, 5-7. 161 Takata, Nikkei Legacy, 21. 162 Ibid. 163 Ibid., 23. 73

graduated with honours in commerce and economics in 1938, was unable to find employment in the business world, and worked in a pulp mill before he became the editor of the New Canadian.164

The development of social infrastructure and youthful Canadian born generations did not alter structural discrimination in the pre-war years. Examples cited by Nikkei who lived through the era and their children, as well as academic observers at the time and since have indicated the difficult circumstances that Nikkei faced. Omatsu writes of the fact that her father was paid half the amount that whites were for the same work in Vancouver before the war, and the way he fantasised about living in certain neighbourhoods where “Orientals” were forbidden.165 Citing several community figures deserving of acknowledgement, she notes, for example, that Tomey Homma died in

1945, four years before the struggle he began was successfully concluded; and Ryuichi

Yoshida, a Japanese lawyer who laboured in Canada and became an organiser for the

Japanese fisherman’s union, also died before seeing decades of discrimination slowly addressed.166 Takata tells the story of the 196 Nikkei who were allowed to fight for

Canada during World War I, and the survivors, who were given the franchise about 12 years after their return from the battlefield.167 These sorts of stories, which indicate a range of connections and the struggle for inclusion were not just popularly rediscovered through archival sources like in Australia, but were studied and reported on at the time by academics in Canada.

Forrest La Violette and H.F. Angus were British Columbia academics whose contributions will be examined in following chapters. The work of Young and Reid,

164 Ann Gomer Sunahara, The Politics of Racism: The Uprooting of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War (Toronto: James Lorimer and Co., 1981), 5. 165 Maryka Omatsu, Bittersweet Passage: Redress and the Japanese Canadian Experience (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1992), 42-43. 166 Ibid., 58-60. 167 Takata, Nikkei Legacy, 38-39. 74

published by the University of Toronto in 1938 questioned “the essentially un-rational character” of the racial agitation in British Columbia.168 They painted broad portraits of individuals in typical to various industries in Canada, generally noting financial difficulties they faced, but also their desire for acceptance. For example, the “Steveston fisherman…plans to live in Canada and as evidence of his intentions, he and all the members of his family have joined the Japanese Christian church;” the “Ucluelet fisherman…has been back to Japan once in twenty-six years to see his people, but has no intention of returning to stay there permanently;” “The Lumberman…thinks of

Canada as home;” and the “Fraser Valley farmer[’s]…ties to the homeland have weakened”.169

La Violette noted that by the mid 1930s, the younger generation of Nikkei began to take leadership positions in the community and undertake a process of “self- scrutinization.”170 By 1934, there existed 230 Japanese community organisations, made up of individuals who, according to Omatsu, increasingly saw their interests aligned with the wider Canadian community rather than relatives in Japan.171 In 1936, the

Japanese Canadian Citizens League was formed, and travelled to Ottawa to seek the franchise.172 In 1938, the New Canadian – dubbed the “Voice of the Second

Generation” – became the first English language Japanese newspaper published in

Canada.173 By 1940, Japanese language school Principals were acknowledging the public school system as the main educational component for Nikkei children, and that

168 Young and Reid, “The Japanese Canadians,” 193. 169 Young and Reid, “The Japanese Canadians,” 61-64. 170 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 15. 171 Omatsu, Bittersweet Passage, 57. 172 Ibid., 24. 173 Ibid., 36. The Canada Shimpo and Taikiku (established 1907) and the Minshu (established 1924) were Japanese-language Canadian papers already in circulation, indicating the institutional development of Japanese Canada, as well as its maturation as a dynamic part of Canadian culture with the emergence of the New Canadian. 75

Japanese language instruction should be tied to Canadian citizenship.174 These actions were not successful in addressing official discrimination – Nikkei remained disenfranchised and publicly discriminated against – but they did establish normative claims to citizenship and community belonging.

As the community began developing a greater political awareness and presence, it was unfortunately affected by foreign affairs. Ward states that Japan’s increasing militarism from the mid 1930s preceded three waves of anti-Orientalism that swept through British Columbia in 1937-8, 1940, and 1941-2.175 Nikkei were presented as fifth columnists by legislators like MacGregor MacIntosh and A.W. Neill, and rumours of illegal immigration led to a public national enquiry in 1938-9, which fizzled out when none of the anti-Japanese agitators were able to produce any proof before the enquiry.176 Roy notes that this episode reinforced fearful narratives of unassimilability which had been present but dormant and this formed an unfortunate lead in to the war.177 A Nikkei community that had established a desire to become an integrated part of a wider Canadian society, and was developing the infrastructure which would allow this, was subjected to a resurgent popular racism before its claims to national membership were widely accepted.

Although the individual and community experiences of Canadian Nikkei present like a migrant community gradually integrating into their new society over a period of several generations, their acceptance as part of the wider national community was hampered by the fact that they were subject to a suite of ongoing anti-Asian legislation.

This meant that as the community matured, its native born generation was shut out of various professions, and unable to play a part in the political process. Canadian Nikkei

174 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 11. 175 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II ,142-44. 176 Ibid., 143-44. 177 Roy, The Oriental Question, 192-96. 76

retained a formal perception of alienage based on a racial difference which meant that they were unable to behave as full members of the Canadian national community, and retained what would be an increasingly troubling connection to Japan.

Conclusion

The pre-war histories of Nikkei in Australia and Canada are littered with confusions and inconsistencies, as each state struggled to understand the place that these groups occupied in their wider communities. Immigration restrictions, the denial of the franchise (in both states) and naturalisation (in Australia), and the inability to engage in various forms of employment were stark illustrations of the undesirability of non-

European subjects in both state. These structural barriers were compromised in

Australia by the C.E.D.T system and in Canada by the gentlemen’s agreements allowing for the creation of small communities of individuals of the sort that each nation was attempting to exclude. Nikkei were, in some ways, the most “acceptable” among a long list of undesirable potential migrants, subjects and citizens, which made them especially feared. At a time when racial hierarchies were very much part of the political calculus in

Canada and Australia, Japanese were seen as the most advanced Asian population, aligned with the one Asian power that had defeated a European nation in battle, and had the power to compromise British interests. This earned concessions for migrants at the same time as it raised suspicions of their potential impact. In a formal sense, neither

Australia nor Canada appeared able to deal with their fearful respect of Japanese and

Nikkei before the war.

Although these concessions were made, they were not accompanied by an extension of internal rights or formal acknowledgement. Australian and Canadian 77

Nikkei were subsequently excluded from social engagement on the basis of racial attributes, a condition unalterable by other demonstrable connections to the nation, or even the producing of native born generations. In spite of the contributions of exceptional individuals in each state, attempts at demonstrating loyalty and seeking inclusion were constantly denied by systems which saw “Japanese” as essentially foreign. Each state’s concept of racial nationalism made it difficult for them to acknowledge that the loyalty of Nikkei could lie anywhere other than with Japan. This placed Nikkei in a difficult position, particularly as central governments began to expand their administrative powers in an emergency setting.

Despite the fact that the majority of each community was made up of long term residents and citizens – most of whom fought to prove their loyalty and remain in both

Canada and Australia – the perception of alienage that Nikkei had retained overrode any considerations of individual justice in the minds of policymakers. Each state had for decades presided over an exclusionary regime which made it difficult for Nikkei to establish their credentials as loyal citizens when the war broke. In the aftermath of

Japan’s attacks in the Pacific in December 1941, the Canadian government responded to the claims of British Columbia agitators that Nikkei presented “a menace to the safety of Canada”, and Australia acted out of a fear of the “well known fanaticism” of its

Nikkei.178 These claims were not justified by rational security assessments (the

R.C.M.P., who were closer to the Japanese-Canadian community than any other security organisation, did “not anticipate any serious trouble in the event of outbreak of war” with Japan, and in Australia, Oliver finds that much intelligence was underpinned by

“racist theory and alarmist fiction”) and justified action which contravened previous

178 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 40; Australia’s internment policy of July 9, 1941, quoted and discussed in Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 49-50. 78

policy settings.179 They were, however, very much in the tradition of the decades long exclusionary policies pursued by each government.

For these reasons, Australia’s and Canada’s attempts to deport large segments of their Nikkei populations after World War II are presented in this thesis as the conclusion to a longer term exclusionary project. The deportations (achieved and attempted) mark a critical point in Canadian and Australian history. They can be seen as a highpoint in each state’s anti-Asian exclusion, where decades of an approach somewhere between bare tolerance and active resistance aggressively moved towards an end of physical removals. Against the context presented here, the failure to ultimately conclude this project of exclusion illustrated the incompatibility of the utopian white nationalism pursued by Canada and Australia, with the realities that would inform their post-war development.

179 “Japanese in Canada stats 1941-43,” Library and Archives Canada, RG25, G2, Central Registry “1940” series, vol. 2939, file 2997-40, pt 1; Pam Oliver, “Who Is One of Us? (Re)discovering the Inside- out of Australia's Japanese Immigrant Communities, 1901-1957,” Japanese Studies 22(3) (2002): 275. 79

Chapter 2 Legislating for the “repatriation” of the Nikkei

…in the Japanese cases there was nothing known against the bulk of them and they were interned merely because they were Japanese… —Commonwealth Investigation Service, Australia1

…the Prime Minister…inclines to the view that consideration should be given to sending to Japan as many persons of Japanese race as possible whatever their national status. —Department of Secretary of State, Canada2

Introduction

In the early 1940s, historical and political factors combined to reinforce, then extend the notion of alienage applied to the small Nikkei populations of Canada and Australia.

Previous waves of legislative and social exclusion in each polity had nurtured the idea that Nikkei were a “foreign” presence more closely allied to Japan than either Canada or

Australia, and as the threat of Japan increased before the war, this perceived alliance became more troubling. Nikkei as “outsiders within” were undesirable but tolerable before the war, but during moments of national crisis this status became unsustainable.

National borders needed to be redefined, and the Canadian and Australian governments sought to more completely exclude, and then reluctantly accept, different groups of

Nikkei.

This chapter examines the way that the executive governments of Canada and

Australia addressed the presence of Nikkei in each state during the war, and the complications that this presented to their pre-war ideas of citizenship and nationality.

Using extraordinary wartime powers, each government passed a series of emergency

1 Comment from Commonwealth Investigation Service file from a post war security review of Australia’s internment policy (August 23, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A373, 11505/48. 2 Secretary of State, External Affairs memo: “Repatriation of Japanese from Canada” (September 16, 1942), Wartime Records W.W.II, Library and Archives Canada, RG6, H4, vol. 811, file 2420. 80

laws and regulations which materially altered the position that Nikkei occupied in each nation. Canadian and Australian Nikkei were racially identified en masse at the time that Japan entered the war, then variously displaced, dispossessed, interned, and finally deported in their hundreds from Australia and thousands from Canada. In some ways, this was a logical extension of pre-war restrictions in a time of heightened national definition, but it was also an aggressive extension of the philosophy and practice of exclusion. While assertive pre-war legislative exclusion was based on restricting access to national goods like naturalisation and the franchise (preventing Nikkei from engaging as full and equal members of each national community), wartime exclusion physically incarcerated and displaced individuals, confiscated their property, removed livelihoods, then expelled large numbers of individuals from each national territory. In restricting the ability of Nikkei to live as free functioning subjects, such wartime action exacerbated tensions within existing racial-national liberalisms, requiring re- examinations of previously unquestioned national ideas.

Although Canada deported 3,964 individuals, and Australia 821, each state was required to modify elements of much more comprehensively imagined deportation policies, then justify the outcomes.3 Canada retained a post-war Nikkei population of

20,558, and Australia, a population of 335. The failure of each nation to exclude their most racially undesirable groups, while armed with extensive emergency authority, illustrated the beginning of the post-war decay of the white Canada and white Australia policies. As the distorting politics of wartime emergency faded, anti-Nikkei discrimination was perceived in a new light, framed by issues of citizenship rights rather than national security. This was not the end of anti-Japanese restriction in either nation, but the beginning of a slow process of national redefinition, whereby residents of

3 See Introduction footnote 11 for a justification of deportation numbers. 81

previously undesirable racial backgrounds were able to stake new claims to national membership.

The deportation policies not only failed to remove the Nikkei presence from each nation, they also necessitated historic legislative acknowledgements of those that could not be expelled. In stretching each nation’s concept of racial nationalism to its limit, and illustrating deficiencies in both cases, Canada and Australia’s compromises proved that even the most racially undesirable subjects were prospective and actual members of each national community. The post-war legislative acknowledgement that

Canadian Nikkei were Canadian Citizens, and that Australian Nikkei were permanent residents of Australia, set public precedents which were an important step on the path to each nation’s post-war reinvention.

In two parallel sections this chapter will conduct in depth examinations of the executive action undertaken by each government which heightened the identification of

Nikkei as undesirable subjects, gradually stripped them of civil liberties and deported a large number of each community. The focus is on executive and legislative administration of government, and although there are references to the judicial and popular action examined in coming chapters, these actions are used only for necessary context. The chapter begins by examining the bases for emergency government power established in each state, primarily through the Defence of Canada Regulations and the

Australian National Security Act which came into force as the war broke in September

1939. It also examines how, backed by discriminatory assumptions and questionable security assessments, each state began considering how its emergency power might be applied to its Nikkei populations long before Japan entered the war. Once the Pacific

War broke in December 1941, both Nikkei populations were subjected to extensive legislative restrictions which, although enacted in the name of security, can also be seen 82

as the final acts in a long progression towards deportation. These “final acts” are traced from late 1941 to the time of the deportations of 1946. This section then concludes with an examination of the incoherence that each executive was required to acknowledge, leading to an historic acceptance that the post-deportation Nikkei were a part of each national community.

Canada

Understanding the history of Canada’s wartime anti-Nikkei legislative action requires a contextualising review of state action from the late 1930s, some years before Japan entered the war. It was at this time that the Canadian Government began drafting emergency powers it believed necessary for the impending conflict, at the same time that it examined how these might be applied to Canada’s “Japanese” population. At the planning stage, it was clear that wide discretionary powers would be assumed by the

Government in any wartime situation, and some discussions indicate the intention to apply these with little discretion to the entire “Japanese” population of Canada on the basis of race.

Emergency legislation and early war action

Between April 1938 and July 1939, an interdepartmental committee examined the powers that Canada would require in case of war, and drafted regulations reflecting these requirements under the powers of the War Measures Act.4 This was an Act which had been on Canada’s statute books since World War I, which stated, in part, that in the

4 Daniel Robinson, “Planning for the ‘most serious contingency’: Alien Internment, Arbitrary Detention and the Canadian State 1938-39,” Journal of Canadian Studies 28(2) (1993). 83

case of “real or apprehended war” the Federal Cabinet had the power to make orders and regulations as it deemed “necessary or advisable for the security, defence, peace, order and welfare of Canada.”5 When Britain declared war on 3 September 1939, the

Canadian Government used this power to pass the Defence of Canada Regulations outlining the powers it intended to assume. These 64 regulations were broad but not prescriptive, and could be further amended or updated throughout the war as the

Government desired.6 Several of the more controversial regulations, which would become central to the plight of Canadian Nikkei, gave the Government extraordinary power to incarcerate individuals and blurred distinctions between Canadian nationals and foreigners. Regulations 21 and 22 allowed the Government to arrest “any particular person” suspected of “acting in a manner prejudicial to the public safety of the State,” while declaring such detention legal, and seeking to avoid habeas corpus proceedings.7

Regulations 24 and 26 allowed the government to act against aliens, naturalised citizens and others deemed a national threat. These initial Defence of Canada Regulations did not directly mandate the “anti-Japanese” action undertaken by regulatory power from late 1941, however the powers being assumed were obviously of some concern to marginal subjects with a history of discriminatory treatment. The unease with which

5 Canada, Defence of Canada Regulations (Consolidation) 1940 (Ottawa, J.O. Patenaude, I.S.O., printer to the King, 1940), regulation 3; discussion of the War Measures Act as it functioned during World War I in David Edward Smith, “Emergency Government in Canada,” The Canadian Historical Review 50 (1969); Lester H. Phillips, “Canada’s Internal Security,” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 12 (1946): 19. 6 Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 275. 7 Canada, Defence of Canada regulations (consolidation) 1940 (Ottawa, J.O. Patenaude, I.S.O., printer to the King, 1940). The first wartime regulations empowered the Cabinet to act in matters of “espionage, acts likely to assist the enemy, access to protected or prohibited places, control of means of communication, censorship, restriction on enemy aliens, sabotage, movements of ships and aircraft and generally public safety and order.” Discussions in Robinson, “Planning for the ‘most serious contingency’”; Robert Martin, “Notes on Emergency Powers in Canada,” University of New Brunswick Law Journal 54 (2005); Phillips, “Canada’s Internal Security,” 27; John Stanton, “Government Internment Policy, 1939-1945,” Labour / Le Travail 31 (1993); Herbert Marx, “Emergency Power and Civil Liberties in Canada,” The McGill Law Journal 16 (1970): 81; Edward Hudon, “The Status of Persons of Japanese Ancestry in the United States and Canada during World War II: A Tragedy in Three Parts,” Cahiers de Droit 18 (1977), 70; Patricia Peppin, “Emergency Legislation and Rights in Canada: The War Measures Act and Civil Liberties,” Queens Law Journal 18 (1993): 129-131. 84

Nikkei leaders viewed these developments was illustrated by the fact that as the war broke and these regulations were passed, Nikkei organisations made immediate and public pledges of loyalty to Canada and the Government.8

Although the powers assumed were sweeping, they were widely accepted in the early stages of the war. This was in part because of the existence of a new and real emergency, and in part because the new regulations were not used excessively in the immediate period. As an example of this acceptance, Toronto lawyer Andrew Brewin, who went on to become a central figure in the Canadian civil rights movements, argued in 1940 that

[t]here is no doubt that it has been found necessary to take steps which would be recognized in peacetime as involving serious inroads on civil liberties. It is also clear that so far at any rate these extraordinary powers have been used generally with moderation.9

Before long, however, they were being used to curb the activities of various undesirable groups in questionable or opportunistic ways. Jehovah’s Witnesses, The Canadian

Labour Defence League and The League for Peace and Democracy were among the organisations summarily banned under the power of the regulations.10 At the same time that undesirable religious and labour groups were banned, about 2,500 Germans and

Italians were interned in a process that Kelley and Trebilcock suggest was based on suspicion rather than investigation and evidence.11 The timing of the internment and release of ex-Europeans, which paralleled military developments in Europe (with the incarcerations occurring after Allied troubles and Italy’s engagement, and the releases

8 For example, the Japanese Canadian Citizens’ League wrote to the Prime Minister pledging “loyalty and devotion” immediately as the war was declared and the regulations passed. See “JCCL Pledges ‘Loyalty and Devotion’ to Canada in Wire,” New Canadian, September 8, 1939. 9 F.A. Brewin, “Civil Liberties in Canada During Wartime,” Bill of Rights Review 1 (1940): 121. 10 Marx, “Emergency Power and Civil Liberties in Canada,” 75-77; Robert Martin and G. Stuart Adam, A Sourcebook of Canadian Media Law, 2nd ed. (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1994), 190. 11 Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 279-81. 85

after a series of Allied victories in 1942 and 1943) indicated that the course of the war and issues of public morale also played a part in the early excessive uses of the regulations.12

The way that emergency powers were applied to undesirable elements with marginal (if any) connections to the prosecution of the war, and then to thousands of

German and Italian Canadians who were subsequently cleared of any wrongdoing, was indicative of the reach of the powers and the ease with which they could be abused.13

The fact that their use coincided with external developments indicated that populist and psychological reasons at the very least combined with security motives in their domestic use. These developments set precedents for the way that Canada’s emergency powers would be applied to Nikkei when Japan entered the war.

Discrimination, intelligence and Canadian Nikkei

A series of intelligence and political assessments from the late 1930s onwards make it clear that anti-Nikkei action was being considered by the Canadian Government some years before Japan entered the war. While anti Japanese/Nikkei planning is understandable on account of the cordial relations that Japan had with Germany and

Italy in the 1930s, the historic undesirability of Nikkei was reflected by the discriminatory treatment envisaged for them in comparison to ex-European enemy residents.14 It indicated that the historical animosity which Nikkei had faced in Canada

12 Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 279-81 13 R.C.M.P. reports of 1940-1946 indicate no instances of subversion or sabotage by German or Italian Canadians during the war. Quoted in ibid., 285. 14 The relationship is evident in treaties such as the Anti-Comintern Pact which the two nations signed in 1936, as well as the cordial relations developed particularly from the late 1930s. See Carl Boyd, “The Berlin Tokyo Axis and Japanese Military Initiative,” Modern Asian Studies 15 (1981). 86

in the pre-war decades had carried over into wartime planning, linking their long term treatment to the policies which eventually culminated in the deportations.

On 23 September 1938, about one year before Canada declared war on Germany, the

Committee on the Treatment of Aliens and Alien Property distinguished between apolitical prospective European “enemies”, and more dangerous Asians. It found

European enemy nationals to be “politically disinterested farmers and refugees, poorly educated, and generally unsympathetic to their former governments” against whom the government should “act cautiously”.15 This caution contrasted with the recommendation for

the internment of nearly all the Asiatic enemy nationals…not alone to avoid danger of espionage and sabotage, but also for the protection of the person and property of enemy aliens.16

Such an argument looked beyond any danger that “Asiatic enemy nationals” (i.e.,

Nikkei) posed directly, to focus on the possibility of their mere presence causing wider unrest. In early 1939, the Department of Defence concurred with this thinking, stressing the need for a “100 percent round-up” of “Japanese”, at the same time as it was considering the internment of about 25 percent of Italian and German Canadians.17

These decisions indicated that there was a fundamental difference between the way that intelligence and security agencies tended to perceive suspicious residents of European and Asian backgrounds. Ex-Europeans were presumed to be scrutable, and mostly loyal to Canada, whereas the Nikkei community universally presented a danger. On the basis of such evidence, Robinson has concluded that well before Pearl Harbor, “it was clear in

15 Robinson, “Planning for the ‘most serious contingency,’” 8. 16 First Interim Report of the Committee on the Treatment of Aliens and Alien Property (September 23, 1938), quoted in ibid., 10. 17 Ibid., 10. 87

the minds of government officials that the fate of Japanese enemy aliens would be met collectively.”18

The official discriminatory approach to Nikkei evident in these accounts was compounded by factually incorrect and strategically questionable intelligence reports produced as the war drew closer. In July 1940, the Canadian Government ordered a

Joint Services Committee to report on the possibility of an attack on its West Coast.19

Joint Services estimated that the Nikkei population of British Columbia numbered between “30-32,000” (an overestimation of about 40 percent), who were living in a number of “strategic and vulnerable areas”.20 It also divided the “Japanese” community into two groups – older immigrants who “have adopted this as their land permanently”, and the new generation who were “instilled with the superiority of the Japanese race by their education and convinced by these teachings that they are the ‘Chosen People’.” It concluded that the “greater danger lies among this [younger] class.”21 Given that subsequent official and scholarly examinations found the direct opposite – including a government publication which as early as 1945 stated that the younger generation spoke

English, had a “Canadian” outlook, and were intelligent, industrious, law-abiding citizens22 – the sort of early and powerfully defining opinions presented by Joint

Services appear to be based at least in part on historic prejudice rather than empirical knowledge or rigorous analysis.23

18 Robinson, “Planning for the ‘most serious contingency,’” 11. 19 Air Commodore A.E. Godfrey, Brigadier C.V. Stockwell and Commodore V.G. Brodeur, “Memorandum of the Joint Services Committee, Pacific Coast, on the matter of the defences of the Pacific Coast of Canada” (July 12, 1940), Library and Archives Canada, RG24, vol. 2730, HQS 5199 X. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 George Drummond, “British Columbia,” Canadian Affairs 2(1) (Ottawa: Edmond Cloutier, 1945). 23 There is evidence that, as early as January 1942, it was the youthful Canadian born Japanese who sought to work with the Government in order to exemplify their loyalty and minimise hardship for their community. See New Canadian articles quoted in Patricia E. Roy et al., Mutual Hostages: Canadians and Japanese during the Second World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 139; Ann Gomer Sunahara, The Politics of Racism (Toronto: James Lorimer and Co., 1981), 5-8; “A Record of the work of The Cooperative Committee on Japanese Canadians,” CCJC Summary of Activities 1943-1947, Library and Archives Canada, MG28, V1, vol. 2, 1. 88

Information which ultimately proved more reliable was unsurprisingly offered by sources closer to the Nikkei. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (R.C.M.P.), who were responsible for security in British Columbia and had kept the Nikkei community under surveillance since 1938, claimed that they did “not anticipate any serious trouble in the event of outbreak of war.”24 After consulting with community leaders, R.C.M.P.

Assistant Commissioner F.J. Mead reported on 21 August 1941 “that no fear from sabotage need be expected from the Japanese in Canada”.25 Mead’s contact with the

Canadian-Japanese Association also offered far more accurate information than the

Joint Committee about the size of the Nikkei community (it estimated about 23,000), as well as the extent of natural born and naturalized Canadians among this group (it estimated about 70 percent) as opposed to foreign nationals.26 The basic facts offered by the R.C.M.P. indicate how comparatively accurate their intelligence was, by one of the few quantifiable measures. Although the R.C.M.P. advanced a much clearer picture of the size and makeup of the Nikkei community, its conclusion that Canadian Nikkei did not pose a threat was difficult to carry in the shadows of war, given the history of anti-

Nikkei politics in British Columbia.27

In September 1941 a Joint Services Committee report specifically dealing with

“Persons of Japanese Origin,” continued to advocate anti-Nikkei action, but also began

24 “Japanese in Canada stats 1941-43,” Library and Archives Canada, RG25, G2, Central Registry “1940” Series, vol. 2939, file 2997-40, pt 1; Peter W. Ward, White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy Towards Orientals in British Columbia, 3rd ed. (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 146. 25 Ibid. 26 “Japanese in Canada stats 1941-43,” Library and Archives Canada, RG25, G2, Central Registry “1940” Series, vol. 2939, file 2997-40, pt 1. A series of telegrams between the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs in London, and External Affairs, Ottawa in 1941 and 1942 indicated the lack of accurate knowledge of the size and makeup of the Japanese community. Norman Robertson initially estimated a population of 15,500 (5,000 of whom were Canadian born) before being corrected by the R.C.M.P. and forwarding on correct figures; “Japanese in Canada stats 1941-43,” Library and Archives Canada, RG25, G2, Central Registry “1940” Series, vol. 2939, file 2997-40, pt 2. The 1941 Census reported a Japanese population of 23,060, of whom at least 14,073 were natural born Canadians, 12 were British citizens, 3,135 were naturalized Canadians, and 5,911 Japanese citizens. 27 Ward, White Canada Forever, 142-9. 89

to reflect on the problems that the exclusion of Nikkei could pose during the war.28 It still recommended the “evacuation of Japanese from important defence areas” and the confiscation of fishing boats in the case of an emergency, but it also questioned structural discrimination like the continued denial of the franchise to loyal Nikkei and the ban on “Japanese” enlisting in the armed forces.29 Joint Services pointed out the divergence that this presented compared to U.S. policy, and they felt that such exclusion made it difficult to promote loyalty and identify disloyal Nikkei. Having senior military figures critically consider the political implications of Nikkei exclusion indicates the tensions that anti-Nikkei policy was presenting, and the fact that complex political issues were considered along with security as Canada was making preparations for its wartime Nikkei policy.

The impending crisis raised new questions about how the marginal status of

Nikkei would impact on the nation during a time of emergency. But while the crisis situation suggested problems with the way Nikkei had historically been treated in

Canada, it did not present the ideal circumstances for addressing Nikkei grievances in a politically courageous way, and even as Joint Services noted problems with historical exclusion, it continued to advocate action, which further marginalised Canadian Nikkei.

There have subsequently been many interpretations of the appropriateness of decisions taken by Canada at this time. Granatstein and Johnson argue that the

Government’s early war policy is understandable, and claim that Canadian intelligence at this time was based on “improvisation and amateurism”; that Japan did pose a limited military threat to Canada in the first part of the war; and that the loyalty of “Japanese

28 “Memorandum of the Joint Services Committee, Pacific Coast, on the Subject of Dealing with Persons of Japanese Origin in the Event of an Emergency” (September 20, 1941), Library and Archives Canada, RG24, vol. 2730, HQS 5199 X. 29 Ibid. 90

Canadians” at that time remained questionable.30 On the other hand Sunahara has argued that the Government’s actions were based on political calculations and driven by the racist populism of a few prominent members, a position seemingly backed by the

Chief of General Staff, who wrote to his Vice-Chief at the beginning of the war that

“[f]rom the Army point of view, I can’t see how [Nikkei] constitute the slightest menace to national security.”31 Both arguments appear internally coherent, but when placed in the context of actions before and after initial policy formulation – including the prejudicial assumptions apparent in much of the intelligence, and the fact that discriminatory policies were not only embraced but extended beyond the time that

Granatstein and Johnson claim that Japan posed a threat – the suggestion remains that there was more than a ‘balance of probability’ security assessment driving anti-Nikkei action at this time. Wartime planning appeared to reflect a political culture conditioned to view Nikkei suspiciously.

1941-42: The disruption and displacement of Nikkei life and community

When Japan entered the war, the emergency powers drafted by the Government were marshalled against Canadian Nikkei almost immediately in ways reflective of long term anti-Nikkei agitation. By a series of executive orders, the Government identified the

(racial) foreignness of all Nikkei (despite the fact that many were acknowledged to be

Canadians by birth or naturalization), then mandated the removal of Nikkei from certain industries and geographic areas which had historically been contentious. These actions,

30 J.L. Granatstein and Gregory A. Johnson, “The Evacuation of the Japanese Canadians: A Realist Critique of the Received Version,” in On Guard for Thee: War, Ethnicity and the Canadian State 1939- 1945, ed. Norman Hillmer, Bohdan Kordan and Lubomyr Luciuk, 101-29 (Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services, 1988), 104-06. 31 Sunahara, The Politics of Racism; Ken Stuart quoted in Yon Shimizu, The Exiles: An Archival History of the World War II Japanese Road Camps in British Columbia and Ontario (Wallaceburg: Shimizu Consulting and Publishing, 1993), 203. 91

prominently applied to the entire Nikkei community and backed by the power of wartime authority, clearly marked Nikkei as undesirable, and compromised the ongoing stability of Nikkei life in Canada.

On 7 and 8 December, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hong Kong and other parts of South-East Asia and the Pacific, heralding the beginning of the . These attacks, widely described as both “surprising” and “treacherous,” confirmed for many the validity of their unease with domestic Nikkei.32 The Canadian Government reacted immediately, passing order-in-council P.C. 9596 of 7 December requiring the compulsory registration of all persons of Japanese nationality.33 On 16 December

(perhaps after discovering that individuals “of Japanese nationality” comprised only about one-quarter of the total Nikkei population) P.C. 9761 was passed, requiring the registration of all members of the “Japanese race”.34 This second order ignored the naturalisation and birthright citizenship possessed by the great majority of Nikkei, and identified the entire community as members of an enemy race. From this time, executive orders were directed at all racial “Japanese” in Canada, regardless of their national status.

Once the Nikkei community had been identified in this way, a further series of orders destroyed the long established patterns of Nikkei life on the B.C. coast. The one- third of all Nikkei who earned their livelihoods in the maritime and agricultural industries were compromised by a series of orders which confiscated “Japanese” owned boats, rescinded fishing licenses, and curtailed the acquisition of land and growing of

32 Christina Twomey, Australia’s Forgotten Prisoners: Civilians Interned by the Japanese in World War Two (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 6-7; Granatstein and Johnson, “The Evacuation of the Japanese Canadians,” 110. 33 Order-in-Council P.C. 9596 of December 7, 1941. All Orders-in-Council cited here are listed in Sources for the Study and Treatment of Japanese Canadians, rev. ed. (Library and Archives Canada: Ottawa, 1988). For many, this was a re-registration after an earlier voluntary process. 34 Order-in-Council P.C. 9761 of December 16, 1941; 1941 Census indicates that 27.7 percent of the Nikkei community were Japanese nationals: Canada, Report on the Re-Establishment of Japanese in Canada, 1944-1946 (Ottawa: Department of Labour, 1947), 28. 92

crops by Nikkei.35 These orders, among the first enacted by the Federal government after Japan entered the war, conveniently echoed restrictive legislative action and popular anti-Nikkei agitation emanating from British Columbia in the first half of the century in the fishing, lumbering and agricultural industries.36 According to Sunahara, these legislative restrictions set a precedent which was followed by the private sector, and saw Nikkei discharged from other major industries of employment, including construction, clubs, hotels and sawmills from December.37 The subsequent conditions of extreme unemployment robbed a community that was largely employed in low and semi-skilled industries of their economic independence.

These first orders, enacted in the weeks after the commencement of the Pacific

War, were essentially reflections of previous recommendations made by security organisations and the Federal Government’s advisory Standing Committee on

Orientals.38 More comprehensive policy settings with a view to recent developments and future requirements were sketched out on 8 and 9 January at the “Meeting to consider questions concerned with Canadian Japanese and Japanese Nationals.”39 This government organised conference was attended by members of the Federal Cabinet, prominent British Columbian politicians, members of the Standing Committee on

35 See Canada, Report on the Re-Establishment of Japanese in Canada, 28 for Census figures on occupations of Japanese employed in Canada. In 1941, 16.2 percent of those employed worked in the fishing industry and 18.6 percent in farming were Japanese. Order-in-Council P.C. 288 of January 13, 1942; Order-in-Council P.C. 987 of February 9, 1942; Order-in-Council P.C. 9591 of December 7, 1941; Order-in-Council P.C. 9760 of December 16, 1941. These ordered control of vessels used or operated by members of the Japanese race, the prohibition of issuance of boat licenses and their sale and by the hastily formed Committee on the Disposal of Japanese Fishing Vessels; Order-in-Council P.C. 1457 of February 24, 1942 regulated the acquisition of land and growing of crops by Japanese. 36 See Charles H. Young and Helen R.Y. Reid, “The Japanese Canadians,” in The Japanese Canadians, ed. by H.A. Innes, 3-198 (New York: Arno Press, 1978), 41-57; W.S. Tarnopolsky, “Discrimination and the Law in Canada,” University of New Brunswick Law Journal 41 (1992): 223; Henry F. Angus, “The Legal Status in British Columbia of Residents of Oriental Race and their Descendents,” The Canadian Bar Review 9 (1931). 37 Sunahara lists other major industries which refused to employ Japanese-Canadians from 1942 in The Politics of Racism, at 24. 38 Forrest E. La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II: A Sociological and Psychological Account (Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1948), 31-39. 39 “Meeting to consider questions concerned with Canadian Japanese and Japanese Nationals in British Columbia” (January 8, 1942), Library and Archives Canada, RG25, G2, Central Registry “1940” Series, vol. 3004, file 3464-B-40C. 93

Orientals, R.C.M.P officials and other security figures. Proceedings were directed by the veteran Federal Minister of Pensions and National Health, Ian Mackenzie, who was seen as the government expert on B.C. politics, and had a long history of anti-Asian agitation in the province.40 Mackenzie reflected the discriminatory orthodoxy in his opening address to the conference, stating that compared to other minorities, the

“Japanese” in Canada posed specific problems because of their geographic concentration, their “racial rather than national” loyalties, and their work patterns, which provoked “intense economic jealousy”.41 Mackenzie and the B.C. faction faced general and ideological opposition at the conference from a more liberal faction led by

R.C.M.P. Commissioner F.J. Mead, Hugh Keenleyside of the Department of External

Affairs, and elements of the Standing Committee.42 These two factions clashed when the conference considered a proposal that all “Japanese” be moved east of the Rocky

Mountains for security reasons. The necessity of this action was rejected by Mead,

Keenleyside and others, who argued that apart from being unnecessary in terms of security, it had the potential to endanger Canadians in Japan, and was strategically at odds with the U.S. policy at the time.43 This reportedly enraged the B.C. faction, who

40 La Violette notes that Mackenzie was “recognized as a ‘die-hard’ in his opposition to the Japanese”: The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 56. Sunahara quotes Mackenzie’s 1935 campaign in which he argued that “A Vote for ANY C.C.F. Candidate is a VOTE TO GIVE the CHINAMAN and JAPANESE the same Voting Right that you have!” Mackenzie was also the Minister who campaigned in B.C. on the slogan “No Japs from the Rockies to the sea” (“Jap Newspaper Hits Mackenzie,” Vancouver Province, October 2, 1944) and threatened to resign from Government if anti-Japanese policy was relaxed in mid- 1944 (“Japs Will Not Return to B.C.,” Montreal Herald, June 6, 1944). Aside from this public record, his anti-Asian politics and power in shaping policy are well documented in Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 12-14. 41 “Meeting to consider questions concerned with Canadian Japanese and Japanese Nationals in British Columbia” (January 8, 1942), Library and Archives Canada, RG25, G2, Central Registry “1940” Series, vol. 3004, file 3464-B-40C. 42 Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 15. 43 “Meeting to consider questions concerned with Canadian Japanese and Japanese Nationals in British Columbia” (January 8, 1942), Library and Archives Canada, RG25, G2, Central Registry “1940” Series, vol. 3004, file 3464-B-40C. 94

according to Department of External Affairs official Escott Reid, spoke of “Japanese-

Canadians in the way that the Nazis would have spoken about Jewish-Germans”.44

The disagreement over evacuation, while particularly notable, was not the only evidence of overt racism at the conference. Official agenda items, including a consideration of “Canadians of Chinese and East Indian race”, and an examination of

“the position which Canadians of Japanese race should be expected to occupy in Canada during and after the war,” indicate that anti-Asianism remained a general concern alongside more specific wartime threats.45 The fact that the Government’s premier policy conference took a detour to consider racial citizenship in Canada, just weeks after

Japan’s entry into the war, indicates the almost reflexive desire to use the emergency to affect the status of Asians in Canada.

After two days of discussion, Ian Mackenzie presented a conference report to

King, who announced Canada’s domestic “Japanese” policy on 14 January 1942.

According to La Violette, this announcement marked an increase in anti-Nikkei action, which while “still moderate” became more responsive to populist anti-Nikkei voices than real security needs.46 The policy itself set up something approaching a dichotomy between the security of Canada and the fair treatment of Nikkei, with its first two objectives being

(a) The primacy of defence considerations. (b) In so far as it is compatible with (a) just and decent treatment of Canadians of Japanese race.47

44 Roy, Mutual Hostages, 83. Nb. Reid made this statement sometime after the event. 45 “Meeting to consider questions concerned with Canadian Japanese and Japanese Nationals in British Columbia” (January 8, 1942), Library and Archives Canada, RG25, G2, Central Registry “1940” Series, vol. 3004, file 3464-B-40C, agenda items 8 and 9. 46 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 44. 47 “MacKenzie King Statement” (January 14, 1942), Library and Archives Canada, RG25, G2, Central Registry “1940” Series, vol. 3004, file 3464-B-40C. 95

The practical measures accompanying these headline objectives included continued

“intense surveillance” of the “Japanese” community, and the removal of all “Japanese” males of military age from the “Protected Area” around coastal B.C., by 1 April 1942.48

King claimed that “those who conform loyally to the regulations set out for their guidance will be given every protection for both themselves and their property”.49 Thus, the Government’s first official policy outline confirmed that Nikkei would be dealt with on account of their “Japaneseness” rather than the Canadian citizenship which the majority held; announced that there would be a partial evacuation from B.C.; and demanded that Nikkei “conform loyally” to the policy in order to be afforded the state’s protection. Over the following weeks the Government then made preparations to remove young men from the coastal Nikkei community.50

Before the government could carry out its policy as initially drafted, international developments began to impact on domestic politics, and exclusionary elements of the policy were strengthened again. As the Japanese military built on its successes in the Pacific, allied countries, including Canada’s powerful neighbour, began to act against their own Nikkei populations. When Japan captured Singapore on 15

February 1942, the U.S. ordered the removal of 110,000 Japanese Americans from its west coast, many of whom were formally American Citizens.51 The restraint that members of the Standing Committee had urged on account of maintaining a uniform

North American approach was now void, and the Canadian media began to fearfully

48 “MacKenzie King Statement” (January 14, 1942), Library and Archives Canada, RG25, G2, Central Registry “1940” Series, vol. 3004, file 3464-B-40C; removals were allowed by Order-in-Council P.C. 365 of January 16, 1942. 49 “MacKenzie King Statement” (January 14, 1942), Library and Archives Canada, RG25, G2, Central Registry “1940” Series, vol. 3004, file 3464-B-40C. 50 An account of the planning and public responses in Patricia E. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship: the Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2007), 34-46. 51 Don T. Nakanishi, “Surviving Democracy’s ‘Mistake’: Japanese Americans and the Enduring Legacy of Executive Order 9066,” Amerasia Journal 19 (1993); Kenneth R. Mayer, “Executive Orders and Presidential Power,” The Journal of Politics 61 (1999). 96

consider that Canada might be a target of Japanese aggression.52 The Cowichan Leader claimed Vancouver Island was “like the neck of a chicken stuck out for the next axe,” and the Nanaimo Free Press sought “the complete removal of these people from the protected areas which are likely to be the scene of invasion.”53 Canadian Security still contended that “an invasion on either coast [was] not considered to be a practicable consideration”, but a North American precedent had been set, and B.C.’s populist elements began to agitate more strenuously for the removal of Nikkei.54

On 22 February, Ian Mackenzie told the Cabinet that

The feeling in British Columbia in regard to the Japanese is so aflame that I consider we should take the necessary powers (if we have not got them now) to remove Canadian Nationals, as well as Japanese Nationals, from the protected areas.55

Some observers since have supported Mackenzie’s account, but H.F. Angus is quoted as saying the idea that “bloodshed” was impending if Nikkei were not removed was

“absurd”.56 Roy suggests that while political calculations were part of the equation, anti-

Japanese public feeling in B.C. had been growing, and King truly did fear violence.57

Two days after Mackenzie’s warning, the government passed order-in-council P.C.

1486, which gave the Government power to remove “any and all persons” from the protected area, and also gave the Government wide control over “members of the

Japanese race” with regards to movement, employment and communication.58 On 26

52 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 50. 53 Quoted in Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 49, 53. 54 Canadian Chiefs of Staff quoted in Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 35. 55 Mackenzie quoted in Ward, White Canada Forever, 154. 56 Angus quoted in Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 64. 57 Ibid, 60-61 58 Order-in-Council P.C. 1496 of February 24, 1942; Discussions of these powers in La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 59; William E. Conklin, “The Transformation of Meaning: Legal Discourse and Canadian Internment Camps,” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law IX(27) (1996): 227-8; The B.C.S.C. was established by Order-in-Council P.C. 1665 of March 4, 1942; La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 63. 97

February, it was announced that all “Japanese” would be evacuated from the protected area, and on 4 March P.C. 1665 established the British Columbia Security Commission

(B.C.S.C.) to oversee this process.59 P.C. 1665 also established a custodian who “as a protective measure only” was to control and manage “all property situated in any protected area of British Columbia belonging to any person of the Japanese race.”60

Throughout the following months, the B.C.S.C., acting by the power of P.C. 1486, saw the removal of the entire Nikkei community from the B.C. coast. In total 16,000 Nikkei were sent to the so called “ghost towns” and detention camps in the interior of B.C., and the rest were dispersed across Canada through 1943.61 La Violette claims that Nikkei had become “in effect wards of the government,” who in the space of a few months had lost their identification as nationals of Canada, their livelihoods, their property, and their freedom of movement.62

Canada’s build up of anti-Nikkei policy and legislation in the first months of the

Pacific War, when contextualised against the longer term history of the treatment of

Nikkei in Canada, indicates remarkable parallels between the outcomes long sought by anti-Asian antagonists and the security policies enacted. When Japan entered the war, historic exclusionary sentiment appears to have played a part at several key moments, underpinning flawed security assessments and encouraging certain readings of them, stoking populist fears, and giving credence to political figures whose histories indicated an inclination to discriminate against Nikkei. In a series of legislative actions with real and prominent consequences both in immediate and ongoing senses, the undesirability

59La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 60. 60 Order-in-Council P.C. 1665 of March 4, 1942. 61 “A Fine Piece of Work,” Vancouver Province, December 15, 1942; An in depth chronology of the initial evacuation is in La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 63-95; Canada, Report on the Re-Establishment of Japanese in Canada, 26. 62 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 63. 98

of Nikkei was prominently displayed by the disdainful treatment that they received at the hands of their government.

1943-44: The idea of “repatriation”

Once Nikkei had been removed from the B.C. coast, the ultimate resolution of Nikkei policy became less publicly pressing for the Federal government. La Violette noted that

“most important observers in 1943 and 1944 reported the impression that Ottawa was disinterested in the whole Japanese programme” and that “[b]etween February, 1942 and March, 1945 no action was taken [by the Government] with a final, specific goal in mind”. 63 However, the Government did continue to act in ways which affected the status of Nikkei, impacting upon their ability to ever resume their pre-war lives and necessitating, for better or worse, an eventual reconstruction of the relationship between

Canada and Nikkei and the notions of citizenship that underpinned this.

With the initial stage of the evacuations complete, the custodian held millions of dollars worth of property on behalf of the Nikkei.64 By early 1943, the Government was in possession of a large amount of vacant real estate and industrial and personal property in a major coastal city. Ian Mackenzie had been lobbying for the acquisition of this property for returning war veterans, and on 23 January 1943, the government passed order-in-council P.C. 469, which gave them authority to “liquidate, sell or otherwise dispose” of “any property of persons of the Japanese race”.65 This decision

63 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 228. 64 “Custodian Sold 1 ½ Millions Real Property,” New Canadian, May 20, 1944, 1; By 1947 it is estimated that about $11.5 million worth of property had been sold: Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 92. 65 Order-in-Council P.C. 469 of January 23, 1943; Sunahara documents a series of exchanges between Mackenzie, Thomas Crerar, Gordon Murchison, Norman McLarty and other figures indicating the early planning for the disposal of Nikkei property. These exchanges indicate that Mackenzie and other B.C. politicians drove the process, gradually strengthening their position within the Departments of Labour, Mines and Resources, and the Soldier Settlement Board, who were ultimately responsible for the policy of property disposal. Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 89-92. 99

made sure that the Nikkei community would not be able to return to its pre-war life at the conclusion of the emergency, and sparked an ultimately unsuccessful legal battle

(examined in the following chapter) that was stonewalled for years before the court rejected its premise in 1947.66 If appropriating and selling the homes of Nikkei was not a decision taken with “a final, specific goal in mind,” it certainly suggested that Nikkei were not expected to resume their lives in the part of Canada where almost all Japanese migrants and Nikkei had lived throughout their history in the country.

The delegation to, and work of, the B.C.S.C. meant that the Cabinet did not need to be involved in the day to day management of Nikkei policy, and it was not until

August 1944 that Prime Minister King offered a public policy update. This does not mean that internal discussions did not take place, and they appear to have been balanced between considerations of the deportation of all Nikkei to Japan, or their dispersal across Canada.67 La Violette’s contention that a final decision had not been taken at this time (implying that something close to universal deportation was a live consideration) was evidenced by the fact that even in 1944, after the B.C. property of many Nikkei had been liquidated, there were still extreme restrictions on buying, or even renting properties in other parts of Canada.68 Sunahara argues that Justice Minister St. Laurent, who had authority over issuing property permits, favoured mass deportations and was reluctant to allow Nikkei to attain more property.

With a view to the post-war period that was by this stage in sight, King gave a speech to the House of Commons on 4 August 1944 which clearly restated the undesirability of any “Japanese” presence in Canada. He stated that while there had “not

66 Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 89-92; See also Peter Neary, ‘Zennosuke Inouye's Land: A Canadian Veterans Affairs Dilemma’ The Canadian Historical Review vol. 85, no. 3 (2004): 423-450, for an examination of Zennosuke Inouye, a veteran of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in World War I who obtained a farm under the Soldiers' Settlement Act. He was removed from the coast in 1942 and his property was confiscated, and appears to be the only Nikkei who got his property back at the war’s end. 67 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 118-26. 68 Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 96. 100

been one single case of sabotage by persons of the Japanese race in this country during this war,” his Government would set loyalty tests for all Nikkei and deport those who failed them.69 He also announced that future emigration of Japanese-Canadians generally would be “encouraged”, further immigration would be banned, and that any

Japanese who remained in Canada after the war would be dispersed across the country.70 Throughout the speech, the Prime Minister referred to “Japanese,” with no mention of their claims to citizenship or nationality.

With this broad guiding policy established, government bureaucracy began to plan for deportations. On 30 August 1944, a Department of External Affairs memo argued that the Government should be seeking the “repatriation” of “[d]isloyal

Japanese-Canadians and non-cooperative Japanese Nationals” as well as “[v]olunteers

[who would be] given free passage and possibly bounty.”71 It estimated that there might be as many as 6,000 of these people, or nearly one-third of the entire Nikkei population.72 By December, the government’s legal counsel advised the use of six separate “repatriation” forms in order to maximise the deportations and give the government legal cover for its actions.73 There were two forms for each of the

“Canadian born”, “Naturalized Canadian[s]” and “Japanese National[s]” – one for those with dependents, and one for those without. It was thought that without separate forms

69 Canada, Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, August 4, 1944, 6062 (W.L. Mackenzie King, Prime Minister). 70 Ibid. 71 H.T. Pammett to A.H. Brown, Deputy Minister of Labour, “Memo” (August 30, 1944), Japanese Division – Administration: General Correspondence, Library and Archives Canada, RG27, vol. 40, file 23-2-2-1. 72 Ibid. 73 This action was suggested by a Government conference of legal experts attended by, among others, J. Read (Legal advisor, External Affairs) A. Rive and M. Wershof (Special section, External Affairs), Inspector Leopold (Enemy Aliens Branch, R.C.M.P.) and H.T. Pammett (Department of Labour). The six forms they divised were entitled: Canadian born, head of family, listing dependents under 16 (Form CBD); Canadian born without dependents (Form CBW); Naturalized Canadian, head of family, listing dependents under 16 (From CND); Naturalized Canadian without dependents (Form CNW); Japanese National, head of family, listing dependents under 16 (Form JND); Japanese national without dependents (JNW). From “Conference of matters of voluntary application for repatriation,” (December 11, 1944), Library and Archives Canada, RG18, vol. 3566, C-315-36-3. 101

for individuals of different statuses, family disputes and legal issues might cause people to opt in or out, thereby giving an individual “a case for demanding an annulment of his voluntary application since an implied condition of his own application had suddenly changed.”74 These discussions indicate the fact that “Japaneseness” was still seen as fundamentally alien, as even the “Canadian born” or “Naturalized” could be

“repatriated” to Japan. Racial nationalism remained central to the way that Nikkei policy was developing.

1944-45: American policy divergence and loyalty tests

At the beginning of the war, liberal elements had argued for maintaining a less restrictive Nikkei policy in line with the U.S. During the evacuations and other restrictions, the Canadian Government defended itself by claiming that there was a need for a uniform “North American Policy” that required it to act in concert with the United

States.75 Until the end of 1944 the U.S.’s much larger evacuation program offered a degree of international legitimacy to Canada’s actions. This changed in late 1944 with the outcome of a US Supreme Court challenge, and the abandonment of U.S. anti-

Nikkei displacement. The U.S. legal action illustrated the unconstitutional nature of the

U.S.’s anti-Nikkei policy, and demanded change. The Supreme Court, in the case of

Mitsuye Endo, argued that

A citizen who is concededly loyal presents no problem of espionage or sabotage. Loyalty is a matter of the heart and mind, not of race, creed, or color. He who is loyal is by definition not a spy or a saboteur.76

74 “Conference of matters of voluntary application for repatriation,” (December 11, 1944), Library and Archives Canada, RG18, vol. 3566, C-315-36-3. 75 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 235; also Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 35. 76 Ex parte Endo, 323 U.S. 283, 302 (1994). 102

The U.S. Government immediately abandoned its anti-Nikkei policy, and allowed

American Nikkei to return to their west coast homes on 2 January 1945.77

Across the border, Canada’s devotion to a consistent “North American policy” faltered, indicating the lack of influence that the U.S. ultimately had on Canada’s policy drive towards deportation. As the U.S. began to normalise its relations with its Nikkei population, Canada began distributing repatriation surveys to all Nikkei in Canada in a process that would come to be seen as the “loyalty test”.78 On 13 February 1945, Labour

Minister Humphrey Mitchell published a statement that was the New Canadian and circulated in Nikkei camps and towns which essentially offered Canadian Nikkei the choice of signing on for “voluntary repatriation” to Japan or moving “east of the

Rockies”.79 It was a coercive and complicated message that did not explain how the majority of Nikkei who were formally Canadian citizens could legally be repatriated to a foreign country, and reiterated the racial foreignness of Nikkei. The statement noted that those who signed on for repatriation were to be guaranteed “the net proceeds realized from the disposition of their property”, and free passage for themselves, their dependents and whatever property was allowed on their voyage to Japan, while

“persons of the Japanese race repatriated other than on a voluntary basis” would not be given the same guarantee. Furthermore, those who signed on for repatriation would be allowed to remain and work in B.C., while those who did not “should now re-establish themselves east of the Rockies as best evidence of their intention to co-operate with the government policy of dispersal.” “Repatriation” offered certain short term guarantees and stabilities to marginalised people who had been uprooted from one home, and were living in transitory settings. Relocation, on the other hand, required immediate

77 Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps U.S.A.: Japanese Americans and World War II (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971): 156-7. 78 Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 105. 79 Humphrey Mitchell, “Press release” (February 13, 1945), R.G. Robertson fonds, Library and Archives Canada, MG31, E87, vol. 1. 103

movement and did not appear to guarantee ongoing residence, as illustrated by the mention that there were further deportations being considered that would be “other than on a voluntary basis”. In the short period between Mitchell’s statement in February, and

August 1945 when Japan surrendered, Canada collected “repatriation requests” from over 10,000 Canadian Nikkei – 6,844 independent people over 16 and 3,503 of their dependents.80

Shortly after the completion of the administration of the repatriation surveying, the War ended abruptly. A Cabinet Committee on Japanese Questions – whose members included Labor Minister Humphrey Mitchell, Commissioner Mead, Prime

Ministerial Advisor Norman Robertson and Ian MacKenzie – was formed to consider the Government’s policy options. This committee met on 12 September, not two weeks after Japan’s surrender, and recorded a desire “to repatriate, as soon as possible, some

10,000 Japanese”.81 Two notable developments had begun to trouble the arguments for

“repatriation,” and give some context to this desire for such a hasty resolution. First, many of those who had signed on for repatriation began to retract their requests, a move which the Government resisted, given the official position that signing on indicated disloyalty; and second, a public civil liberties discourse in Canada (examined in Chapter

4) had began to forcefully argue for the rights of Japanese-Canadians in terms of their citizenship claims.82

80 The number 10,347 is quoted in various government documents and the press, but Mitchell quoted two separate figures in parliament, and Roy has cited 10,511. See Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 189; “Demand Chance to Say ‘No’ for Japanese-Canadians,” Toronto Daily Star, November 29, 1945. 81 Cabinet Committee on Japanese Questions, “Agenda and Minutes of Meetings 1945-1948,” Meeting 1 (September 12, 1945), Library and Archives Canada, RG27, vol. 3026. 82 Memos between A. MacNamara and T.B. Pickersgill (March 14 and 15, 1945), Library and Archives Canada, RG18, vol. 3566, C-315-36-3 indicated that the Government would not accept direct requests and would send them through R.C.M.P. offices for further verification and examination; “Department of Labour memo,” Library and Archives Canada, RG27, vol. 658, 23-3-17-1, pt 4; many had sought to retract their requests as early as March 1945 and by April 1946, 4,527 adults had made such retractions. The civil liberties movement is examined in depth in Chapter 4, and its expansion, particularly from 1944 onwards, saw a more nuanced understanding and acceptance of the Canadian citizenship claims possessed by the Nikkei, as evidenced in several opinion polls, and press coverage and responses more generally. 104

Barry Broadfoot’s work reveals the level of confusion, particularly among older

Nikkei and the very young, that the entire repatriation surveying process caused.83

These groups made up the more vulnerable and less mobile parts of the Nikkei, who formed the bulk of those still in the eastern B.C. camps in 1945.84 The sign-on rates of

Nikkei who accepted repatriation were much higher in the camps than outside of them, with many individuals subsequently claiming that their acceptance of “repatriation” was a tactical necessity born of their difficult circumstances. For example Kameo Kumano, a

B.C. forestry worker with three dependent children and a wife in a New Denver tuberculosis sanatorium and mental institution, signed for repatriation in order to keep his family together.85 Nineteen-year-old Miyeko Yasunaka, who had infirm parents and a minor sibling as dependents, did likewise.86 Another young woman wrote of the intergenerational tensions in her family, stating that “[i]f after all my objections I do go to Japan you’ll know very well I never went because I desired to do so”.87

Against an increasingly organised civil liberties campaign, which was beginning to publicise cases like the above, and the advancing bureaucratic plans for the deportations, Humphrey Mitchell provided the first official post-war update of

Government policy in speech to Parliament on 21 November 1945. He referred to

King’s policy outline of 1944, and noted four pillars by which this was now interpreted, which continued to underline the populist undesirability of Nikkei, and ignore real

83 Barry Broadfoot, Years of Sorrow, Years of Shame: the story of the Japanese Canadians in World War II (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1977), see especially 320; There are also contemporaneous letters from Japanese-Canadians expressing confusion and feelings of betrayal at the time, as well as later contact with the Government and other agencies pleading special circumstances and requesting permission to retract their acceptance. See examples of correspondence in Pamela Suligman, “Passing Time, Moving Memories: Interpreting Wartime Narratives of Japanese-Canadian Women,” Social History 36(73) (2004): 60-64; Conklin, “The Transformation of Meaning,” 239-240. 84 Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 105. 85 Norman F. Black and W.H.H. Norman, Vancouver Consultative Council for Study of Problems of Citizenship, “Save Canadian Children and Canadian Honour” (1946). 86 Ibid. 87 Suligman, “Passing Time, Moving Memories,” 66. 105

citizenship claims.88 First, he said that the concentration of “Japanese” on the west coast was something “that must be avoided in the future”, revealing the influence that B.C. opinion still had over federal policy. Second, he framed prospective deportations as being in the interest of “loyal” Nikkei, claiming that in order for the Government to be able to distinguish and protect this group, “those who have shown disloyalty to this country during the war should not have the privilege of remaining here”. Third,

Japanese immigration would be prohibited after the war. And fourth, in spite of the preceding content, Mitchell claimed that “people of Japanese origin who have been guilty of no disloyal act or who have not displayed any disloyal intent, must be treated fairly and justly.”89

This last sits at odds with the first three pillars of the policy, as any implementation of them would clearly create a second class of citizenship for Nikkei.

Point one indicated that even those Nikkei that the Government deemed “loyal” would not be allowed to move freely in their own country, and point three indicated that they would not have family immigration rights as other Canadians did, under the blanket ban on Japanese immigration. By this policy, citizenship rights were still conceived as a privilege that the government could bestow in partial measures on an undesirable racial minority.

With these priorities ordered, the Government swiftly assumed the powers that it would need to execute its deportation policy, and greatly alter the position and influence of Nikkei in Canada. On 5 December 1945, the Government passed the National

Emergency Transitional Powers Act, which extended its wartime powers for a further

88 Canada, Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, November 21, 1945, 1,756-1,767 (Humphrey Mitchell, Minister of Labour). 89 Ibid. 106

year.90 “Clause G” of this Act gave the government power over the “entry into Canada, exclusion and deportation, and revocation of nationality.” Two days later, the Cabinet

Committee on Japanese Questions approved the tabling of two Orders-in-Council, the first of which would give the Government power to remove Citizenship from any

Nikkei it wished to deport (to shield it from the claims that it was exiling Citizens), and the second to legislate for “repatriation” more generally.91 Within a week Deputy

Minister for Labour Ross had sent a formal request to the U.S. Military requesting

10,000 berths for repatriates to Japan by January, illustrating the speed with which the

Government expected to achieve its aim.92

On 15 December, the Government tabled three executive orders, which would become central to debates about the rights of Canadian citizens, and the implications of the deportations from this time. Order-in-Council P.C. 7355 made provision for the deportation of Nikkei, claiming that those who “manifested their sympathy with or support for the enemy powers and have by such actions shown themselves to be unfit for permanent residence in Canada”.93 P.C. 7356 allowed the revocation of Citizenship for those Citizens to be deported, and P.C. 7357 authorised the creation of a loyalty commission, which was to further examine those not deported, indicating that there was consideration of the deportation of more than the initial 10,000.94 These extraordinary powers and their wide application indicated the Government’s desire to use its

90 National Emergency Powers Act, S.C. (1945) (Can.); See La Violette, The Japanese Canadians, 135-6 for a discussion of passage. 91 Cabinet Committee on Japanese Questions, “Agenda and Minutes of Meetings 1945-1948,” Meeting 3 (December 7, 1945), Library and Archives Canada, RG27, vol. 3026. 92 A. Ross (December 13, 1945), Library and Archives Canada, RG24, reel C-5394, file HQS 7236-56, pts 1-3; Additionally, Government leases on resettlement centres, which still housed thousands of Japanese Canadians, ended six months after the completion of the war: see “Memorandum on Program for Repatriation and Relocation of Persons of Japanese Race in Canada,” dated “early 1946,” Japanese Division – Administration: General Correspondence, Library and Archives Canada, RG27, vol. 40, file 23-2-2-1. 93 Order-in-Council P.C. 7355 of December 15, 1945. 94 Ibid.; Order-in-Council P.C. 7357 of December 15, 1945; Further information contained in Library and Archives Canada files, Series RG2 Privy Council Office by name. 107

emergency authority while it existed, in a way that would alter the citizenship norms applied to these individuals.

1946: Deportation and the meaning of citizenship

By the beginning of 1946, the Canadian Government possessed the powers that it required to deport Nikkei, setting the stage for the final act of a process that had been unfolding throughout the war. Mackenzie King claimed that the deportation orders that his Government had passed “raise[d] no new principles, nor do they depart from any established principles.”95 Insofar as the Government’s four policy pillars were vague and contradictory, this was true. However, those who had hoped for an ultimately more liberal interpretation of the Nikkei policy protested strongly, raising ethical, democratic and constitutional issues that the Government was forced to consider. Angus MacInnis, a Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F.) M.P., from Vancouver claimed that the proposed action “violated every democratic tradition and every Christian principle”.96 The 4,720 Nikkei who had contacted the Government by the end of 1946 requesting permission to remain in Canada outlined various reasons why they had applied for repatriation, and the Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians alerted the Government that they wished to challenge its powers in the Supreme Court of

Canada.97

Bringing a case against Canada required its permission, which (as discussed in the following chapter) was granted to the C.C.J.C. by a Government secure in its legal

95 Canada, Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, December 17, 1945, 3,697 (W.L. Mackenzie King, Prime Minister). 96 Ibid., 2,385 (Angus MacInnes). 97 Canada, Report on the Re-Establishment of Japanese in Canada notes at 13 that 285 revocation requests were received before Japan’s surrender on September 1, 1945. By December 31, 1945 this number was 4,720 and by March 1946 it was 6,313. 108

position.98 This was a turning point in the wartime history of Canadian Nikkei. For the first time, they had accessed an important national institution in a way that challenged the power that had been exercised almost without review until this time. The court case and surrounding publicity broadened the discourse from a purely legal argument into one with ethical and political dimensions about the meaning of citizenship, much as it had in the United States a year earlier. The Court offered divided opinions with four of the seven Justices objecting to the idea of the deportation of any dependents of signatories (who would be unwilling “repatriates”), and two of these also questioning the ability to “repatriate” any natural born citizens, severely impacting on the

Government’s ability to execute its policy.99

The Cabinet Committee on Japanese Questions found that if the Government was to strictly follow the Supreme Court findings at this stage, about 7,000 people would be deportable, but if they accepted the idea that separating any dependents from their parents and spouses was illegal, this number would drop to 1,500.100 It felt that these complications made it impossible to decisively move one way or the other, and so the Government allowed the C.C.J.C. to take an appeal to the Privy Council in London

– at the time, Canada’s highest court – while continuing to deport those who “still expressed a desire to go”.101

On 13 March 1946 Mackenzie King announced that

Notwithstanding the fact that the Orders in Council are under review, any Japanese persons who wish to go to Japan will be accorded the terms provided

98 As will be examined in Chapter 3, the majority opinion of the Supreme Court backed the Government’s opinion and a subsequent challenge to the Privy Council backed the full scope of the Government’s powers and proposed actions. The formation and background of the CCJC is examined in more detail in chapter 4. 99 All judgements in “In the matter of a reference as to the validity of Orders in Council of the 15th Day of December, 1945 (P.C. 7355, 7356 and 7357), in relation to persons of the Japanese race,” Library and Archives Canada, MG28, V1, vol. 6 and further examined in Chapter 3. 100 Cabinet Committee on Japanese Questions, “Agenda and Minutes of Meetings 1945-1948” (February 17, 1946), Library and Archives Canada, RG27, vol. 3026. 101 Ibid. 109

for in Order in Council P.C. 7355, which allows the removal of the value of all property and assets held in Canada, and which provides for minimum financial credits and government assistance in needy cases.102

By King’s directive, the Government began deporting Nikkei in May of 1946. Fifty-one percent of those deported over the following months were Canadian born and dependents of older repatriates, while another 15 percent were naturalised Canadians, and 34 percent were Japanese nationals.103 Upon landing with the first group in Japan,

Lt-Col. Oscar Orr, who in his civilian life was a Vancouver lawyer, told the government that the majority of this group were children who were “obviously depressed and all desirous of returning as soon as possible.”104 Further shipments of deportees left Canada for Japan in June, August, October and December 1946 totalling 3,964 individuals.105

At around the time of this last shipment, the Privy Council reinforced the

Government’s prerogative to deport whomever it pleased under the emergency powers, however, the government decided to abandon the deportation policy. The wider action that had been canvassed, and expected for much of the war, did not eventuate.

Ultimately a notion of citizenship emerged which rejected the racial-nationalism that was so hostile to Nikkei. The following chapters will illustrate the influence that the judicial and popular realms had on altering the course of events, and compromising the centralised power under which the Canadian Government had acted. Important events were able to halt the mass deportations with the swiftness that they required.

This chapter’s review of policy and legislative developments has not attempted to convey the individual situations and outcomes of this history in the way that more

102 Canada, Report on the Re-Establishment of Japanese in Canada, 15. 103 Ibid 104 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 273; Lt-Col. G. Orr (June 15, 1946), Library and Archives Canada, RG24, reel C-5394, file HQS 7236-56, pts 1-3. 105 Canada, Report on the Re-Establishment of Japanese in Canada, 15. 110

personalised accounts in Canadian historiography have.106 Rather it has focussed on the structural developments to the policy and legislation which led to the deportations. This approach illustrates the centrality of the executive Government and agencies that it empowered to the attempts made to deport large sections of the Canadian Nikkei community. It has illustrated how the Canadian Government seized extraordinary powers at the beginning of the war, and how these were applied to Nikkei, following the exclusionary logic established in the first decades of the 20th century. During the war, these policies gained a momentum which propelled them towards what seems was their logical conclusion in the deportations. New understandings of citizenship and an examination of the treatment of Nikkei during the war illustrated the incoherence in

Canada’s treatment of territorially present subjects. Chapter 5 of this thesis will examine how, in the wake of the deportations, formal Citizenship, the franchise and other civil liberties were extended to Nikkei in historic ways. In being required to address the outcomes of the discriminatory treatment of its most undesirable subjects, Canada needed to reimagine its national bounds in a more inclusive way.

Canada’s deportation of nearly 4,000 Nikkei was a major expression of its historical belief in the undesirability of Nikkei, the high-point of the anti-Nikkei movement existent throughout the 20th century in Canada. The deportations pre-empted a shift in the way that Nikkei existed in Canada but not in the way that its drafters had envisaged. The following chapters will examine how, as the deportation policy approached execution, a new civil rights discourse extended beyond government, through the courts to the wider public, and the treatment of Nikkei was increasingly seen as an abuse of Government power rather than a security necessity. This encouraged

106 For example Ken Adachi, The Enemy That Never Was: A History Of The Japanese Canadians (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976); Broadfoot, Years of Sorrow, Years of Shame. 111

a re-examination of the bounds and meaning of citizenship, and an acceptance of the fact that Canadian Nikkei could be, and in fact were, parts of the national community.

Australia

The history of Australia’s wartime anti-Nikkei policy, legislation and executive action parallels the Canadian situation in some notable ways and diverges in others. As was the case in Canada, Australia’s historically marginalised Nikkei population was dealt with en masse, as members of an enemy race, by the powers of emergency regulation.

Historical fears were used to frame a policy establishing widely restrictive executive powers whose logic led towards deportations at the war’s end. But the Australian situation diverged from Canada’s in its strict application of the policy and its more absolute outcomes. The complicating factors that the Canadian executive eventually faced from judicial review and public protest were less prominent in Australia, leading to the execution of a more comprehensive deportation program. Australia’s wartime anti-Nikkei policy was a stark illustration of its racial-nationalism, but the extent of its internment and deportation programs left less scope for a public examination of its tensions within its racial liberalism. Nevertheless, the tension within this ideology was illustrated by concessions made to Nikkei at the end of the war, which indicated a new way of thinking about citizenship.

The notable differences between Canadian and Australian Nikkei communities in the early 1940s require a brief review in order to contextualise Australia’s policy approach to these people. The Australian Nikkei population of several thousand residents in the early 20th century had been gradually reduced to an official number of

1,139 at the beginning of the war, smaller than the Canadian community in both 112

absolute and relative terms. This community was located physically and politically at the nation’s margins, and did not demographically mirror the wider population, being largely comprised of working men.107 Various figures indicate that about 10 percent of

Australia’s “Japanese” were women, and about another 10 percent were Australian born.108 As illustrated elsewhere, many others had connections to the nation (residence, marriage etc.,) but these were not demonstrable in terms of formal citizenship.109 This meant that Australian Nikkei were at a comparable disadvantage in both garnering sympathy from the wider community, and negotiating with the government, through the employment of a young native born and educated community component. Australia’s strict exclusionary policies meant that claims that Australian Nikkei were an alien population were much more defensible than similar claims made in Canada.

Emergency legislation and early war action

As was the case in Canada, Australia planned for the war by drafting emergency powers which would enable government by the Cabinet during war. Its Department of Defence was given the task of establishing the guiding principles which were laid down in the

Commonwealth War Book.110 The War Book stated that government would be centralised during the war by the power of a National Security Act, which would invest

107 Only 143 of the 1,175 Japanese registered in Australia in 1941 were women. Yuriko Nagata, Unwanted Aliens: Japanese Internment in Australia (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1996), 22-24 and Noreen Jones, Number 2 Home: A Story of Japanese Pioneers in Australia (Freemantle: Freemantle Arts Centre Press, 2002), 52-54 notes that early women emigrants were often prostitutes who returned to Japan. Some women married in Australia, or came out with their husbands, but the community was overwhelmingly male. 108 Ibid.; Neville Meaney, Towards a New Vision: Australia and Japan through 100 Years (NSW: Kangaroo Press, 1999), 59. 109 See the overview of the Australian Nikkei community before the war in Introduction, 10-11, which indicates that at least 259 individuals were Australian born or married to Australians or had other special national connections, 69 were released during the war for various reasons and 230 deported were long term residents according to the Director General of Security. 110 Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien, “Citizenship, Rights and Emergency Powers in Second World War Australia,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 53(2) (2007): 207. 113

“necessary emergency powers” in the Commonwealth.111 On 8 September 1939, five days after Australia entered the war, it passed its National Security Act, and the following day it passed a series of regulations under its powers.

The National Security Act vested power in the Cabinet to “make regulations for securing the public safety and the defence of the Commonwealth.”112 Amongst its broad mandate, it empowered the Government to undertake “any action…with respect to aliens, and…prohibit[] aliens from doing any act or thing,” and then applied these powers to aliens, “naturalized persons, with or without modifications”, and “persons having enemy associations or connexions”.113 This wording gave the Government extensive power not only to act against aliens, but also to define who was normatively an alien, a category which could include “naturalized persons” or those with “enemy connexions.” This was the bedrock power on which the wartime exclusion of Australian

Nikkei was mounted.

On 9 September, the National Security (Aliens Control) Regulations further outlined the powers the government intended to exercise, claiming authority in matters of censorship, procession and assembly, the economy and rationing, and the use of cars, among others.114 The most extreme regulation with regards to the restriction of civil liberties was Regulation 20, which gave the Government power to arrest and hold citizens as it saw fit. It allowed the Minister or anyone that he authorised, to require any subject “to be detained in such place, under such conditions and for such period as the

Minister or person so authorized determines,” allowing for incarceration without habeas

111 Australia, Commonwealth War Book (Melbourne: Department of Defence, 1956), 2. 112 National Security Act 1939 (Cth) in J.M. Jelbart, Emergency Legislation Handbook: Commonwealth (Sydney: Butterworth and Co., 1941), 2. 113 Ibid, sections 5(1)(c), 5(1)(e), 5(1)(f) and 5(2). These sections gave the Governor General power in a manner so vague as to allow the Government a wide mandate to create policy and legislation as required. 114 O’Brien, “Citizenship, Rights and Emergency Powers,” 207. 114

corpus.115 But while the regulatory powers assumed were expansive, the Australian government acquired them with the stated intention of using them sparingly, both for philosophical reasons (Prime Minister Robert Menzies claimed at the time that it was

“as important to preserve justice in our own land as it is to fight injustice internationally”) and to avoid wasting government resources.116 As was the case in

Canada, fear of the unknown at this time, along with sparing use in the early stages of the war, meant that the powers that the Australian Government had obtained were widely accepted.117

Fischer argues that Australia’s internment policy during World War I had proved to be expensive, resource intensive and of dubious security value, and this led to the idea that during the World War II, “[i]nternment was to be resorted to only when it was considered that other forms of control would not be adequate.”118 But in another parallel with Canada, these extraordinary powers were soon being used in prejudicial ways, in response to populism and to boost public morale.119 O’Brien notes that wartime developments, as Italy entered the war, and Japan threatened to follow suit, precipitated expansions in the number of those interned. Neumann indicates that although a small number of internees were Nazis or Fascists, a much larger number were anti-Nazis, anti- fascists, and Jewish refugees interned for racial reasons.120 By the end of 1940, of over

115 National Security (Aliens Control) Regulations 1939 (Cth), Statutory Rule no. 88 of 1939, amended by Statutory Rule no. 59 of 1941, regulation 20. 116 Menzies quoted in Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 42; Gerhard Fischer, Enemy Aliens: Internment and the Homefront Experience in Australia 1914-1920 (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1989); Robert R. Wilson, “Treatment of Civilian Alien Enemies,” The American Journal of International Law 37 (1943): 30. 117 Werner Levi, “The Government of Australian Commonwealth in the War and Post-War Period,” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 11 (1945): 18. 118 See Fischer, Enemy Aliens; Wilson, “Treatment of Civilian Alien Enemies,” 30; Noel W. Lamidey, Aliens Control in Australia: 1939-46 (Sydney: N. Lamidey, 1974), 5-6. 119 Klaus Neumann, In the Interest of National Security: Civilian Internment in Australia During World War II (Canberra: National Archives of Australia, 2006), 10. 120 Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien, “Ubi bene, ibi patria: The Second World War and citizenship,” in Under Suspicion: Citizenship and Internment in Australia During the Second World War, ed. Joan Beaumont, Illma Martinuzzi O’Brien and Matthew Trinca, 16-34 (Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press, 2008); Neumann, In the Interest of National Security, 5. 115

22,000 registered enemy aliens in the Commonwealth, 2,387 were interned, most of whom were Italians arrested after mid-1940, and most of whom were subsequently released before the war had ended.121

From the moment Australia entered the war, the Government assumed wide powers which allowed administration by the Executive without the oversight of the other branches of government. Included among these powers was the ability to legally intern any subjects that the Government thought posed a threat to the nation. Although initially this power was used in moderation, it was soon being applied to undesirable subjects for reasons other than security. This set a precedent for the widespread internment of Australian Nikkei from late 1941, which was being explicitly planned some time before Japan entered the war.

Discrimination, intelligence and Australian Nikkei

Australia’s small pre-war Nikkei population, being physically and socially removed from most Australians, was represented in intelligence reports in an unreal fashion.

Oliver reports that cultural misunderstandings led to the development of a discourse in military and security organisations during the 1930s which was based on “racist theory and alarmist fiction” rather than a true reflection of any security threat.122 Further, in an atmosphere where the White Australia Policy was basically unchallenged – Walker notes that between 1901 and 1962, only two books were published which offered

121 Lamidey, Aliens Control in Australia, 5-6; Gianfranco Cresciani, The Italians in Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) states that by August 1940, 1,901 local Italians were interned (at 100). 122 Pam Oliver, “Who Is One of Us? (Re)discovering the Inside-out of Australia's Japanese Immigrant Communities, 1901-1957,” Japanese Studies 22 (2002): 275; Pam Oliver, “Citizens without certificates or enemy aliens? Japanese residents before 1947,” in Under Suspicion, ed. Beaumont, Martinuzzi O’Brien and Trinca, 125-141 (Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press, 2008), 136; David Walker also notes that the Asian invasion fantasy was a common literary genre from the late 19th century: David Walker, Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850-1939 (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1999). 116

critical assessments – this sort of intelligence fell on fertile ground, and reflected widely held fears about ill-defined yet menacing national threats.123 The Nikkei community did not have the size, infrastructure or contacts to alter the discriminatory way in which they were perceived, and it is likely that the majority of disenfranchised working men did not have the desire or skills to mount a political campaign in Australia. As a result, security assessments appear shallow, and even at the Aliens Tribunals examinations of exceptional Nikkei, the “general character” of the “Japanese” remained an influential factor in conclusions reached.124

While Australian intelligence began to perceive Japan as an external threat during the 1930s, it was not greatly interested in conducting in-depth examinations of its local Nikkei population.125 A series of cables from the late 1930s illustrate the lack of expert knowledge of and interest in both Japan and Australia’s Nikkei within Australian

Security forces at the time. In May 1938, the Acting Attorney General acknowledged that “after lengthy inquiries…I was unable to find in Australia a single person of

European origin who was competent to act as a Court interpreter” in the trial of

Japanese pearlers.126 The Defence Committee, comprising of the Chiefs of Staff of the military then acknowledged in September that the lack of interpreters or students of

Japan in Australia presented “a very serious state of affairs.”127 In December of that year, the Prime Minister’s Department identified two Post Office employees in Adelaide with an interest in pursuing further studies in Japanese that they could facilitate.128

Australia clearly did not have the sort of institutional knowledge, or individual expertise

123 David Walker, “Race Building and the Disciplining of White Australia,” in Legacies of White Australia: Race, Culture and Nation, ed. Laksiri Jayasuriya, David Walker and Jan Gothard, 33-50 (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2003), 33. 124 Oliver, “Who is One of Us?” 279. 125 Neville Meaney, Fears and Phobias: E.L. Piesse and the Problem of Japan 1909-1939 (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1996), 37-58. 126 “Attorney General’s Minute Paper” (May 9, 1938), National Archives of Australia, A432, 1940/153. 127 “Minutes of the Defence Committee” (September 9, 1938), National Archives of Australia, A2031, 47/1938 – 58/1938. 128 F. Strahan, “Memo”, National Archives of Australia, A432, 1940/153. 117

that Canada did in the R.C.M.P., Commissioner Mead and Professor Angus to counterbalance populist ignorance and racism.

Professor W.E.H. Stanner who was personal assistant to Minister for the Army,

Frank Forde during the war, stated that in discussions about Australian “Japanese”, there “was a lot of talk about spies, strange lights, and so on, but I believe they were due to over-active imaginations”.129 Recent work by Pam Oliver, based on an extensive examination of historical security records in Australia, found that “only a handful of

Japanese were engaged in espionage or information gathering that could be used in wartime,” yet the prejudicial prism through which all Japanese residents of Australia were seen meant that interest in things like photography or foreign business practices were viewed suspiciously.130 Oliver notes elsewhere that despite a lack of evidence that

Nikkei in Australia were involved in any military preparation, intelligence examinations continued to present them as some sort of vanguard for a future Japanese invasion.131

This was reflected in the rare systematic examinations of Australian Nikkei.

In March 1942, the Department of the Army completed a “Theoretical Survey of the Japanese ‘Fifth Column’” which presents as a fantastical account of the threats posed by “Japanese” without offering much in the way of rationality or a factual base.132

The survey alleged that an enormous network of Japanese espionage agencies was at work throughout the world, without supporting this contention with anything concrete.

Using medieval witch-trial logic, it explained the lack of tangible evidence for the existence of this network “in Australia, the U.S.A. or Europe” by the guile of individuals involved, which was naturally required “in view of conspicuous Japanese

129 Stanner quoted in Richard Walker and Helen Walker, Curtin’s Cowboys: Australia’s secret bush commandos (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986), 62. 130 Pam Oliver, Raids on Australia: 1942 and Japan’s Plans for Australia (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010), 248. 131 Pam Oliver, Empty North: The Japanese Presence and Australian Reactions 1860 to 1942 (Darwin: Charles Darwin University, 2006), 170-180. 132 Department of the Army: Military Intelligence, “Theoretical Survey of the Japanese ‘Fifth Column’” (March 1942), National Archives of Australia, C320, J227. 118

characteristics”.133 It then urged an examination of “the attitude of Oriental races, particularly of course the Japanese, towards Australia” in order to determine how

“Japanese” in Australia might act during the war.134 The fact that the psychology of

“oriental races” was thought of as a useful approach to understanding a group of

Australian Nikkei, as well as the presentation of a dichotomy between “orientals” and

“Australia, the U.S.A or Europe” indicates the sort of sweeping racial advice being provided to the Cabinet by security experts in Australia. Alongside this information, there was no estimate of the number of Nikkei in Australia, no assessment of national or political allegiances, and very little practical information presented at all.

The belief in widespread Japanese spying was stated in other assessments, despite the fact that the claims could not be substantiated. Deputy Director of Military

Intelligence, Lieutenant-Colonel Wake, cited (without producing) “ample evidence, old and new, to support the fact that the Northern Territory and adjacent areas have been a hotbed of Japanese espionage.” He also claimed that it was

highly probable that enemy agents are being landed at present by parachutes from aircraft coming in over the Gulf of Carpentaria. The possibility of these agents being clothed in Australian, USA, NEI uniforms should not be ignored.135

Whether or not these claims were based on any real intelligence, or just the “over active imaginations” that Stanner has noted, is difficult to assess, because most of the

“Japanese” who were in Australia as the war broke were interned, then deported at its conclusion without telling their stories. But, given that there was no evidence uncovered that Australian Nikkei played any direct role in the bombing of Darwin or the war build

133 Department of the Army: Military Intelligence, “Theoretical Survey of the Japanese ‘Fifth Column’” (March 1942), National Archives of Australia, C320, J227 134 Ibid. 135 Wake quoted in Walker and Walker, Curtin’s Cowboys, 3. 119

up, claims of espionage appear specious, informed as much by long held fears and prejudices as any informed intelligence.136

Oliver’s research has since indicated that Australian Nikkei were regarded as

“‘good citizens’ by neighbours, business associates and many bureaucrats between 1901 and 1941.”137 Nagata has indicated that the majority of those still in the country in 1941 were poor labourers who had some connection to Australia and no desire to leave, and

O’Brien notes that the average length of residence among the alien Nikkei (that is, excluding the Australian born and naturalised) was 23.2 years.138 Australian intelligence at the time did not note these facts, but rather drew attention to vaguely defined fears that aligned with historical ideas of the threat that the “Japanese” posed to Australia.

The intelligence produced in and by Australia did not seem to be discursive in the way that Canadian intelligence was, but rather it supported the government’s early stated desire to act against its “Japanese” residents, in ways that extended the anti-Nikkei exclusionary impulse long evident in Australian politics.

1941-45: Australian Nikkei and universal internment

Australia’s wartime approach to its Nikkei population was essentially settled by mid-

1941, when the Australian Cabinet decided on a particularly restrictive policy, with little room for negotiation. This stood in contrast to the Canadian situation, where genuine discussion was prompted by the nuanced assessments of the R.C.M.P. and Joint

Services about the security implications of acting against loyal Nikkei. While Canada’s policy became gradually more restrictive after the policy conference of January 1942, and then at various times before the deportations, the Australian Cabinet sketched its

136 Oliver, Empty North, 179. 137 Oliver, “Citizens without certificates or enemy aliens?” 125. 138 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 31; O’Brien, “Citizenship, Rights and Emergency Powers,” 221. 120

ultimate desire for mass deportations seven months before Japan entered the war against the Allies.

On 9 May 1941, the Australian Cabinet set out its wartime Nikkei policy in stark and absolute terms. In the case of war with Japan, the Government required the:

(a) Internment of all Japanese males over 16 years within Australia and its territories, except those with diplomatic or consular privileges. (b) Internment of all Japanese women until they could be transferred out of the country (c) The negotiation with Japan of internees other than those required to be held for security reasons (d) Acceptance of Japanese internees from New Caledonia if so required by the Free French Movement, as well as those from Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, British Soloman Islands and New Hebrides.

By this policy, all “Japanese” were to be captured and interned, including women, and there is a strong suggestion that the preference would be to remove them from Australia if and when possible.

With this policy decision taken, the Government charged security agencies with gathering information and distributing it to local divisions so that arrests could be made immediately when required. By July 1941, a list of the names and addresses of all

Japanese residents of Australia was in the Government’s possession.140 On 17

November 1941, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army announced that “should war come, no time will be lost in apprehending these people and the danger of their carrying out sabotage before arrest will be reduced to a minimum.”141 Each of these actions indicate the government’s fear of all Nikkei. Government planning and Army

139 “War Cabinet minute no. 1029” (May 9, 1941); “Memo to security commanders outlining policy” (May 26, 1941), both from National Archives of Australia, MP729/6, 65/401/135. 140 “Department of Defence Minute Paper” (July 28, 1941), Japanese Internment File Part 1, National Archives of Australia, MP729/6, 65/401/135. 141 Deputy Chief of Staff (November 17, 1941), National Archives of Australia, MP729/6, 605/401/135. 121

intelligence indicate that Australian authorities were unsure about whether Japan would in fact enter the war, but if it did, it was assumed that Australian Nikkei would be inclined to swiftly engage in sabotage.

The plan to intern all “Japanese” was a marked departure from the earlier policy of minimal and targeted internment, and led to internment figures incomparable to any other group. While many Italians and Germans resident in Australia were interned, often in response to populist panic rather than security needs, there were differences in the way that Europeans and Asians were approached by Australian authorities.142 At the height of ex-European internments, about one-third of the total Italian and German populations of Australia were incarcerated, and many were subsequently released, as it was assumed that there was a way to distinguish the loyalty or danger posed by

Europeans. For example, while 4,727 Italians in Australia (out of 14,904) were interned at the end of 1941, by mid-1944 only 135 “hard-core Fascists” remained.143 In comparison, 97 percent of all “Japanese” in Australia, including women, were interned

(with the notable exception of European wives of Japanese men, who were nationally, but not racially Japanese).144 The Government justified the totality of its Japanese internment policy by claiming that in the absence of Japanese equivalents of Nazi or

Fascist organisations it was impossible to separate loyal from disloyal so instead it relied on its belief that all Nikkei possessed a particular “fanaticism and devotion to their country” (i.e., Japan) which was incompatible with loyalty to Australia.145 A post-

142 Neumann, In the Interest of National Security, 12-16; O’Brien, “Citizenship, Rights and Emergency Powers,” 220-22. 143 Cresciani, The Italians in Australia, 105. 144 In total 97.83 percent of all Australian Nikkei were interned and most of these were held for the duration of the war. In contrast about 30 percent of Germans and Italians spent some time in internment, from Lamidey, Aliens Control in Australia, 1939-46, 53; “Department of Defence Minute Paper” (October 14, 1941) and “Chiefs of Staff weekly report of 5 August 1941,” both from Japanese Internment File Part 1, National Archives of Australia, MP729/6, 65/401/135 states that the Minister had advised that white women were only to be interned where they were a security threat. In practice no white women were interned, see Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 51. 145 Cabinet minute (July 9, 1941) quoted in Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 49. 122

war Commonwealth Investigation Service review admitted that “there was nothing known against the bulk of them…they were interned merely because they were

Japanese.”146

The comprehensive anti-Nikkei policy and the extensive preparations for it, meant that the bulk of Australia’s Nikkei were interned by the Commonwealth

Investigation Department, Military Intelligence and state police within one day of

Japan’s attacks on Pearl Harbor and through the Pacific.147 Those not apprehended immediately were arrested over the following days and weeks, and by early 1942, the

Japanese presence was all but removed from Australian society.148 The scope of these early actions was indicative of the Government’s desire to remove the Nikkei presence from Australia, and made it very difficult for individual elements of this small community to argue for different treatment.

In contrast to Canadian Nikkei, who were subjected to a progressively more restrictive policy throughout the war, and who used their ongoing social presence to argue against total exclusion, Australian Nikkei had essentially disappeared from public view by early 1942. Any potential conflicts and controversies in their treatment were not exposed in the way that they were in Canada, and the Australian government was under even less pressure than the Canadian government to outline its post-war intent.

The Australian Government was not required to deal with property or other civilian matters, nor did it have cross-border developments emanating from a strategically powerful neighbour. For these reasons, there was no major alteration to the strict policy laid down by the Government in May 1941 throughout the war.

146 CIS (August 23, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A373, 11505/48. 147 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 59, 64-68. 148 Ibid. 123

General internment policy developments

While Australia’s overarching anti-Nikkei policy was not altered during the war, several government-directed developments between 1941 and 1944 illustrated the ongoing perception of Australian Nikkei as a foreign element in Australia. I will briefly examine the decision to accept overseas Nikkei for the purposes of internment, the exclusion of

Australian Nikkei from appeals processes, and the reassignment of some Nikkei as special POWs. All of these actions demonstrate the undesirability of Nikkei, and impacted in various ways on their ability to challenge the looming plans for deportation.

In the first stages of the Pacific War, Australia’s belief in the innate foreignness of “Japanese” was shared by the Administrators of its island neighbours. Being suspicious of their own Nikkei, these states employed Australia as an internment hub, as part of a Pacific Allied strategy.149 From late 1941, and throughout 1942, Australia accepted 3,160 Japanese civilian internees from New Caledonia, Netherlands East

Indies, New Zealand, New Hebrides and the Solomon Islands.150 This meant that for every one Australian Nikkei interned, there were three from these overseas destinations, and unlike Europeans, these “Japanese” were all interned as foreigners without reference to various national statuses. This created a situation where the Nikkei interned by Australia were most readily identifiable as a group by their Japaneseness. Only a minority of the interned “Japanese” had actually lived in Australia and had a claim to national membership, and their situation, as a small part of a larger truly foreign group, complicated attempts to present Nikkei as loyal Australians.

149 Canberra, “Report on the Directorate of Prisoners of War and Internees” (1953), National Archives of Australia, A7711, vol. 1, 93. 150 During World War II, Australia held 3,160 Japanese civilians previously resident in neighbouring countries: 1,949 came from the Netherlands East Indies; 1,124 from New Caledonia; 50 from New Zealand; 34 from New Hebrides; and 3 from the Solomon Islands. Canberra, “Report on the Directorate of Prisoners of War and Internees” (1953), National Archives of Australia, A7711, vol. 1, 93. 124

The rights afforded to Nikkei internees as compared to Europeans also indicated continuing discrimination. From late 1940, the Australian Government allowed internees to appeal their internment to an Aliens Tribunal. When the first Nikkei were interned in late 1941, officials seriously considered barring Nikkei access to this avenue of appeal. However, the government relented and allowed a minority of exceptional individuals to challenge their situations, and several of these are examined in the following chapter. The success rate of Nikkei at these forums, in comparison to

Europeans, indicates the discrimination carried over into these forums. Between

September 1942 and December 1944, of 4,550 internees released, only 59 were

“Japanese”.151 And although there are documented cases to the contrary, Lamidey states that most releases of “Japanese” during the war were due to illness and old age, rather than any accepted demonstration of loyalty.152

While policy developments generally liberalised the treatment of ex-European internees by offering them opportunities to demonstrate their loyalty through tribunals, or involvement in public works, the only major development with regard to Nikkei marginalised a large part of this group even further. Reviews completed on 12 April and

7 July 1943 saw 524 civilian Nikkei internees who had been involved in the pearling and other maritime industries reclassified as P.W.J.M. (Prisoners of War Japanese

Merchant Seamen) on account of the knowledge that they had of Australia’s northern waters.153 These individuals were removed from their families (if they were interned with them) and placed in a camp alongside real P.O.Ws. Their new status meant that they were unable to challenge their internment during the war and most were summarily

151 Figures quoted in Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 103. 152 Lamidey, Aliens Control in Australia, 53-54. 153 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 131. 125

deported without even the minimal chance to appeal that some other Nikkei exercised at the war’s end.154

Australia’s decision in 1941 to intern all “Japanese” and give them little opportunity to challenge their incarceration was ultimately a large step on the way to their deportation. Discrimination in the cases of tribunal appeals, public works and reclassifications indicate a general antipathy to all “Japanese” which was inconsistent with Australia’s treatment of other internees. The unrelenting adherence to the original aims of Australia’s anti-Nikkei wartime policy meant that Nikkei had very little opportunity to enter into negotiation with the Government about the position they occupied in Australia.

1945-46: Deportation policy and the post-war position of Nikkei in Australia

There is little evidence that the Australian government spent any energy during the war considering how its “Japanese” policy would ultimately be resolved. A flurry of

Australian cables towards the end of 1945, after General Douglas MacArthur enquired about the number berths required for “repatriations” to Japan, indicate that it was only at this time that policy makers began to seriously consider their position.155

Interdepartmental memos sent between the Departments of Immigration, the Army, and

External Affairs indicate a lack of planning, but also a wide assumption that all of the

“Japanese” who had been interned would be deported.156

154 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 131-33. 155 MacArthur to Department of Army (October 15, 1945), Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1, National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. This file contains further inter-departmental correspondence. 156 Ibid.; also Internees in Australia – Japanese – Repatriation, National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5. Both files contain series of memos between the Departments of Army, External Affairs and Immigration in the second half of October and throughout November 1945, discussing possible deportations policy settings; Secretary, Department of Army to Secretary, Department of External Affairs (November 10, 1945), Internees in Australia – Japanese – Repatriation, National Archives of Australia, 126

Australian officials immediately distinguished between local and overseas

“Japanese,” and prioritised dealing with the latter. These overseas “Japanese” were a group who did not have previous lives, jobs and connections in Australia, and presented the Australian government with less ethical responsibility than those previously domiciled in Australia. As of 15 November 1945, Australia held 2,310 Japanese civilian internees previously resident in various Pacific Islands, and it contacted the administration of each jurisdiction to enquire whether those held could be returned to their homes or would be sent to Japan.157 One after another, each Government

“expressed the desire that the Japanese in question be repatriated to Japan”.158 No further correspondence was entered into, and notwithstanding the fact that Australia’s contact with the previous home states of these individuals suggests that they held some sort of claim and/or desire to return to these places, all were sent to Japan in early

1946.159

More complicated were the cases of the Australian Nikkei, a group which included individuals who were Australian born, others who were married to British subjects and had Australian born children, and others still with decades of residence and a clear connection to Australia. In mid-November 1945, an External Affairs official queried “whether all the Japanese civilian internees present in Australia are to be repatriated to Japan,” while another told his Secretary that the “Director of Prisoners of

A1066, IC45/1/11/5 notes tentative allocations on ships to Japan were booked while the Cabinet examined the issue. 157 “External Affairs memo” (November 15, 1945), Internees in Australia – Japanese – Repatriation, National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5. Of this 2,310, 1,240 were from the Netherlands East Indies, 988 from New Caledonia, 50 from New Zealand, 31 from New Hebrides and one from the Solomon Islands. 158 See telegrams from Australia to representatives from New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Netherlands East Indies, Soloman Islands and New Zealand on October 17 and 18, 1945 in Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1, National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72; “Memo to the Acting Minister for External Affairs” (November 20, 1945), Internees in Australia – Japanese – Repatriation, National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5 made the comment that each jurisdiction sought deportation to Japan. 159 “Order for repatriation under Regulation 20C of the National Security (Aliens Control) Regulations,” (February 21, 1946); Lamidey to Coffin, “Memo” (February 27, 1946); both in Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1, National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 127

War tells me that he is awaiting a definition of our attitude in regard to the return to

Japan of (a) Japanese internees and (b) Japanese merchant seamen.”160 Clearly no final authoritative decision had been taken about the extent of the deportations before this time.

Interestingly, Australia looked to situation in Canada, indicating some concern with how another Commonwealth territory was dealing with its Nikkei residents, as it formulated its final deportations policy. The Australian High Commissioner to Ottawa sent several cables with outlines of policy and action in Canada to Australia Cabinet members, and the contents of the communications indicate the possible influence that

Canada’s more developed policy had on Australia. On 27 October, Commissioner

Sterling gave the Department of External Affairs an overview of the history of wartime anti-Nikkei action in Canada, noting the growing opposition to the Government for “the development of a class of citizenship which is denied freedom of movement and the exercise of the franchise.”161 On 20 November, Sterling sent another cable, this time telling the Australian Government that Canada had “adopted the policy of examining all

Japanese in the country – (there are some 23,000 in Canada of whom 17,000 are

Canadian citizens) – with a view to deciding their loyalty”.162 On 20 December he updated the Government about the passage of Canada’s deportation Orders in council, and in February 1946 he sent updates about the Supreme Court examination of these powers.163 There is no further evidence of high level government contact in the External

Affairs files beyond these brief communications. Nevertheless, the timing of Sterling’s

160 “External Affairs memo for the Acting Minister” (November 15, 1945), National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5; Kevin to Acting Secretary of External Affairs (November 15, 1945), National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 161 Alfred Sterling to External Affairs (October 27, 1945), Internees in Australia – Japanese – Repatriation, National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 162 Alfred Sterling to External Affairs (November 20, 1945), Internees in Australia – Japanese – Repatriation, National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 163 Alfred Sterling to War Cabinet and External Affairs, Defence and Immigration (December 20, 1945); Sterling to External Affairs (February 21, 1946); both from Internees in Australia – Japanese – Repatriation, National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 128

communications, along with the fact that Australia developed a loyalty commission, and began referring to the national claims of Australian Nikkei in similar ways to Canada, indicate that some aspects of Canadian action were influential in Australia.

In late November 1945, Australia established the Simpson Commission

(examined in the following chapter) to make recommendations about the release or deportation of internees still incarcerated.164 On 28 November, acting Attorney General

John Beasley stated that the commission would examine all naturalised British subjects and local ex-European internees, but not “Japanese,” who would only be examined if

“specifically referred through the Attorney General”.165 Beasley also stated that

[e]xcept in any case specifically referred to the Commissioner for examination, compulsory repatriation to Japan of all internees being Japanese Nationals (together with any children under 16 years of age of such internees) is to be effected as a matter of policy.

The description of all “Japanese” internees as “Japanese Nationals”, with no mention of

Australians or British subjects, is telling of the normatively foreign way that Nikkei were perceived. While European nationals previously domiciled in Australia were to be given the chance to argue that they were part of the Australian community, the

“Japanese Nationals” who had spent an average of a quarter of a century in Australia, and their children under 16, who presumably were natural born British subjects, were to be deported as a matter of policy.

With the announcement of the Simpson Commission’s terms of reference, logistical organisation for the deportations was entrusted to the Director General of

Security, Colonel Longfield Lloyd. On 10 December, External Affairs was

164 John Beasley, “Policy memo” (November 28, 1945), Internees in Australia – Japanese – Repatriation, National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 165 Ibid. 166 Ibid. 129

informed that shipping would be available on or about 6 January, and asked Lloyd to organise the deportations for this date.167 He replied the following day that “the bulk of

Japanese civilian internees will be available for shipment by 6th January,” but there would be 36 individuals remaining who it had been decided were entitled to front the

Commission.168 In the two months since the initial contact from General MacArthur asking about Australian plans for repatriation of “Japanese”, the Australia Cabinet had decided, in secret and without any parliamentary scrutiny, that other than three dozen individuals, its Nikkei internees were foreigners who would be “repatriated” to Japan.

From late 1945, the Australian and Canadian policies, which had been following similar trajectories throughout the war, began to diverge. Although there were differences in policy (as noted, Canadian Nikkei were displaced and dispossessed but not forcibly interned en masse like Australians were)169 each Government had assumed that they would be deporting large numbers of their Nikkei when practicable. But on the eve of deportations, Canada’s relatively more powerful Nikkei community linked with supportive organisations who protested loudly and demanded a Supreme Court hearing and public examination of their government’s actions. In contrast, the smaller, less institutionally developed Australian Nikkei community, which had been completely socially marginalised by the Australian government during the war, did not have the required support, or the opportunity, to mount a similar public resistance. The Canadian government was required to liberalise its policy, in line with evolving understandings of citizenship, while the Australian government was not.

167 Department of External Affairs to Longfield Lloyd (December 10, 1945), National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 168 Longfield Lloyd to Department of the Attorney General (December 11, 1945), National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 169 Approximately 800 Japanese in Canada were interned at an isolated camp in Northern Ontario About 40 were interned almost immediately upon the outbreak of the war because of suspicions of their loyalty. Most of the remainder were interned because they would not co-operate with the removal process which initially separated able-bodied men from their families. Most of the latter group were released if they agreed to accept jobs in eastern Canada. 130

There was no organised public movement in support of Australian Nikkei, however Nikkei used the avenues open to them to protest their treatment in ways which forced some liberalisation in the first part of 1946. As those in the camps were made aware of their impending deportation, several protested directly, writing to the government to plead their cases. The day of 6 January came and went, the shipping that

Longfield Lloyd and Australian Security had expected did not arrive, an event which delayed the deportations in a stroke of fortune for dozens of impending deportees. On

10 January 1946, the Attorney General’s Department received letters from Tanaka

Tatsuhei, Oyama Hashi and Swizo Togamis, three Japanese born long term residents of

Australia with Australian spouses and children who would have already have been deported if January 6 deportations had proceeded as planned.170 As examined in the following chapter, each man passionately pleaded to be allowed to remain in Australia with their families. Several departments began to examine the ethics and implications of the policy that would deport such men, and the complications – practical and normative

– of an inflexible deportation policy became clear. On 15 January 1945, S.H. Crawford,

Acting Secretary of the Department of the Army alerted External Affairs that “several anomalies would occur” if only the Australian born were withheld from repatriation, presenting scenarios where

(a) an Australian born husband and his children would be withheld, while his Japanese wife and mother would be repatriated. (b) An Australian born wife would be withheld while the Japanese born husband, with his Australian born children under 16, and a Japanese born child over 16, would be repatriated.171

170 These include the cases of Tanaka Tatsuhei, Oyama Hashi and Swizo Togamis, all of whom had European wives and Australian children, but were deportable under the policy as it was enunciated at the end of 1945. Their pleas reached the Attorney General on 10 January, four days after the planned date of deportation. These and others are examined in more detail in Chapter 3. 171 S.H. Crawford, Acting Secretary of the Army to Department of External Affairs (January 15, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 131

Crawford also noted his awareness that some long-term residents had requested permission to remain in Australia, and argued that if special consideration were given to these individuals, “other Japanese internees with residential qualifications should also be examined.”172 On 24 January 1946, Longfield Lloyd announced a policy update, stating that while repatriations would still be effected “upon the maximum scale”, those married to an “Australian born” spouse, or medically incapable of travelling would be withheld from the initial shipment.173

Several weeks later, on the very eve of the deportations, another action illustrated just how opportunistic the Australian deportation policy was, and how little consideration central policy makers had given to many of the individuals that they were exiling. This action was taken by Kojiro Katsumata, a 67-year-old single internee who had been resident in Australia for 53 years, and had repeatedly and unsuccessfully requested permission to remain in Australia after the war from the time that he was interned.174 On 15 February, with his deportation imminent and his pleas falling on deaf ears, Katsumata had Labor Party figure and QC J.V. Barry petition the Australian High

Court with a writ of habeas corpus (this is examined in the following chapter).175 This challenge was communicated to the Government, and on 18 February, just three days before hundreds of Nikkei internees were due to be deported, the Department of

Immigration attempted to overhaul the entire deportation policy. It circulated a memo which stated that

172 S.H. Crawford, Acting Secretary of the Army to Department of External Affairs (January 15, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 173 Longfield Lloyd to Secretary of External Affairs (January 24, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 174 Katsumata’s case, including Government and legal correspondence, is examined in detail in the following chapter. 175 Longfield Lloyd to Justice Simpson (February 20, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A367/1 C23732. 132

in addition to the three categories of Japanese nationals already known to you and approved to be deferred for examination there shall be added a fourth category for such deferment. This fourth category is to include for present deferment any Japanese nationals who have been resident continuously in Australia for forty years and over so that they may be given an opportunity under examination by a Judicial Authority to show cause why they should not be deported.176

Such a policy shift was unlike anything that the Government had considered with regards to Nikkei throughout the war. It constituted an acknowledgement that Nikkei of

40 years residence had some sort of claim to Australian citizenship and provides a rare glimpse of divergent opinion in what was otherwise a tightly controlled and almost single minded policy development. This divergence, however, was short lived.

The response to the Immigration memo was swift. A handwritten note at the bottom of the memo, dated 19 February, stated that “Major Coffin rang to say that he had been called to the Minister’s Office and decision made that fourth category be now revoked…no age limit and no residence period to apply.” An official telegram followed later that same day, asking Defence to delete “all reference to fourth category thus leaving position of Japanese nationals for deportation subject only to three categories of exemption”.177 Katsumata himself was withheld from deportation by Ministerial exemption, and his habeas corpus hearing was suspended, thus saving the government embarrassment, and avoiding a complicating public precedent.

With these issues dealt with, Australia’s policy at the time of the deportations was that only the Australian born, those married to an Australian, or those unfit to travel would not be “repatriated” to Japan. On 21 February 1946, 304 “Japanese” civilian internees were recorded as being deported on the Koei Maru, and on 2 March, 485

176 CIB to Defence, “Memo” (18 February 1946), Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1, National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 177 CIB to Defence, “Memo” (February 19, 1946), Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1, National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 133

others followed on the Daikai Maru.178 These shipments included both civilians internees and P.W.J.M.s, and made up the majority of the Australian Nikkei deportees.

After the majority of Australia’s pre-war Nikkei community was deported,

Australia’s approach to those remaining became somewhat more liberal, and its rhetoric shifted. In March 1946, Minister for Immigration Arthur Calwell informed the Attorney

General that of the 144 Japanese remaining in Australia 43 were “Australian born of

Japanese origin,” 80 were “Japanese married to Australians” and 21 were “Medically unfit and infirm and others deferred for special reasons.”179 Calwell made reference in this memo to “natural born Australians” and “British subjects” in an enormous departure from previous practice in government communications of referring to

“Japanese” or “Japanese nationals” without mention of Australian or British subject status. By the recommendation of the Simpson Commission, a further 19 individuals were subsequently deported. Working with the figures of those Nikkei ex-internees remaining in Australia after these 19 were deported on 4 January 1947, it appears that in the 11 months after February 1946 Australia deported 821 of the 958 Nikkei internees that it held at the end of the war.180

Australia’s policy approach to its Nikkei population was strictly exclusionary until the time of the deportations. Concessions to the policy were not made, and the desire to effect maximum deportations did not waver throughout the war. Against this background, it is difficult to say what caused the enormous shift in Calwell’s end of war rhetoric above, compared with previous practice. Chapter 5 mentions the post-war international developments, Australia’s role in the formation of the United Nations, and

178 Major Coffin to Noel Lamidey, “Order for the repatriation under Regulation 20C of the National Security (Aliens Control) Regulations, 21 February, 1946” (February 27, 1946), Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1, National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 179 Arthur Calwell to Attorney General (March 1946), Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1, National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72, 2. Although Calwell used the figure 144, it would appear that 153 individuals were subsequently examined by Justice Simpson. 180 Introduction, footnote 11 justifies this number. 134

the emerging post-war discourses of human rights. It could be argued that a growing understanding of the Canadian situation, and Canada’s markedly more liberal interpretation of Nikkei citizenship played a part in Australian developments. Or perhaps the Australian Government ultimately pushed its exclusionary policy as far as possible, and was required to extend notional citizenship to those Nikkei whose

“Australianness” was difficult to deny. These individuals were soon granted permanent residence through a decision to relax the Immigration Restriction Act (in 1947) exempting aliens of 15 years residence from needing C.E.D.T.s. The attempt to remove all “Japanese” from Australia had proven the impossibility of this goal, requiring an acknowledgement that the most historically undesirable subjects in Australia were in fact permanent resident members of the Australian national community.

Conclusion

Between 1941 and 1946, the Canadian and Australian governments pursued anti-Nikkei policies which reflected and advanced an anti-Asianism that had long existed in each state. Using the emergency situation as justification, both Canada and Australia enacted legislation which granted each executive government extraordinary power over the civil liberties of all of their respective subjects. These powers were then applied particularly stridently to Nikkei, whose combined historic undesirability and perceived wartime alliance with Japan left them vulnerable to strong central government action. Although large numbers of each Nikkei community were deported, the more scrutiny that each policy received, the more incoherent each appeared and a series of compromises followed. In failing to achieve the objectives sought even with the backing of extraordinary wartime power, the Canadian and Australian governments were forced, to varying degrees, to confront the logical endpoint of their white exclusionary projects. It 135

became clear that some renegotiation and reimagination of white settler statehood was required.

In both Canada and Australia, the emergency wartime action materially affected the position of each state’s Nikkei population in an ongoing sense. The racial identification, internment, displacement, dispossession and deportation showed the depth of long term hostility towards these groups, and disrupted the lives of many long term residents and citizens. The anti-Nikkei policies enforced by each government were based on emergency security justifications, but also led to outcomes for which anti-

Asian voices had long lobbied in Australia and Canada. For this reason, they are better seen as a continuation of formal historical exclusion, magnified by the security situation, rather than a real wartime emergency.

The physical removal of long term residents and citizens was an extreme action which focussed attention on citizenship debates in each state. In Canada this became a more broadly inclusive discourse, and in Australia it remained a slow moving and constrained one. But in both cases, new realities were acknowledged. The incoherence of the outcomes of racial-nationalism, as applied to territorially present subjects who otherwise satisfied the normative requirements of citizenship had become a factor in the rhetoric and actions of each executive. In post-war Australia, Calwell referred to the

Nikkei not deported as “Australian” and “British” in ways that the government had not throughout the war. In Canada, the new Canadian Citizenship Act, which came into force at the beginning of 1947, gave a thinly veiled acknowledgement to Nikkei grievances and acknowledged the Citizenship claims of many of its Nikkei. The coincidence of deportation and citizenship legislation, combined with the adoption of the language of citizenship in ministerial discussions of Australian-born Japanese people suggests that the two processes were intertwined to some degree. If the 136

deportation of Canadian and Australian Nikkei constituted the zenith of an anti-Asian legislative approach central to each state’s national identity in the first half of the 20th century, they also helped to foster a less racial-nationalism beyond the war. 137

Chapter 3 The role of law in deportations and citizenship

Banishment with or without the loss of citizenship status or rights, as an effective exile over a period of time…[is] a legislative and executive impossibility. —Canadian Supreme Court, February 19461

…the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth, the Minister of State for Defence and the Commonwealth of Australia…[are ordered] to show why a writ of habeas corpus should not be issued… —High Court of Australia, February 19462

On the eve of the deportations of Nikkei from Canada and Australia, the highest judicial authorities in each state produced opinions that were critical of aspects of the respective anti-Nikkei policies. These opinions presented a challenge to the build up of executive power, indicated a reassertion of the idea of judicial review, and heralded the beginning of the end of wartime anti-Nikkei policies. The courts’ opinions illustrated the ideological tensions between the racial-national premises for anti-Nikkei policies and liberal democratic principles, such as the constraint of arbitrary power and an adherence to the rule of law. In Canada, the Supreme Court opinion of 1946 gave invaluable publicity to a campaign of popular resistance, preceded a reworking of the deportation policy, and paved the way for the eventual public acknowledgement of the Citizenship rights of Canadian Nikkei. In Australia, Kojiro Katsumata’s habeas corpus order saved one elderly man from effective exile to Japan, and coincided with a policy relaxation and the appearance of more liberal rhetoric emanating from the Australian Government.

In both cases, the opinions of the judiciary problematised assumptions that Nikkei were an inherently alien presence in Canada and Australia, raised questions about their

1 In the matter of a reference as to the validity of Orders in Council of the 15th Day of December, 1945 (P.C. 7355, 7356 and 7357), in relation to persons of the Japanese race, Library and Archives Canada, MG28, V1, vol. 6, 6 (per Rand J) 2 The King versus The Attorney General of the Commonwealth Ex parte KATSUMATA Kojiro, National Archives of Australia, A10117, 1946/1. 138

treatment, and required a re-examination of citizenship construction and interpretation in each state.

The Canadian and Australian judiciaries did not play central roles in the crafting and application of anti-Nikkei policies during the early 1940s, and their absence arguably allowed the policies to develop in the ways that they did. Emergency legislation and regulation which centralised power in the executives minimised the capacity of Nikkei to mount challenges, and the judiciaries were unable to act as a balancing arm of government during the war. Nevertheless judicial review, absent during the years when Canada and Australia variously interned, dispossessed and displaced their Nikkei, began to reassert itself as the deportations approached. As territorially present yet marginalised Nikkei presented their citizenship credentials through judicial and quasi-judicial forums, the governments (in both states) and the public (in Canada) critically examined the deportation policies in new ways. By interpreting the treatment of Nikkei through constitutional and legal frames, rather than as part of a security policy, each judiciary began to suggest that there were normative and even legal problems with the looming deportation of citizens and long term residents, requiring political adjustments to the long pursued exclusionary policies.

These political adjustments became important parts in the notional citizenship being developed in each state at the end of the war.

This chapter will analyse how judicial (and quasi-judicial)3 systems aided in the identification of national bounds and the scope of normative citizenship, as they related to Nikkei in the mid-1940s. The legal outcomes in the cases examined here ultimately reinforced the authority of the Canadian and Australian governments, however these

3 Quasi-judicial refers to the tribunals and commissions set up in Australia, as well as the loyalty commission that Canada legislated for but never implemented. These tribunals and commissions were overseen by judicial officers, but governed by administrative law, and answerable to the executive Governments. They offered the illusion of judicial review, but their power ultimately resided within the Federal Cabinet. 139

cases also played an important role in broadening citizenship discourses and complicating what had previously been a centrally driven policy process. Addressing these complications required policy adjustments which offered explicit and implicit acknowledgement of some of each nation’s most undesirable subjects. These were historic precedents which encouraged gradual national liberalisations to racial pre-war citizenship in the post-war period.

This chapter examines judicial action, and its background, from the early 1940s until the time of the deportations. There were a series of hearings throughout the war, predating the centrally important actions already quoted, which questioned the treatment of Nikkei in each wartime nation. In Canada, the cases examined include the Japanese

Property Owners’ Association challenge at the Exchequer Court in 1944, the Supreme

Court opinion sought at the insistence of the C.C.J.C. at the beginning of 1946, and an appeal against this opinion before the Privy Council of London through the second half of the same year. These cases affected executive government and popular discourses, and are examined in light of their legal impact, as well as their effect on wider discursive developments. In Australia, there were no such publicly defining challenges, but there were a series of quasi-judicial challenges whose nature and outcomes illustrate the narrow avenues of appeal Australian Nikkei were afforded. Some Nikkei internees were able to appeal to the Aliens Tribunals in 1942 and others were examined by the

Simpson Commission from 1945. Alongside these quasi-judicial hearings, I also examine a series of direct ministerial contacts that were dealt with on an administrative basis, and raised questions which otherwise may have been the basis for judicial challenges. Lastly, I examine an aborted habeas corpus hearing initiated on behalf of

Kojiro Katsumata in 1946 at the High Court of Australia.

140

These cases indicate that Canadian Nikkei were able to gain better access to the

Canadian legal system than their Australian counterparts, and obtained more positive structural political outcomes in the wake of judicial intervention. The arguments made in Canadian courts publicly challenged policymakers, engaged various media, and offered greater visibility to previously marginalised individuals. The Canadian government reduced the scope of its deportation policy immediately after the Supreme

Court opinions were announced in February 1946, and abandoned it completely only weeks after the Privy Council concluded its review in January 1947, indicating the connection between these decisions to the surrounding politics.

Nikkei in Australia raised similar moral and legal questions and issues to those examined in Canada, but they were only able to do this before the more limited audiences of Ministerial Departments and closed administrative tribunals. In the one instance where an Australian Nikkei presented his case to the High Court, the Australian government averted judicial intervention by making an individual policy exception, and then pressed on with its deportation policy. This suggests that the Australian containment of judicial review stymied the sort of popular citizenship and civil rights examinations that occurred in Canada. The executive made concessions when ideological incoherence threatened to complicate the process, thereby avoiding popular scrutiny of structural problems with its racial policies. Nevertheless, the tentative re- emergence of the Australian judiciary through the Katsumata precedent forced a change in the government’s plans, almost prompted a wide scale policy shift (in Calwell’s brief acceptance of residence claims) and immediately preceded historic extensions of rights to previously undesirable subjects in Australia.

141

The previous chapter illustrated how the Canadian and Australian executives had used emergency powers to drive an exclusionary ideology towards its ultimate conclusion with the deportation of Nikkei from each state. In turning to the judicial sphere, this chapter indicates how executive excess necessitated the re-engagement of the respective judiciaries, and illustrated the unsustainability of the exclusion of a minority group for reasons of racial undesirability in Canada and Australia. The judicial findings which complicated the deportation policies present as moments of illumination, where each government was required to reassess incoherent racial national ideologies, and consider citizenship reform.

Canada

There are several reasons why Canadian Nikkei did not mount a judicial challenge to their treatment prior to mid-1944, even though they had had their rights restricted, and been dispossessed and displaced long before this. As discussed in Chapter 1, Nikkei were a relatively politically disorganised community, historically marginalised over a long period. This made the gargantuan task of challenging the Canadian government particularly unappealing at the outbreak of the war. Second, La Violette notes that the

Canadian legal system required potential litigants to obtain the permission of the

Canadian Government in order to sue it, a scenario particularly unlikely alongside the extensions to executive power being obtained at the time.4 And third, the politically savvy younger generation of Nikkei had decided that it would accept the government’s policy and attempt to demonstrate the Nikkei community’s loyalty, rather than launch

4 Forrest E. La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II: A Sociological and Psychological Account (Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1948), 50-55; See also Edward Hudon, “The Status of Persons of Japanese Ancestry in the United States and Canada during World War II: A Tragedy in Three Parts,” Cahiers de Droit 18 (1977), 75. 142

challenges which might compromise their already precarious community standing.5

These factors combined to encourage a process of negotiation rather than confrontation between the government and Nikkei, in a way which paralleled civil libertarians’ early war acceptance of the extension of executive power.6

Notwithstanding the factors mitigating confrontation, there was a natural unease among Nikkei as they were subjected to a series of regulations which ordered their removal from their homes and lives on the British Columbian coast. Some of the most palpable unease surrounded insecurity about the fate of the property and businesses that many had accumulated over long periods, and it was this issue which eventually led to the first challenge mounted.7 Nikkei, who had been largely accepting of the discriminatory treatment to which they were subjected throughout 1942, reacted angrily when Government action fundamentally compromised the position that they had occupied in Canada for decades through the compulsory liquidation of their property, which was perceived as a movement towards their expulsion from Canada.

The sale of Nikkei property and the struggle for judicial review

As Nikkei were evacuated from the B.C. coast, their belongings were entrusted to the

Custodian of Enemy Property “as a protective measure only,” except where security requirements dictated otherwise.8 By this policy, Nikkei fishing vessels and cars were sold, with the proceeds going to the dispossessed, but homes, farms and businesses

5 This was evident through community reporting in the New Canadian which announced the desire of Canadian Nikkei to “[r]e-affirm loyalty as war flare[d] over [the] Pacific” on December 12, 1942, and called on the community to “[k]eep cool and keep calm and don’t get excited! Let’s wait until all the details of the new regulations are worked out” as the anti-Nikkei policy was being announced on January 14, 1942. 6 See F.A. Brewin, “Civil Liberties in Canada During Wartime,” Bill of Rights Review 1 (1940), 121. 7 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 50-55. 8 Order-in-Council P.C. 1665 of March 4, 1942; La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 210. 143

remained in the care of the Custodian.9 As the evacuation policy became more comprehensive to the point of being universal, the Government found itself entrusted with the property and industrial resources of about 20,000 people in what had been designated a vital military zone. Sunahara has indicated how this development was seized upon by anti-Japanese agitators within the Government, who began to argue for the sale of this property from early 1942.10

The background to the sale of property indicates just how swiftly and forcefully

British Columbian politicians acted with the aim of severing the Nikkei connection to the province. On 14 April 1942, months before all Nikkei were displaced, Ian

Mackenzie wrote to Minister for Mines and Resources Thomas Crerar, arguing that

Nikkei farms should be acquired as they presented “the opportunity to develop sound soldier settlement in [British Columbia]”.11 On 26 June 1942, the Soldier Settlement

Board was given authority by the Custodian of Enemy Property to evaluate all Nikkei holdings, while noting the suitability of various properties for veteran settlement.12 In

November, with Nikkei in the B.C. interior and moving across Canada, Crerar stated his

“uncertainty as to the time and circumstances under which these people may ever return to their homes”.13 Then, in January 1943, Order-in-Council P.C. 469 authorised the

Custodian of Enemy Property to sell all property formerly held by Nikkei in British

9 Order-in-Council P.C. 251 of January 13, 1942 announced that the Government would re-crew all seized Japanese-Canadian fishing boats with non-Japanese members. It then sold these vessels over the following months, along with automobiles. See La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 207; Toyo Takata, Nikkei Legacy: The Story of Japanese Canadians from Settlement to Today (Toronto: NC Press Limited, 1983), 117. 10 Sunahara documents a series of exchanges between Mackenzie, Thomas Crerar, Gordon Murchison, Norman McLarty and other figures indicating the early planning for the disposal of Japanese-Canadian property. These exchanges indicate that Mackenzie and other B.C. politicians drove the process, gradually strengthening their position within the Departments of Labour, Mines and Resources, and the Soldier Settlement Board, who were ultimately responsible for the policy of property disposal. Ann Gomer Sunahara, The Politics of Racism (Toronto: James Lorimer and Co., 1981), 89-92. 11 Ibid. 12 Order-in-Council P.C. 5523 of June 26, 1942; Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 90. 13 Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 91. 144

Columbia without the owners’ consent.14 Prominent B.C. politician A.W. Neill outlined the unofficial rationale for the action, explaining that “we are at war with Japan and it is the law of nature to seize the property of the enemy and, if necessary, sell it.”15

The response from Nikkei was more forceful than at any stage throughout the first year of the war. The New Canadian, which had provided a leading moderate voice, editorialised that “a policy as indefensible as this from any point of view except the dictates of race war, is certain to provoke a strong reaction.”16 Kelley and Trebilcock indicate that there was an immediate mobilisation of resistance, and some defenders of

Nikkei drew analogies to the dispossession provisions of the Nuremberg laws.17 Roy has noted the “mental turmoil” the decision caused, and La Violette wrote of the strong historical and cultural attachment that Canadian Nikkei had to family property, because of the important role it played in economic security, independence and prestige in

Canada.18 But notwithstanding these bitter reactions, Sunahara notes that the subsequent actions of Nikkei were “orderly and legalistic,” leading to the first challenge.19

Individual Nikkei, and supporters like H.F. Angus, first protested to the

Government by writing to the Custodian to appeal against the proposed sales.20 When these direct approaches were ignored, the Japanese Property Owners Association was formed, and in April 1943 it began to raise funds with the aim of instigating a test case against the government, retaining counsel J.A. MacLennan.21 The Association noted

14 Order-in-Council P.C. 469 of January 23, 1943 authorised the Custodian of Enemy Property to sell all property formerly held by Japanese in B.C.; Greater Vancouver Advisory Committee, “Minutes” (March 28, 1943), Office of the Custodian of Enemy Property Papers, cited in Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 93; “Ottawa Order Authorizes Sale of ‘Seized’ Property,” New Canadian, February 6, 1943. 15 Neill quoted in Patricia E. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship: the Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2007), 117. 16 New Canadian, April 10, 1943. 17 Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 295. 18 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 116; La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 215-17. 19 Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 93. 20 Ibid.; La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 217. 21 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 218. 145

that test cases had been launched by Nikkei in the pre-war period, and requested

Government permission for a hearing in the Exchequer Court.22 As with the direct approaches to the Custodian, letters to the Government were ignored, and by June

Vancouver papers ran government ads calling for tenders for “all Japanese real property.”23 This silence was maintained until October 1943, at which point MacLennan made his frustrations publicly clear, stating in an interview with the New Canadian that

The applications [for a hearing] were made some time ago, but so far there has been no answer…I’m going to wire the Secretary of State and if there’s no suitable answer to that I’ll have to start proceedings in our own [Vancouver] courts.24

Shortly thereafter, the Association was given permission to sue the government, but a court date was not set (the Exchequer Court only sat once per year) and the property sales continued.25 In February of 1944, it was announced that the case would be heard in

April, and there was a belief that in the Nikkei community that it would then progress to the Supreme Court, but no injunction order halted the sales in the interim.26

The stonewalling of formal Canadian citizens by the Canadian government, throughout all of 1943 as they tried to appeal what was an egregious prima facie abuse of property rights, indicated the low level of access to the judicial system that Canadian

Nikkei were allowed in wartime. This stonewalling continued even as partial concessions were made. The case was delayed beyond April as the government raised questions about the jurisdiction of the Exchequer Court over the matter, but then on 13

22 Forrest E. La Violette, “Two Years of Japanese Evacuation in Canada,” Far Eastern Survey 13(11) (May 31, 1944): 97; “Our Fights for Justice,” New Canadian, June 12, 1943. 23 “Commission and Custodian Advise Selling of Personal Goods Now,” New Canadian, June 19, 1943. 24 “May Take Action on Property Sale in Vancouver Courts Soon,” New Canadian, October 10, 1943. 25 “Visits Ottawa to Ask Haste in Property Case,” New Canadian, November 27, 1943. 26 “Evacuee Owners Seek Decision To Confirm Right to Hold Land,” New Canadian, February 12, 1944. 146

May, it was announced that the case would be heard on 29 May.27 MacLennan publicly stated that the Association’s

argument will be on the broad constitutional question of what are the rights of the subject in the case of this nature and whether the Crown can be held responsible for what has taken place in the way of the disposal of Japanese properties.28

This illustrated the fundamental importance of the case and any judicial finding, not only in terms of millions of dollars of property which had been disposed of to this time, but also because any finding about the constitutionality of government action had the power to endanger other aspects of anti-Nikkei policy, both past and future.29

The Exchequer Court

Over two days at the end of May 1944, the Exchequer Court of Canada sat to begin hearing claims on behalf of Eikichi Nakashima, Tadao Wakabayski, and Jitaro Tanaka and Takejiro Tanaka. These three claims were presented by MacLennan, and were to serve as tests to examine government power over natural born and naturalised

Canadians, and Japanese nationals.30 This is an early indication of the tactic of highlighting the fact that many Nikkei were Canadian citizens, a tactic which was viewed sympathetically by an increasing number of Canadians as the war continued.

The case was heard by Justice Thorson, a man with obvious conflicts of interest, being

27 “That Property Case,” New Canadian, April 15, 1944; MacLennan quoted in “Court to Rule if Sale of Property is Constitutional,” New Canadian, May 13, 1944. 28 “Court to Rule if Sale of Property is Constitutional,” New Canadian, May 13, 1944. 29 Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi, Justice in Our Time: The Japanese-Canadian Redress Settlement (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991), 43. 30 Eikichi Nakashima, Tadao Wakabayski, Jitaro Tanaka and Takejiro Tanaka v His Majesty the King, The Exchequer Court of Canada (August 28, 1947), Library and Archives Canada, MG31, E38, vol. 34 no. 21, 12. 147

part of the cabinet which initially approved the evacuations in 1942.31 The

Government’s counsel was Thorson’s one-time colleague, F.P. Varcoe, Deputy Minister of Justice.32

MacLennan argued that Nikkei property had been entrusted to the Custodian by

P.C. 1665 of 14 March 1942 “as a protective measure only”, and that this phrase meant that any later orders authorising the sale of that property were hence invalid.33 He further argued that the property sales were not necessary for the security of Canada or prosecution of the war, and so the War Measures Act could not authorise empowering the Custodian to make sales.34 The Government avoided the substance of these charges, and instead attacked the premise on which the case was mounted. Varcoe argued that the Custodian was not a Crown servant, but rather a statutory officer, and so action brought before the Exchequer Court was invalid.35 This tactic meant that the Court was required to consider the structure and powers of the government, and whether or not it had jurisdiction to hear the case, before it could address any Nikkei grievances.

Essentially, Canada was telling its Nikkei that they should seek redress from the

Custodian directly, rather than the Government that created and empowered this office.

On 30 May the Court rested.

Throughout the following months and years, Canadian Nikkei waited for the decision on the preliminary matter of whether the Exchequer Court had jurisdiction over this case. In late July 1944, the Property Association was advised “that a decision may be expected at any time depending on the time available to Mr. Justice Thorson to give

31 Forrest E. La Violette, “The Canadian Japanese,” Far Eastern Survey 17(8) (April 21, 1948): 94. 32 Ibid. 33 Eikichi Nakashima, Tadao Wakabayski, Jitaro Tanaka and Takejiro Tanaka v His Majesty the King; La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 220. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 148

full consideration to the case”.36 While Nikkei remained interested in the case’s outcome, they had not yet marshalled the power of mass public support for their plight.

The New Canadian continued to seek updates on Thorson’s progress, but received little concrete information. La Violette notes that no indication was given as to when his decision would be offered, and that long before any decision was made Canadian Nikkei saw this challenge as a “lost cause”.37 As 1945 came and went, Nikkei focussed on other avenues of protest and redress, including the prospect of mass deportations.38

It was not until September of 1947, some time after the Supreme Court and

Privy Council findings had altered the political situation, and nine months after the

Canadian Citizenship Act came into force, that Thorson quietly published his findings.

It had taken him three years to decide that that the Custodian was not a servant of the

Crown, and therefore the Exchequer Court could not hear the case.39 However, as part of this decision Thorson also reiterated the absolute power of the War Measures Act, indicating a belief in the subservience of the judiciary to the executive. Recalling the

Act, he noted that in times of emergency, the Governor-in-Council had power to act for the “security, defence, peace, order and welfare of Canada”, and that “the Court has no right to substitute its opinion of what is necessary or advisable for that of the Governor in Council or to question the validity of an order so made.”40

The first wartime challenge made by Nikkei was thus a failure on several counts, but was a positive organising tool which paved the way for future developments. It did not achieve its express aim of stopping government sales of Nikkei property, nor did it succeed in winning any compensation for the sales made while the case continued. The

36 “War Owners to Use Care Claiming Property Refunds,” New Canadian, July 22, 1944. 37 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 222; La Violette, “The Canadian Japanese,” 94. 38 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 241. 39 “Property Owners Petitions Dismissed in Test Cases,” New Canadian, September 20, 1947; La Violette, “The Canadian Japanese,” 94. 40 Eikichi Nakashima, Tadao Wakabayski, Jitaro Tanaka and Takejiro Tanaka v His Majesty the King, 20-21. 149

decision did not even recognise the validity of the Nikkei grievance, although this was for technical reasons. However, the process established the desire of Nikkei to challenge government action, and raised arguments which aided the politicisation of the pro-

Nikkei movement. The organisation of the Nikkei community around the Japanese

Property Owners Association was an indication of the collective strength that could be mobilised. Its attempted defence of possessions and property previously owned by

Nikkei indicated their connections to the nation. And the existence of this undecided case in 1946, as Nikkei were beginning to build a sympathetic movement, allowed them to press for compensation. In July 1947 – before Thorson had reached a decision – the

Government agreed to hold a Royal Commission into cases where the Custodian had failed to act with reasonable care.41 For these reasons, the ability of the Nikkei to gain access to the Exchequer Court in 1944 was an important part of the process of resistance which began to demonstrate their position within the national community.

Repatriation or exile, the Supreme Court and the dilution of executive power

While Nikkei were waiting for Thorson and the Exchequer Court, intervening legal and political developments required them to refocus their strategy of resistance elsewhere.

From early 1945, Canada began distributing its repatriation surveys, offering Nikkei the option of moving east of the Rockies, or signing for “repatriation” to Japan.42 The liquidation of coastal property had been an important factor in facilitating the

41 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 243. 42 Humphrey Mitchell, “Notice To All Persons of Japanese Racial Origin Having Reference to Making Voluntary Application for Repatriation to Japan” (February 13, 1945), Library and Archives Canada, RG18, Vol. 3566, C-315-36-3; T.B. Pickersgill, “Notice To All Persons of Japanese Racial Origin Now Resident in British Columbia” (March 12, 1945), Library and Archives Canada, RG18, Vol. 3566, C-315- 36-3. 150

executive’s deportation plans, but it became a secondary concern when the very existence of much of the Canadian Nikkei community was under threat.

By the second half of 1945, the Canadian Government had collected 10,500 forms accepting (or requesting) “repatriation”, a number which comprised of over 40 percent of the entire Nikkei community at the time.43 As noted, many claimed to have done this as a short term solution to complicated personal situations and requests to revoke the acceptance of “repatriation” began flooding into government offices soon after.44 The Cabinet Committee on Japanese Questions took a hard line approach to these requests, deciding that anyone who had not revoked requests for repatriation before Japan’s sudden surrender in September 1945 was disloyal and should be repatriated.45 Those who were not Canadian citizens were treated even more harshly.

This created a situation where Canada was home to thousands of unwilling and confused prospective “repatriates” whose fate was being crafted in a hurried, secretive policy process by the executive. The way that this policy process played out, with no negotiation or engagement, set the scene for the next vital challenge launched by

Canadian Nikkei.

The Canadian Government was unwilling to consider even the most obvious cases for a policy relaxation. This is illustrated by its response to the pleas of Saenesake

Kubota, a Canadian Citizen who had fought for Canada in World War I, and was in receipt of a state pension. Kubota wrote to Ian Mackenzie in December 1945, explaining that he believed that he would not be able to support his wife and four

43 In addition to the examples cited in the previous chapter, see “Demand Chance to Say ‘No’ for Japanese-Canadians,” Toronto Daily Star, November 29, 1945. 44 By April 1946, 4,527 of an initial 6,884 adult signatories had sought to revoke their ‘requests’ for repatriation: Library and Archives Canada, RG18, vol. 3566, C-315-36-3. 45 “Cabinet Committee on Japanese Questions, Agenda and Minutes of Meetings 1945-1948” (Meeting 1, September 12, 1945), Library and Archives Canada, RG27, Vol. 3026. 151

children in Japan, and pleading for permission to remain in Canada. He explained to

Mackenzie that

When we were in Vancouver before evacuation they said we were enemy aliens and must be sent to interior towns. In which case I thought we would surely be sent to Japan later on, thus I had signed for repatriation. I have been living in Canada for 39 years and for the service of Canada I had performed a very high duty. I am sure you will give a little thought in this matter.46

The request was forwarded to T.B. Pickersgill, Commissioner of Japanese Placement, who chose to interpret the emotional but somewhat clumsy letter in a purely literal manner. He responded to Deputy Labour Minister Brown in January 1946 with a letter saying that

Kubota keeps referring in his letter to “being sent to Japan”. We cannot see how he is being sent to Japan when he has already expressed that desire twice, and has given us no indication that it is still not his desire.47

By the end of 1945, the Government had received 4,720 requests to revoke repatriation orders.48 Given the Government’s treatment of Kubota, and the fact that they were still planning to deport “nine to ten thousand” repatriates “as soon as possible” it is clear that most of these requests were initially ignored.49

Chapter 4 examines the popular movement that civil libertarians and Nikkei had begun to build in support of their resistance to the government’s push towards deportations. Much of this organisation happened under the banner of the Cooperative

46 Saenesake Kubota to Ian Mackenzie (December 29, 1945), Library and Archives, RG27, Vol. 40, file 23-2-1, Vol. 2. 47 T.B. Pickersgill to A.H. Brown (January 29, 1946) in ibid. 48 Canada, Report on the Re-Establishment of Japanese in Canada, 1944-1946 (Ottawa: Department of Labour, 1947) notes at 13 that 285 revocation requests were received before Japan’s surrender on September 1, 1945. By December 31, 1945 this number was 4,720, and by March 1946 it was 6,313. 49 “Memorandum on Program for Repatriation and Relocation of Persons of Japanese Race in Canada” (dated “early 1946”), Japanese Division – Administration: General Correspondence, Library and Archives Canada, RG27, Vol. 40, file 23-2-2-1, notes that “nine to ten thousand” repatriates should be deported “as soon as possible” for administrative ease. 152

Committee on Japanese-Canadians, which decided, along with its public campaign, to institute court proceedings as a delay mechanism and a legal test.50 On 27 December

1945 Andrew Brewin issued a writ of habeas corpus to the Supreme Court of Ontario on behalf of Utaka Shimoyama, Yae Nasu and her seven children, claiming that “[t]he

Governor-in-Council is not authorized by the War Measures Act or by any other valid statute or law to enact the said Orders-in-Council” and that the powers by which the deportations were proposed were “therefore invalid, void and of no effect.”51 Feeling secure in their legal position, but nonetheless impressed by the public campaign and support that the Nikkei and their supporters were building (with church groups and

Some Liberal Senators beginning to speak out, and the Office of the Prime Minister receiving about 1,000 letters in the first weeks of 1946)52 the government agreed to a hearing. It bypassed the individual challenge launched in order to avoid the prospect of any number of habeas corpus challenges by those awaiting repatriation, but agreed to refer the orders in total to the full bench of the Supreme Court on 24 January 1946.53

Brewin and J.R. Cartwright, a constitutional lawyer, backed by the Province of

Saskatchewan, acted for the C.C.J.C. on behalf of Canadian Nikkei, while the Federal

Attorney General, backed by the Province of British Columbia, acted for the

Government.54 As in the case of the Exchequer Court hearing, the Supreme Court

50 The first repatriations were expected in January, 1946. Edith Fowke, They Made Democracy Work: The Story of the Cooperative Committee on Japanese-Canadians (Toronto: C.C.J.C., 1951), 18. 51 “Writ of Summons – General S.C.O, No. 3041, Utaka Shimoyama and Yae Nasu to The Attorney General of Canada” (December 27, 1945), Library and Archives Canada, MG32, C26, Vol. 1. 52 Brewin’s supporters included Liberal Senators A.W. Roebuck and Cairine Wilson, Saskatchewan Premier T.C. Douglas, and welfare and church groups. Cooperative Committee on Japanese-Canadians, “The Concern of the Canadian People for the Christian and Democratic Treatment of Japanese- Canadians” (January 4, 1946), MG28, V1, vol. 3 contains a list of several pages of supportive individuals and groups; See also Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 199. 53 Ibid. 54 Saskatchewan was led by a C.C.F. Government which believed that the Federal Government had treated Canadian Nikkei inequitably, and believed that a national solution to the issue of the Nikkei in Canada was required. They offered to settle Nikkei in Saskatchewan before the completion of the war, and supported the C.C.J.C.’s challenges at the Supreme Court and Privy Council. See Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 201; Stephanie Bangarth, Voices Raised in Protest: Defending North American Citizens of Japanese Ancestry, 1942-49 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008), 110. 153

functioned as a proxy battlefield for the different political arguments being put. Once again, the pro-Nikkei argument centred on the constitutional validity of government action, and argued that the government was abusing its authority in attempting to deport citizens. Brewin and Cartwright attempted to reframe the discourse by emphasising the

“citizenry” of Canadian Nikkei and arguing that what the government was seeking to do was not repatriate, but rather exile its subjects, which was “expressly prohibited under heavy penalties by Habeas Corpus Act 31.”55 They also invoked international responsibilities, claiming that “the banishment of nationals particularly on racial grounds, is contrary to the principles of International Law”.56

In opposition, the Government argued, more simply, that

Orders in Council P.C. 7355, 7356 and 7357 were enacted within the authority of the War Measures Act and continue in full force and effect…[and] the matters in relation to which these Orders in Council are enacted clearly fall within the emergency power of Parliament during time of war…[and by a Parliamentary proclamation] the state of war with Japan continues to exist.57

True to form, British Columbia was more blunt still, arguing that “[t]he Courts do not overrule the Government in a matter of this sort”.58 These brief arguments were concluded the following day, with the bench retiring on 25 January.

Government action and internal correspondence at this time indicate the existence of real concerns that Nikkei would be able to use the courts to derail the entire repatriation policy. Throughout the first weeks of 1946 a Brewin ally, solicitor Robert

55 F.A. Brewin and J.P. Erichsen Brown, “Factum of the Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians in the matter of a reference as to the validity of Orders in Council of the 15th Day of December, 1945 (P.C. 7355, 7356 and 7357), in relation to persons of the Japanese race” (Toronto: The Sovereign Press, 1946). 56 Ibid. 57 Aime Geoffrion and David Mundell, “Factum of the Attorney General of Canada in the matter of a reference as to the validity of Orders in Council of the 15th Day of December, 1945 (P.C. 7355, 7356 and 7357), in relation to persons of the Japanese race” (Ottawa: Edmond Cloutier, 1946), 8-12. 58 R.L. Maitland, “Factum of the Attorney General of British Columbia in the matter of a reference as to the validity of Orders in Council of the 15th Day of December, 1945 (P.C. 7355, 7356 and 7357), in relation to persons of the Japanese race” (Ottawa: Ewart, Scott and Co., 1946), 2. 154

McMaster, had been visiting towns where many prospective repatriates were living, and collecting requests to instigate habeas corpus proceedings.59 On 10 February 1946,

McMaster wrote to Brewin indicating that he had 1,300 such requests with “more to come”.60 The Government was concerned about how these would be used, and

“demanded a list” of those intending to launch proceedings, “so that luggage would not be mixed up etc.”61 McMaster refused to supply him with one.62 At the same time, T.B.

Pickersgill contacted government counsel Locke, Lane, Guild and Sheppard Solicitors to enquire as to whether a Supreme Court finding in favour of the government would preclude other habeas corpus proceedings.63 Locke advised that the use of “race” in the wording of the government’s orders was ambiguous, and individuals would be able to issue a writ to enquire as to whether they were “of the Japanese race and [thus] liable to deportation”.64 Locke’s advice all but confirmed that the government would not be able to continue to execute its repatriation policy without some negotiation. The public involvement of the Supreme Court had altered the government’s political calculus, reframing the policy in legal terms which troubled the ideological racism which allowed the deportation of citizens.

Asking for a Supreme Court opinion complicated the Government’s position because it compromised the absolute authority with which the executive had claimed to act up until December 1945. When the Court returned findings which did not unanimously back the Government, underlying ideological tensions were publicly presented. On 20 February, three separate opinions were offered which variously backed and opposed parts of the Orders in question. Chief Justice Rinfret and Justices

59 Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 121. 60 McMaster to Brewin (February 10, 1946), Library and Archives Canada, MG32, C26, Vol. 1. 61 Campbell, Brazier, Fisher and McMaster Barristers and Solicitors to Brewin (February 14, 1946), Library and Archives Canada, MG32, C26, Vol. 1. 62 Ibid. 63 Locke, Lane, Guild and Sheppard to T.B. Pickersgill (February 4, 1946), Library and Archives Canada, RG27, III B 5, vol. 24. 64 Ibid. 155

Kerwin and Taschereau backed the Government’s position in its entirety, arguing that the Cabinet was “responsible directly to Parliament” which had “full power to amend or repeal the War Measures Act” if it believed that Cabinet was abusing its power.65 As the parliament had not acted against the Cabinet, Rinfret, Kerwin and Taschereau held that

Cabinet’s actions were justified, and the judiciary did not have the authority to assert its opinion over the executive and legislature. Justices Hudson and Estey agreed with

Rinfret, Kerwin and Taschereau that all orders were valid “with the exception of paragraph 2(4) of P.C. 7455”.66 This paragraph referred to the deportation of dependents of signatories, and Hudson and Estey argued that these “wives and children” had not given consent, and hence were not free repatriates who the government had the power to deport. Finally, Justices Rand and Kellock agreed with Hudson and Estey that dependents should not be deported against their will, but also questioned the

Government’s right to deport natural born Canadians to a foreign territory. Rand argued that

“Repatriation” means simply a return to the patria or fatherland, and has no relation to the compulsory transfer of a natural born British subject to a foreign country.67

Rand also explicitly raised issues of race and its bearing on citizenship, stating that his findings were made with a mind to how the court might find in cases of Canadians with

European ancestry, and whether England, Ireland and France would accept Canada exiling undesirable subjects to these places.68

65 In the matter of a reference as to the validity of Orders in Council of the 15th Day of December, 1945 (P.C. 7355, 7356 and 7357), in relation to persons of the Japanese race, Library and Archives Canada, MG28, V1, vol. 6, 6 (per Rinfret C.J., Kerwin and Tascherau JJ.). 66 Ibid., 7 (per Hudson J.). 67 Ibid., (per Rand J.). 68 Ibid. 156

Far from clarifying the government’s position, and giving it legal legitimacy for its repatriation program, the Supreme Court opinions had introduced further confusion, at the heart of which were questions about the place that Nikkei occupied in Canada.

The Judges had unanimously accepted the power of the government to deport Japanese nationals and naturalised Canadians, had voted five to two in favour of deporting natural born Canadians of Japanese ancestry, and four to three against deporting unwilling dependents of signatories. In backing parts of the proposed policy, but not all of it, the government was not given the authority to continue with its actions as previously imagined, nor effectively ordered to desist. The split opinions raised a series of normative and legal questions about the civic status and treatment of Canadian Nikkei – including whether the government should or could seek to separate families – that did much to humanise the outcomes of Canada’s policy.69 The C.C.J.C. saw this confusion as an opportunity to continue its public campaign, and urged the Government to delay any deportations and appeal the findings at the Privy Council in London.70

The Government’s digestion of these opinions indicated that its pre-Supreme Court policy was dead. At a Cabinet committee meeting on 27 February, Deputy Minister for

Labour Arthur McNamara outlined the scenario facing the Government. He stated that if they were to strictly follow the Court’s advice, about 7,000 people would be deportable, but if it decided not to separate parents from their children, this number would be reduced to about 1,500.71 Minister for Labour Humphrey Mitchell suggested three possible courses of action, namely:

69 Reginald Hardy, “Jap Deportation Findings May Create Moral Issue,” Calgary Herald, February 20, 1946; C.C.J.C. statement after the findings were released stated that “what is left of these orders as legally valid cannot be carried out without separating families, depriving wives of their husbands, children of their fathers, thus making in effect widows and orphans of Canadian citizens,” quoted in Fowke, They Made Democracy Work, 21. 70 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 201. 71 “Cabinet Committee on Japanese Questions, Agenda and Minutes of Meetings 1945-1948” (February 27, 1946), Library and Archives Canada, RG27, Vol. 3026 (Arthur McNamara, Deputy Minister for Labour). 157

1. Allow the Privy Council challenge, and make preliminary arrangements for deportation, while deporting some voluntary Japanese nationals. 2. Disclose to those ‘interesting themselves in the case’ what the government ultimately proposes to do, which might quieten resistance and make the PC challenge unnecessary. 3. Proceed with deportation to the limits allowed by the Court.72

The Government decided that its most prudent approach would be to facilitate the Privy

Council challenge, while deporting those who “still expressed a desire” to go.73

Privy Council review, executive vindication and the evolution of citizenship

Mackenzie King publicly announced the changed policy in March 1946. He stated that in order to remove “any uncertainty in the legal situation that had been created by the differing judgements of the Justices of the Supreme Court,” Canada would allow the

Supreme Court opinions to be reviewed at the Privy Council.74 While this was occurring, the government intended to “proceed with arrangements to enable any

Japanese who wish to leave Canada voluntarily to do so at an early date”. As each side prepared for the Privy Council hearing, the government continued to deport those that it would later claim were the disloyal (despite the fact that a majority of those who were

“voluntarily” repatriated were in fact dependent Canadian citizens in a series of complicated situations), and Nikkei and their supporters continued with their public campaign in support of civil rights. Both attempted to frame the issue of Nikkei

72 “Cabinet Committee on Japanese Questions, Agenda and Minutes of Meetings 1945-1948” (February 27, 1946), Library and Archives Canada, RG27, Vol. 3026 (Humphrey Mitchell, Minister for Labour). 73 Ibid. 74 Prime Minister’s Office, “Press release,” Library and Archives Canada, MG31, E87, vol. 1. 158

citizenship in a way that would allow an ultimate resolution of the issue in ways acceptable to them.

The appeal reached the Privy Council in July 1946. Brewin, assisted by

Christopher Shawcross and Geoffrey Wilson, was required to review the case put to the

Supreme Court as the Lords prompted him and asked questions. The questioning was broad, indicating at times the dearth of knowledge that Canada’s highest court of appeal had about Canada, and included queries about whether or not dual nationality existed, whether the Orders-in-Council defined “Japanese race”, and what R.C.M.P stood for.75

Brewin concluded his brief with a non-exhaustive series of reasons as to why the

“Orders-in-Council were wholly ultra-vires”.76 These 10 separate points drew on various criticisms of the Government’s actions that had been mounted throughout the process of appeal, and included the arguments that the War Measures Act did not give

Parliament the power to order “the exile, to Japan, of British subjects”; that removing

British Subjects to a foreign country was “contrary to accepted principles of international law”; that the emergency situation did not exist at the time that the Orders authorising deportation were passed; that the category of “Japanese race” was so vague that it was “incapable of application to ascertained persons”; and finally, that if any part of the Orders was considered problematic, they should be considered “wholly invalid,” as they were part of “one legislative scheme.”77 In response, Canada was narrow and direct, arguing again that the powers the Government had exercised were authorised by the emergency situation and not subject to judicial review.78

75 Norman Cribbins, “Can Japanese be Canadians?” Vancouver Sun, July 16, 1946. 76 In the matter of a reference as to the validity of Orders in Council of the 15th Day of December, 1945 (P.C. 7355, 7356 and 7357), in relation to persons of the Japanese race (Toronto: The Sovereign Press Limited, 1946). 77 Ibid., 9-10. 78 Ibid. 159

The arguments took four days, at which time Brewin conveyed his impressions to his allies in Canada. On 22 July 1946 he told McMaster that the Lords “seem to feel that the Orders in Council were thoroughly unsatisfactory,” but also that “that of course, is a different thing entirely to conceding that the Government did not have the power to make such Orders.”79 This communication acknowledged the political nature of the questions being considered, and hinted at the difficulty that the Privy Council would have in finding against what was, in all but name, a foreign self-governing nation. Roy has noted that the C.C.J.C. understood the possibility that the decision could go against them, and so continued to press for political negotiations.80 After the hearings, private meetings with Mackenzie King were difficult to obtain, and the C.C.J.C. was informed that “the government would wish to have an opportunity to examine whatever decision is handed down by the Privy Council in this case before meeting your delegation.”81

The C.C.J.C. thus continued to wage a vigorous public campaign which increasingly focused on universal citizenship rights. This shift was encapsulated by two press releases drafted by Brewin on the eve of the Privy Council decision. A win was to be announced as “a great triumph for civil liberties and the civil rights of all Canadians,” whereas a loss was to indicate that the government had obtained “the legal power to exile Canadian citizens for such reasons as seem good to it”.82

On 2 December 1946, the Privy Council returned findings which methodically supported the previous opinion of Rinfret, Kerwin and Taschereau. The Council concluded that it was

not pertinent to the judiciary to consider the wisdom or the propriety of the particular policy which is embodied in the emergency legislation…that none of

79 Brewin to McMaster (July 22, 1946), Library and Archives Canada, MG28, V1, vol. 2. 80 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 202. 81 R.G. Roberson to Brewin (December 2, 1946), Library and Archives Canada, MG28 V1, vol. 3. 82 C.C.J.C, “Draft Press Statement Re Privy Council Decision: 1. If we win; 2. If we lose,” Library and Archives Canada, MG28, V1. 160

the Orders in Council is in any respect ultra vires and that the appeal should be dismissed.83

Roy and Bangarth have illustrated that although the courts accepted the supremacy of the Government, the public process of the appeal had given Nikkei and their supporters a prominent visibility they had been denied throughout the war.84 The arguments made, framed in terms of civil rights and citizenship, were well received by wider audiences beyond the Courts, and in his review of the decision, Brewin argued that “there is good reason for optimism that…none of these orders will ever in fact be enforced.”85

Once the Privy Council’s decision had been announced, the deportation policy moved swiftly towards a conclusion. On 24 December 1946 the S.S. Marine Falcon left Canada with what would be the final 290 deportees, and on 1 January 1947 the Canadian

Citizenship Act came into force. On 10 January 1947 the Cabinet Committee on

Japanese Problems recommended that “Japanese who do not wish to be repatriated be not deported,” but that control over movement be retained until displaced Japanese-

Canadians had become “more settled in their new locations.”86 Then on 22 January

1947 the full Cabinet accepted this course of action. Although Ian Mackenzie begrudgingly accepted a cessation of deportation, Louis St Laurent “fought strongly and bravely for deporting practically all who could be deported,” but was countered by

King’s argument that they were “already in a false position in the minds of many people through our ill-Liberal treatment of different persons”.87 On 24 January 1947,

83 Co-operative Committee on Japanese-Canadians & anor v Attorney-General for Canada & anor [1947] A.C. 87, 99-100, 109 (hosted at United Settlement, accessed December 12, 2010, http://uniset.ca/other/ths/cooperative.html). 84 Bangarth, Voices Raised in Triumph, 64-66; Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 205 85 F.A. Brewin, “Memorandum for the Co-operative Committee on Japanese-Canadians on the Judgement of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council” (December 22, 1946), Library and Archives Canada, MG32, C26, vol. 1. 86 “Cabinet Committee on Japanese Questions, Agenda and Minutes of Meetings 1945-1948” (January 10, 1947), Library and Archives Canada, RG27, vol. 3026. 87 Diary of Mackenzie King (entry dated January 22, 1947) quoted in Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 128; Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 207-08. 161

Mackenzie King announced the withdrawal of the orders allowing deportation, only weeks after the conclusion of the Privy Council review.88

The ultimate power to call an end to the policy of deporting Canadian Nikkei still rested with the Canadian Government, but considerable pressure had been applied by the way that the court systems had been used by Nikkei and their supporters, and the moral support that this gave to their citizenship claims. The executive Government managed to “win” the cases that made it to the courts, however in two of the three cases, political readjustments were made to the deportation policies in the wake of the court decisions, and in the third, movement towards a resolution was made before the

Exchequer Court returned with its belated decision that there was no case for it to answer. These changes were not made because the judiciary legally required them, but because of the political importance of the existence of the cases and the publicity that surrounded them. The way that this publicity was used to pressure the government is elaborated upon in the following chapter, and this pressure, backed by the authority of the nation’s highest courts required the government to defend their actions in a public way. Its inability to rationalise discriminatory action led to the formal public acceptance that the majority of the Nikkei in question were Canadian Citizens, which reshaped the bounds of notional citizenship.

Australia

The experiences of Australian Nikkei with the judiciary in Australia compare unfavourably with that of Canadian Nikkei: Australian Nikkei were unable to mount a strategically important challenge the equal of Canada’s Supreme Court hearing; they

88 Canada, Report on the Re-Establishment of Japanese in Canada, 23. 162

were unable to extend public discourse about their situation through the courts to the public; and ultimately, a greater percentage of Australian Nikkei were deported. This can partially be explained by the relatively small size and political powerlessness of the

Australian community, which, along with the severity of the Australian internment and censorship policies, conspired to virtually lock Nikkei out of the judicial system until the majority of the community was deported.

Hence the experiences Australian Nikkei had with the Australian judicial system necessitate a different approach to that taken for the Canadian side of this chapter. The judicial and quasi-judicial review that did occur in Australia had less resonance throughout Australian society, and did not have the discursive impact of the Canadian cases. There was less government discussion of the importance of the judiciary, and there has been less examination of them since. For these reasons, the Australian side of this chapter has a greater reliance on in-depth examinations of individual cases and primary materials to illustrate its arguments. As in Canada, the Australian judiciary (and quasi-judiciary) had the power to affect government action, and was viewed warily by the Australian executive. This is evident both in the way that Australia attempted to circumscribe any challenges, and in its reaction to the Katsumata challenge. The

Australian Government, aware of the power of judicial action, acted to contain prospective challenges and made necessary concessions in order to avoid judicial scrutiny. But without the counterbalance of public legal arguments and judicial opinions to challenge executive action, the legal complications raised by Australian Nikkei did not lead to a more robust civil rights discourse of the type being conducted in Canada.

Australian Nikkei mounted wartime appeals at Aliens Tribunal hearings in 1942 and in a series of direct Ministerial contacts in late 1945 and early 1946 as interned individuals learned that their deportations were imminent. There was one remarkable 163

petition for a writ of habeas corpus made on behalf of Kojiro Katsumata in February

1946, and there were a series of quasi-judicial reviews conducted by the Simpson

Commission after the deportations. These events comprise the major judicial and quasi- judicial review of the anti-Nikkei action in Australia. An examination of the lengths that individuals went to in order to obtain these hearings, and the dismissive way that many were then treated, indicate the immense difficulties that Nikkei faced in querying their treatment. Underlying this treatment was a belief in the foreignness of Australian

Nikkei, who were perceived as foreign nationals lacking avenues of appeal through the civilian court system.

Aliens Tribunals

The first series of appeals made by Australian

Nikkei were made before Aliens Tribunals in New South Wales and Victoria in 1942.

These Tribunals were designed to function as an extension of the executive, aiding the

Minister of the Army in making discretionary judgements about internees who felt that they had been wrongly incarcerated. The severity of the Australian Government’s

Japanese internment policy, (outlined in the previous chapter) along with the directions that the Tribunals were given, meant that they did not function as panels of review, but rather gave the illusion of a process of justice. Of over 1,100 Australian Nikkei summarily interned at the beginning of the war, the Aliens Tribunal found four individuals worthy of release.89 Several of the particularly strong cases presented by

Australian Nikkei below indicate the depth of the racism that informed the Australian

Government’s approach to its “Japanese” population at this stage of the war.

89 Yuriko Nagata, Unwanted Aliens: Japanese Internment in Australia (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1996), 103. 164

Since the time of the first wartime internments in Australia in 1939, the policy was that all internees would be given some degree of explanation of the regulations under which they were held and told that they had the right to appeal before an

Advisory Committee if they were British Subjects, and an Aliens Tribunal if they were foreigners.90 The regulations by which tribunals were governed stated that they were

in no sense Courts of Law, but [were] appointed by the Minister to assist him in carrying out his administrative functions. Accordingly, they are not bound by ordinary rules of evidence, and it is open to the Committees to take account of information which is not evidence in the legal sense.91

The Aliens Tribunals consisted of three civilian lawyers and a representative of the

Minister for the Army, who presented the government’s case against an internee. The internee was entitled to an interpreter, witnesses and counsel, although in reality few could organise these from their places of internment.92 There was some discussion of excluding “Japanese internees” from this entire appeals process, but it was decided that anti-Japanese discrimination had the potential to endanger British subjects in Japan, as well as prove “politically embarrassing after the war.”93

The Australian archives indicate that about 140 Japanese-Australians were initially granted hearings at Aliens Tribunal 4 in Victoria, and about a dozen Japanese fronted Aliens Tribunal 1 in New South Wales, although far fewer made it to the

Tribunals, and even less argued for release.94 Margaret Bevege states that most of those

90 Intelligence memo: “NSW Security Service file – Internment of Japanese, right to lodge an appeal” (April 23, 1942), National Archives of Australia, C320, S24. 91 National Archives of Australia, MP508/1, items 255/702/947, 255/702/992; see Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien, “Citizenship, Rights and Emergency Powers in Second World War Australia,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 53(2) (2007): 216. 92 Pam Oliver, “Who is One of Us? (Re)discovering the Inside-out of Australia’s Japanese Immigrant Communities, 1901-1957,” Japanese Studies 22(3) (2002): 279-80. 93 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 103. 94 It is difficult to establish precise figures here. The archive files for Tribunal 4 in Melbourne contain 139 dossiers marked “Japanese internee,” and some of these were made on behalf of family groups. Additionally, many of these only go so far as to have the individual state they no longer wished to 165

allowed to appeal withdrew their objections to internment upon being told they were not obliged to appeal, and many others did so after being warned by the Tribunal that their safety could not be guaranteed outside of the internment camps.95 For example Kojiro

Katsumata told his panel on 12 May 1942 that “[a]t the time when I appealed to be let out, I did not quite understand, but, at the present time, I do not think it would be any good for me to try to get out,” and Australian born Michael Joseph Tenin, who was described by character witnesses as “an excellent citizen” and “a good Australian” decided that he would remain interned because “public feeling would be against him” if he was released.96 The records of these hearings indicate a desire not to cause trouble and accept the government’s processes, along with an ultimately justified assessment made by individual internees of the chances of their success.

Some Nikkei felt the injustice of their internment fiercely, and mounted vigorous appeals in spite of the odds against them. Once in front of the panel, however, they were required to undertake the almost impossible task of satisfying the Tribunal that they presented “no future risk” to the community in physical or psychological terms while being presented with hostile questioning based on beliefs about aspects of the

“Japanese character.”97 The case of 63-year-old Hirokiti Nakamura, heard on 21

September 1942, is an example of the way that these appeals played out.98 As his supporters attested, Nakamura was well-respected man who lived in Mosman with his

British wife Elizabeth, and had been resident in Australia for 44 years (predating

Federation). Elizabeth was a long term volunteer at the local branch of the Red Cross,

challenge their internment, or to have something similar noted. National Archives of Australia, MP529/3; National Archives of Australia, C329; Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 104. 95 Margaret Bevege, Behind Barbed Wire: Internment in Australia During World War Two (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1993), 135-37. 96 Kojiro Katsumata, Aliens Tribunal No. 4 (May 12, 1942), National Archives of Australia, MP529/3, TRIBUNAL 4/42; Bevege, Behind Barbed Wire, 141. 97 Ibid. 98 National Archives of Australia, C329, 648. This and all information about the case and quotations below are taken from Hirokiti Nakamura’s tribunal hearing transcript unless otherwise noted. 166

and the Nakamuras had two daughters who were engaged to Australian soldiers. At face value, he presented as an individual above reproach, but one after another his witnesses were questioned in an almost absurd fashion. Upon claiming that he regarded Nakamura

“really as an Australian friend”, James Harold was asked by the Chairman, Justice Pike, if he would “say he was more a Japanese friend in Australia?”99 The next witness, Maria

Crockett, was asked if there were “shrines or Japanese curtains” or a laundry in the house – there were not – as a means of establishing the “Japaneseness” of Nakamura’s home. Rector Ernest Cameron of St Luke’s Anglican church, Mosman, was asked whether he knew if Nakamura, who was a parishioner of long standing, had actively

“renounce[d] Buddha”. Michael Sulogius Breen, a teacher with the Christian Brothers who took Japanese lessons with Nakamura, was told that “one of the fundamentals of the Japanese belief is that while you are a Japanese from one birth to one death and are loyal to the Emperor during that period,” and then asked “Do you know whether

Nakamura subscribed to that?” He replied that Nakamura had in fact “endeavoured to become Naturalised but under Commonwealth laws he could not change his citizenship.” All of this questioning was aimed at uncovering a racial otherness, rather than any direct evidence of a danger or threat posed by Nakamura.

After his evidence was presented, the Tribunal’s report on Nakamura contained a contradictory conclusion. It accepted Nakamura’s history of loyalty in Australia while still regarding him with suspicion on account of his Japaneseness. The panel wrote that

We are satisfied that the objector is still Japanese in his outlook and national sympathies and would help Japan if he considered that by doing so he would benefit himself or his family. On the other hand, the evidence is clear that he has been a good citizen [my emphasis], a good husband and father, and never made any public or private statements which could be considered subversive or disloyal.100

99 National Archives of Australia, C329, 648 100 Tribunal to Attorney General, “Japanese Activities in Queensland” (October 8, 1942), A367, C68645. 167

Such a conclusion illustrated the extreme difficulty that officials had in separating

Japanese ethnicity from the idea of innate enemy allegiance. Although they considered

Nakamura a “good citizen”, his sympathies were questioned, and his release was denied. Elizabeth Nakamura spent the rest of the time her husband was interned campaigning for his release. By April 1943, elements of the Security forces argued that he presented no danger, but he was only granted release after the onset of extreme health complications on 25 June 1944.101 The elderly man had spent two and a half of his final years locked away from his family, before he died in October 1945. Mrs

Nakamura wrote to the Director General of Security on 2 May 1946 saying she would

“appreciate it very much if you would inform me where I can obtain return of

[Nakamura’s] articles, particularly my photo album, as it contains photos of my family as children.”102

The case of Joseph Suzuki is another which indicates the inability of the Aliens

Tribunal hearings to alter a Government policy predisposed to view Australian Nikkei as enemy aliens.103 Suzuki had arrived in Australia aged six months with his British mother after the death of his Japanese father. He had lived in Australia his whole life, and had enlisted in the Australian Defence Force before the war broke out, at which time he was delisted and interned. Mr. Sharwood, the Chairman at the hearing, told the government’s counsel Captain Gillard that “I do not know whether you can present a case for internment against this man”.104 Gillard concurred, saying that Suzuki presented “the strongest case for release from internment that one could conceive”. The

101 Deputy Director of Security NSW to the General Secretary of Security, Canberra (April 1, 1943); Simpson to E. Nakamura (June 15, 1944), National Archives of Australia, A367, C68645. 102 E. Nakamura to Security (May 2, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A367, C68645. 103 “SUZUKI JOSEPH : Service Number – NX32903 : Date of birth – 28 Feb 1918 : Place of birth – GEELONG VIC : Place of enlistment – PADDINGTON NSW : Next of Kin – SUZUKI ADA,” National Archives of Australia, B883, NX32903; “Prisoner of War/Internee: Suzuki, Joseph; Date of birth – 28 February 1922; Nationality – Japanese,” National Archives of Australia, MP1103/1, NJ17051. 104 Joseph Suzuki, Aliens Tribunal No. 4 (May 13, 1942), National Archives of Australia, MP 529/3, TRIBUNAL 4/46. 168

Security Service assessment presented to the Government with his case argued that it should weigh up Suzuki’s loyalty with the knowledge that “the son of a Japanese is always regarded as a Japanese even if he had some other nationality” and that Japanese had a “fatalistic…adoration of their Emperor” making them “likely to engage in acts of sabotage”.105 Joseph Suzuki remained in internment until he was hospitalised after a mental breakdown and released in late 1944.106 The Suzuki and Nakamura hearings and eventual releases only after extreme health complications give support to Immigration official Lamidey’s claim that the Australian government rarely supported the release of

“Japanese” internees other than in cases of old age or infirmary.107

On the other side of the ledger, a rare positive result is presented by the outcome of Joseph’s sister Hannah Suzuki, whose case was heard on 8 January 1942.108 Her hearing opened with several requests as to why she did not list the deceased father she had never known as a “Jap” on her initial form, which continued until Hannah replied that “I never knew him, but as far as I have been led to believe he was a Jap.” A Sunday school teacher and well-regarded member of her community, Hannah presented a series of impressive witnesses to whom the panel seemed positively predisposed, although its questioning often remained racially prejudicial. The information it required included whether Hannah knew if Mr. Suzuki was “an admirer of hari-kari”, and whether her mother kept Japanese food in the house. Hannah was released on 20 May 1942.109

The quasi-judicial review process was only slightly less stringent in its application to ex-European internees in the first part of the war. Out of over 12,000

105 “Correspondence files re aliens series contains files re repatriation of internees and ex internees, applications for visas, release of prisoners of war and overseas internees and all other matters relating to the administration of the Aliens Control Regulations” (July 1, 1942), National Archives of Australia, SP115/4. 106 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 107. 107 Ibid., 103, 109. 108 “Hannah SUZUKI (Objection 2 of 1942; AC),” National Archives of Australia, C329, 921. 109 “Prisoner of War/Internee: Suzuki, Hannah; Date of birth – 14 August 1920; Nationality – Japanese,” National Archives of Australia, MP1103/1, NJF17000. 169

internees at the height of the operation in 1942, the Tribunals found that there were grounds to release 268 individuals to the end of that year.110 The four Nikkei included in this number were Hannah Suzuki, two natural born British subjects, Veronica Oomori and Marie Kazumine, and the respected farmer (and later mayor of Huntly Shire) Sho

Takasuka.111

Before long, there was internal Government criticism of how these Tribunals were functioning, as they were reviewed by the new Labor Government. Towards the end of 1942, Director-General of Security W. B. Simpson set up the Aliens

Classification and Advisory Committee (A.C.A.C) chaired by future Immigration

Minister Arthur Calwell, and answerable to Attorney General Dr. H.V. Evatt.112

Calwell’s review found that “until recent times, all appeals were farcical and a disgrace to our system of justice.”113 Administration was taken from the Department of the

Army, and given to the Attorney General, who then passed authority to the Deputy

Directors of Security in each state.114 From this time ex-European internees were more steadily released, with 4,550 internees being freed over the following two years.115

“Japanese” internees made up only 69 of this number.116

The functioning of the Aliens Tribunals gave the illusion of a process of judicial review, but they really functioned as an extension of the executive government, administering emergency policy as directed by the Minister. This being the case, Nikkei fared poorly in front of the Tribunals they faced, being ultimately governed by a policy of universal internment. The transcripts of the hearings of well credentialed individuals

110 Neumann cites a high figure of 12,256 internees on June 30, 1942 in Klaus Neumann, In the Interest of National Security: Civilian Internment in Australia During World War Two (Canberra: National Archives of Australia, 2006), 7; Lamidey notes that 268 internees had been released by the end of 1942 in Noel w. Lamidey, Aliens Control in Australia, 1939-46 (Sydney: Noel W. Lamidey, 1974), 54. 111 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 103. 112 Ibid., 110-11. 113 Calwell quoted in O’Brien, “Citizenship, Rights and Emergency Powers,” 217. 114 Ibid., 219. 115 Lamidey, Aliens Control in Australia, 54. 116 Ibid., 103, 109. 170

like Katsumata, Nakashima and the Suzukis indicate the strength of the normative

“foreignness” which Australian Nikkei embodied at the beginning of the war, and the difficulties they faced obtainining release.

The executive control of challenges

Throughout the war, the Australian Government retained tight administrative control of its internment program, but it was also careful to create a façade of independent review.

This was initially done through the tribunal process noted above, but towards the end of the war, it was done through a commission process, whereby a Supreme Court judge was charged with reviewing the cases of individual internees and recommending their release where no security objections existed. As was the case with the tribunals, their application to Nikkei suggests that they were designed to follow government policy, and aid the executive in carrying out the decreed actions, rather than to allow individuals to challenge the government.

In March 1944, Justice Hutchins of the Supreme Court of Tasmania was asked to review the cases of European internees.117 A note filed in August querying Hutchins brief indicates a parallel to constitutional questions raised in Canada towards the end of the war.118 After Hutchins queried the legal basis on which certain internees were held, the Attorney General’s department responded that “it is not for the court to determine whether or not any particular person should continue to be detained” and that “if the

Minister were satisfied that the continued detention of the person was no longer

117 “Civilian Internees - Repatriation - Appointment of Mr. Justice Simpson as Commissioner to make recommendations thereon” (March 20, 1944), National Archives of Australia, A472, W29728 PART 1. 118 Ibid. 171

necessary the order of detention would be revoked.”119 This statement, which appears to be as far as the discussion about executive authority advanced at the time, neatly paralleled the Canadian Supreme Court opinion of Rinfret et al., and the Privy Council’s support of this in 1946.

The surrender of Japan in late 1945 led to another review of internment policy. At this time, the internee population comprised of 47 “Italians,” 564 “Germans” and 958

Nikkei.120 On 25 October, Acting Attorney General John Beasley appointed Justice

W.B. Simpson, who at the time was a Justice of the Supreme Court of the Australian

Capital Territory, as Commissioner to enquire whether it was “necessary or advisable to deport” any “aliens”, people “regarded as aliens” or those who “were, but have ceased to be, naturalized British subjects”.121 These terms indicated that “citizenship” and naturalisation were not to be the final arbiters of a national civic right, but rather a more shadowy concept of “regard”. These concepts were not further defined, and followed

Australia’s traditional practice of refusing to commit to a definition of citizenship, instead leaving discretionary power with the government. The idea that those “regarded as aliens” could be deported did not bode well for Nikkei, given their decades-long history of exclusion in Australia.

Simpson began his work on 8 November 1945, and furnished the Attorney

General with an interim report five days later, after interviewing a group of Italian internees.122 He questioned the fact that his brief was exclusively to advise the government of the suitability of deportations, and was concerned about the

119 Attorney General to Secretary of the Army (dated August 1944), National Archives of Australia, A472, W29728 PART 1. 120 Lamidey, Aliens Control in Australia, 53-54. 121 Prime Minister’s Office to John Beasley (Acting Attorney General), “Memo” (September 25, 1945), National Archives of Australia, A472, W29728 PART 1. 122 Simpson Commission, “Interim Report to John Beasley” (November 13, 1945), National Archives of Australia, A472, W29728 PART 1. 172

government’s lack of a plan to normalise the internment situation, and re-establish the bounds of citizenship. He told Beasley that he felt it

reasonable to assume that if I report in relation to any named internee that it is neither necessary nor advisable to deport him or, pending deportation, to continue to detain him, consideration will be given to his immediate release.123

This exchange and Simpson’s terms of reference indicate that, much like the case in

Canada, there had been little consideration of a post-war plan to late 1945 other than the assumption that there would be deportations. Releases were not Australia’s concern at this point. Recalling the Cabinet cables cited in the previous chapter, it was in mid-

October 1945 that Australia was contacted by MacArthur and asked to prepare a list of prospective repatriates to Japan.

While Simpson was conducting his initial enquiries, the Australian Government was informed that shipping would be available at any time. On 19 November, Longfield

Lloyd, the Director General of Security, passed this advice on to the Solicitor General and asked

whether Japanese internees are to be brought before the Commission in entirety; or whether the compulsory repatriation to Japan of internee Japanese nationals – upon an advisably maximum scale – may be directly effected.124

This question was posed just three months from the time of the eventual deportations. It illustrates the dizzying speed with which the policy fell into place, and the lack of consideration and opportunity to challenge given to prospective deportees. Finally, on

18 December 1945, four years after the internment of Australian Nikkei, the government told Simpson that “each European” civilian would be examined, alongside

123 Ibid. 124 Longfield Lloyd to Solicitor General’s Office (November 19, 1945), National Archives of Australia, A472, W29728 PART 1. 173

“only those individual Japanese referred to you, as Commissioner, by the Acting

Attorney General”.125 It was also

[c]onfirmed that repatriation of internees who are Japanese nationals (together with any children who are under 16 years of age of such internees) shall be upon the maximum scale, and that it is also authorised that such repatriation shall be without reservation as to upper age limit or claimed lengths of residence in Australia.126

The Australian Government’s final pre-deportation panel of review, once again, had very little scope to examine the situation of Nikkei. Rather it was designed to function as cover for the executive’s policy.

Direct Ministerial contacts

As knowledge that the Government was entering the final stages of its preparations for the deportations reached the camps, and Australian Nikkei understood that they would not be heard by the Simpson Commission, individuals began to write to the Government to mount direct appeals. Unofficial and ignored as most of these letters were, they still present some of the most meaningful and telling interactions between the Australian

Government and Australian Nikkei of the 1940s. The letters, now residing in the

National Archives of Australia, illuminate the circumstances of individuals who possessed a number connections to Australia, but who were generally unable to formally naturalise, and by the dominant notions of citizenship were perceived as enemy aliens.

125 S Knowles (Attorney General’s Secretary) to William Simpson (December 18, 1945), National Archives of Australia, A472, W29728 PART 1. 126 Longfield Lloyd to External Affairs (December 4, 1945), Repatriation of Japanese prisoners of war and internees, National Archives of Australia, A373, 11419. 174

On 10 December 1945, three letters were sent to the Department of External

Affairs by individuals pleading for permission to remain in Australia. These were from

Tanaka Tatsuhei, who wrote citing his marriage to an Irish woman, his two Australian children, and the “long period I have been a very obedient servant for Government of

Australia”;127 Oyama Hashi, who wrote mentioning 43 years of residence, and his desire to “support my [Australian] wife and Sacrifice for Australia”;128 and Swizo Togamis, who wrote of his 50 years residence and marriage to an Irish woman.129 These letters were initially ignored as Australia continued its planning for the deportations, which were expected to occur on 6 January 1946.130 On 3 January, the three letters were forwarded to the Attorney General’s Department, which did not reply until 11 January.

Had shipping arrived on 6 January, it is possible that these men would have been deported, however the delay gave the Attorney General’s Department time to assess their letters, and External Affairs was informed to hold them in detention while the

Attorney General examined all of their cases.131 On 24 January it was ruled that “those married to Australian born wives – or husbands; [and] those medically certified as incapable of travelling” were to be automatically referred to the Commission for consideration.132

Other archived letters and file notes indicate the ruthlessness with which appeals beyond these bounds were dealt. On 11 January, the Japanese Camp Leader, Morio

127 Tanaka Tatsuhi to External Affairs (December 10, 1945), Repatriation of Japanese prisoners of war and internees, National Archives of Australia, A373, 11419. 128 Oyama Hashi to External Affairs (December 10, 1945), Repatriation of Japanese prisoners of war and internees, National Archives of Australia, A373, 11419. 129 Swizo Togamis to External Affairs (December 10, 1945), Repatriation of Japanese prisoners of war and internees, National Archives of Australia, A373, 11419. 130 External Affairs to Longfield Lloyd (December 10, 1945), National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 131 Department of the Attorney General to the Department of External Affairs (January 11, 1946); Department of External Affairs to Security (December 10, 1945) both from Repatriation of Japanese prisoners of war and internees, National Archives of Australia, A373, 11419. 132 Acting Attorney General, “Minute” (January 24, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A373, 11419; Longfield Lloyd memo (January 24, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 175

Anyei, wrote to the Minister for External Affairs requesting details on the processes of appeal for those wishing to remain in Australia. Anyei’s letter noted that five months had passed since the end of the war, yet “no great news has been announced as regards to our release from behind this secluded hemisphere.” He expressed his “hearty gratitude to the Australian government for the protection of the Japanese Internees during and after the Second World War” and asked the Minister:

1) What procedure do we have to take if we desire to stay in Australia before the Japanese nationals are repatriated from Australia? 2) Does Australian-born Japanese have any chance of staying in Australia? If so what procedure does he have to take? 3) Where do we have to apply for all these? Is there any special form of application for all of the above? 4) With those who came from the following Islands is there any means of communication as to what procedure they have to take? New Caledonia New Hebrides Dutch East Indies Soloman Islands Fiji Islands Tongga Island [sic] New Britain (The Aust. Mandated Territory)133

At the bottom of the page, a handwritten note states that the Government “agreed not to reply – inappropriate to communicate this info”. The Canadian process leading to deportations, though flawed, was relatively bureaucratic with its use of repatriation surveys, the passage of orders in council and court challenges, and the option of dispersal. The Australian process was more secretive and expedited, less compromised by the idea that Nikkei may have had claims to citizenship that deserved examination, and keeping the ultimate power over policy and any concessions awarded in the purview of the executive Government.

A series of other direct pleas exist in the files, the majority of which were simply marked “repat”.134 Yoichiro Miyamoto wrote to alert the Minister of the fact that he had

133 Ibid. 176

been resident for 40 years, claiming that he was financially secure.135 Harry Shiba noted that his residency predated the turn of the century, and that he had worked constantly since his arrival.136 Shunji Tashiro wrote, alerting the Minister as to his age, 73, and his

46 years of residence. He stated that he had “no family in Japan and no place to go should my release come into realisation,” had never been in trouble and had the means to support himself.137 Waheiji Minami wrote to “beg for special favour”, stating his age as 67, and that he had been a “very obedient and polite citizen” of Australia for 50 years.138 There are dozens of other such recorded appeals. Any without a white British wife or Australian born children were ignored and had their correspondence marked

“Repat 21/2” – the date that these individuals were “repatriated” to Japan.139

Longer files exist for several individuals who had continuously appealed their internment or had been of special interest to Security. Bunzi Mori had been examined by Security in mid-1945 because of suspicion that empty tins he sent to his defacto wife

“because of a shortage in Sydney” were an espionage threat.140 Camp officials rubbished the suggestion of secret communication between the two, and a Security investigation found that “nothing adverse is known in respect to [Eva Moore, Mori’s partner] or her family”.141 The same investigation noted that Mori and Moore had lived together for 15 years prior to his internment. They were not, however, officially married, and therefore not strictly within the Government’s guidelines of individuals to

134 Longfield Lloyd, Director General of Security, “Memo” (January 24, 1946), A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 135 Yoichiro Miyamoto to External Affairs (January 16, 1946), A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 136 Harry Shiba to External Affairs (January 16, 1946), A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 137 Shunji Tashiro to External Affairs (January 17, 1946), A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 138 Waheiji Minami to External Affairs (January 18, 1946), A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 139 “Prisoner of War/Internee: Shiba, Harry; Date of birth – 07 June 1876; Nationality – Japanese,” National Archives of Australia, 1103/1, NJ17062; “Prisoner of War/Internee: Miyamoto, Yaichi; Date of birth – 22 February 1893; Nationality – Japanese,” National Archives of Australia, 1103/1, CJ18881; “Prisoner of War/Internee: Tashiro, Shunji; Date of birth – 06 February 1875; Nationality – Japanese,” National Archives of Australia, 1103/1, WJ18024; “Prisoner of War/Internee: Minami, Waheji; Date of birth – 13 August 1880; Nationality – Japanese,” National Archives of Australia, 1103/1, WJ17927. 140 “MORI, Bunzi,” National Archives of Australia, A367, C66785. 141 Camp commandant, (May 21, 1945), National Archives of Australia, A367, C66785; Deputy Director of Security, NSW to Director General of Security (June 13, 1945), National Archives of Australia, A367, C66785. 177

be withheld from the initial round of deportation. Mori was “repatriated” on 21

February, at which point Eva Moore contracted a solicitor, Percy Williamson to plead for permission for his re-entry into the country.142 This plea was ignored, and by late

1948, Mori was resigned to his fate, requesting the Government return the last of the items confiscated from him upon his internment which were not sent with him at the time of his deportation.143 On 18 October 1949, Mori was told that “enquiries have been made but no trace can be found of the articles mentioned by you.”144 There was no civil rights or welfare group in Australia who lobbied for Australian Nikkei, organised their legal resistance, or enunciated citizenship principles like the C.C.J.C. did in Canada. In the absence of such organisation, most contact along the lines of that above became tragically ignored file notes, rather than queries about the extent of Australian citizenship.

Kojiro Katsumata and the executive’s fear of the judiciary

Although the Australian Government studiously attempted to avoid any legal examinations of their actions, there was one man who came incredibly close to forcing such an examination through a habeas corpus hearing paralleling similar actions in

Canada. On the eve of his deportation, after numerous appeals were ignored or rejected,

Kojiro Katsumata petitioned the Australian High Court with a writ of habeas corpus.

The Court asked the Australian Government to explain its actions, and it immediately folded. The account of Katsumata’s experience with the Australian judicial system

142 Ibid.; Percy Williamson Solicitors to Camp Commandant, Loveday (March 5, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A367, C66785. 143 Ibid.; Bunzi Mori to Prime Minister’s Department (August 29, 1948), National Archives of Australia, A367, C66785. 144 Ibid.; Army to Bunzi Mori (October 18, 1949), National Archives of Australia, A367, C66785. 178

indicates the threat that judicial action posed to the executive, and the extent of its desire to avoid such scrutiny.

Kojiro Katsumata was an unmarried, ageing man, demographically similar to his ignored contemporaries like Miyamoto, Shiba and Tashira, noted above. He was born in

Japan and arrived in Australia in 1893 at the age of 14 to work as a farm hand.145 After decades of work, he had amassed an impressive array of assets in the town of Moama – his arrest certificate lists land, several properties, livestock and over £1,000 in savings – before he was interned in 1941.146 He felt keenly the injustice of being locked up as an alien in the only homeland he had known in his adult life, and agitated for his release from the moment he was interned. He unsuccessfully fronted the Aliens Tribunal in

1942, and was able to receive an undertaking from External Affairs in 1943 that he would “not likely” be deported if he stated his wish to remain in Australia at the war’s end.147 At the conclusion of hostilities, Katsumata again pressed his case, having his associate and property trustee F. Lockwood write to the Department of External Affairs on 6 October 1945. Lockwood noted External Affairs’ intimation of 1943 and stated that Katsumata is

very desirous of returning to his little farm at Moama, N.S.W., He asks me to ascertain what steps he must take to secure, and when he could expect to obtain release.148

Lockwood received an acknowledgement of his letter on 22 October 1945, then a response to its contents on 20 November, which merely informed him that “it is not

145 “Prisoner of War/Internee: Katsumata, Kojiro; Date of birth – 02 January 1879; Nationality – Japanese,” National Archives of Australia, M1103/1, NJ17066. 146 “Prisoner of War/Internee; Katsumata, Kojiro; Year of birth – 1879; Nationality – Japanese” National Archives of Australia, M1103/2, NJ17066. 147 “Transcript of evidence of objection by K Katsumata. Japanese internee, Hay 12/5/1942,” National Archives of Australia, MP529/3, TRIBUNAL 4/42; “Internees in Australia: Japanese; Requests by Kojiro Katsumata to remain in Australia,” National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/4; Letter from F. Lockwood to External Affairs (October 6, 1945), National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/4. 148 Ibid. 179

proposed to release any Japanese internees at the present time.”149 Katsumata retained a lawyer, T.A. Kennedy, to further prosecute his case.

On 7 January 1946, Kennedy wrote to Longfield Lloyd, setting out Katsumata’s case and credentials. Kennedy outlined Katsumata’s working career and achievements, before stating that he had “no instructions as to the reasons of his internment – and would be obliged if, after you have considered the circumstances of this case, you would communicate with me regarding the possibility of the internee being released.”150

The comment is remarkable because of its rarity in the files of Australian Nikkei internments. Both the fact that Katsumata had managed to retain counsel, and that his counsel then asked pointed questions of the government made Katsumata’s case unique among Australian Nikkei. Longfield Lloyd replied to Kennedy immediately saying that he was forwarding the original message onto the Attorney General.151 After receiving no further response, Kennedy forwarded these letters to the Commonwealth

Investigation Branch on 16 January. He also contacted Arthur Calwell direct on 26

January restating his case and plea, and this was acknowledged with a receipt on 31

January.152

The tone and content of further archival correspondence indicates that the substance of Kennedy’s contact was ignored, and Katsumata was notified directly in early February that he would deported on the next shipment to Japan. On 11 February,

Katsumata wrote a despondent letter to Kennedy informing him of the developments, saying that he did not know what his future held or what was to happen to his property and assets, and he informed Kennedy that he should take whatever he is owed via a Mr

149 External Affairs to Lockwood (November 1, 1945), National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/4. 150 T.A. Kennedy to Longfield Lloyd, “KATSUMATA Kojiro” (January 7, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A367, C23732. 151 Lloyd to Kennedy (January 10, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A367, C23732; Lloyd to Attorney General (January 20, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A367, C23732. 152 Kennedy to Arthur Calwell (January 26, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A367 C23732. 180

O’Howell who had been collecting his rents while interned.153 “Goodby Mr. Kennedy,”

Katsumata wrote, “Goodby to my friends and to all Australian Wish Good Luck” [sic].

Kennedy immediately contacted Calwell again on 13 February 1946, stating that he

“would be obliged if you would kindly cause enquiry to be made with a view to ascertaining whether the internee can be permitted to remain in Australia subject to such conditions as you may think fit to impose.”154 Again, Kennedy’s plea was ignored, only days from the planned deportation.

Katsumata’s case had one final twist however. With the aid of Mr J.V. Barry

K.C., Kennedy submitted a writ of habeas corpus to the High Court on behalf of

Katsumata on 15 February.155 Documents held by the National Archives of Australia, and accessed for the first time for the purposes of this dissertation, indicate the positive reception that the arguments put by Katsumata’s team received.156 Kennedy submitted two affidavits, the first of which announced the fact that Katsumata was being held against his will by the Commonwealth, and the second outlining Katsumata’s circumstances and Kennedy’s argument. After outlining the correspondence and history listed above, Kennedy told that Court that

I verily believe it is the intention of the Commonwealth authorities to deport the said Kojiro Katsumata from Australia to Japan and that it is possible that the Commonwealth authorities may place the said Kojiro Katsumata on a vessel leaving Australia on the 16th February 1946. On behalf of the said Kojiro Katsumata I respectfully request that this honourable Court should order the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth of Australia and the Minister of State for Defence to produce the body of the said Kojiro Katsumata to this Honourable Court or alternatively to show cause why a

153 Katsumata to Kennedy (February 11, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A367, C23732. 154 Kennedy to Calwell (February 13, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A367, C23732. 155 Longfield Lloyd to Justice Simpson (February 20, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A367/1, C23732. 156 Affidavit of T.A. Kennedy, The King versus The Attorney General of the Commonwealth Ex parte KATSUMATA Kojiro, National Archives of Australia, A10117, 1946/1. 181

writ of habeas corpus should not issue in respect of the said Kojiro Katsumata.157

The Court’s response of the same day acknowledged Kennedy’s affidavits, as well as presentations by Barry and a Mr. Sweeney, and ordered that

the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth, the Minister of State for Defence and the Commonwealth of Australia attend before the Full Court of this Court in the State of Victoria on Thursday the 21st day of February 1946 at the hour of ten-thirty o’clock in the forenoon or so soon thereafter as counsel can be heard TO SHOW WHY A WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS should not be issued… AND IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the Applicant be not removed from the jurisdiction of this Court until the further order of the Court or a Justice thereof…[sic]158

The Court had demanded that the executive explain its actions, and had forbidden the deportation of Katsumata pending further advice. On 20 February, Longfield Lloyd told

Justice Simpson that “[i]n view of these proceedings, it has been agreed that Katsumata should be excluded from the repatriation group for the time being and his case referred to you for review.”159 The derision with which Australia had treated a man pleading for his future is illustrated by Lloyd’s further comment that

The only details respecting Katsumata known in this Office at the moment are those supplied by his solicitor which are to the effect that he is 66 years of age and that he came to Australia in or about the year 1893 when he would be 13 years of age.160

The Argus of 21 February noted in its legal listings that the case was to be heard that day, but there is no evidence of any further proceeding in court records held in the

National Archives of Australia, the official court publications, or unreported cases. It

157 Ibid. 158 The King against The Attorney-General of the Commonwealth, The Minister of State for Defence and the Commonwealth of Australia (Respondents) and Kojiro Katsumata (Applicant), in National Archives of Australia, A10117, 1946/1. 159 Longfield Lloyd to Justice Simpson (February 20, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A367 C23732. 160 Ibid. 182

would seem that the Australian Government implicitly conceded the validity of

Katsumata’s legal position, and efforts to deport him were quietly shelved at this time.

After being held in internment for a further seven months, Katsumata was released in

Australia.161

What Katsumata managed to achieve as an individual was done on a wider scale in Canada, challenging the legality of the government’s action and demonstrating the strength of his normative claim to Australian citizenship. In both states, the judiciaries illustrated their power to alter government action, but the subsequent responses of the two governments then pursued starkly divergent policies. Until the end of 1945, both states planned the mass deportation of Nikkei. When a challenge was mounted in

Canada, backed by an emerging public movement, the government agreed to have its authority tested judicially, and it publicly facilitated an examination of the powers under which the deportations were proposed. This led to a reframing of the issues surrounding

Nikkei in wartime Canada, and their situation was seen in terms of citizens’ rights rather than wartime security. When a challenge was mounted in Australia, the Government quietly made an exception, and pressed on with its policy as initially envisaged. It is notable that the Canadian challenge was heard on 25 January 1946, and the Court’s advice was handed down on 20 February, right about the time that the push to have

Katsumata deported was dropped.162

There is no direct evidence that Australia altered its policy in light of the

Canadian situation and the Australian Cabinet maintained what was a long term mode of operation making individual exceptions in the name of avoiding controversy and executing policy as purely as possible. However those making the policy decisions were

161 Prisoner of War/Internee: Katsumata, Kojiro – 02 January 1879; Nationality – Japanese, National Archives of Australia, MP1103/1, NJ17066. 162 Australian High Commissioner, Ottawa to Australian Cabinet (February 20, 1946), Internees in Australia – Japanese – Repatriation, National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 183

kept abreast of Canadian developments by the High Commissioner in Ottawa.163 As it turned out, the opinion of the Canadian High Court provided a pivotal point in the dismantling of the more substantial deportation policy, and the notional alienage which had underpinned this. In Australia, Katsumata was saved from exile, but his case did not have the wider import of the Canadian equivalent. It is unclear why others did not instigate similar processes to Katsumata in Australia, but this likely had to do with the limited money, contacts and legal expertise of the long interned Australian Nikkei community, as well as the logistics. Australia could presumably deal with the few cases that might emerge like it had with Katsumata, but this would be more difficult in

Canada, with its larger Nikkei population, more substantial native born and educated component, and politically savvy civil liberties organisations, planning for the Supreme

Court challenge did not happen until late December 1945. Perhaps, in each state, the prospective deportees were not aware of the gravity of their situation or the speed with which government plans were progressing, until the final moments. In Australia,

Katsumata’s case “succeeded,” on an individual level, only hours before the first ships started “repatriating” Australian Nikkei. This left no time for the precedent that he set to be exploited by others.

The Simpson Commission: Cases, recommendations, outcomes

On 21 February, 304 civilian internees were deported, and on 2 March, 485 specially assigned prisoners of war (P.W.J.M.) – Japanese residents of Australia who worked in maritime industries and had “special knowledge” of Australian waters – followed.164

163 Australian High Commissioner, Ottawa to Australian Cabinet (February 20, 1946), Internees in Australia – Japanese – Repatriation, National Archives of Australia, A1066, IC45/1/11/5. 164 “Order for the repatriation under Regulation 20C of the National Security (Aliens Control) Regulations” (February 21, 1946); Major Coffin to Noel Lamidey (February 27, 1946); Army memo, 184

According to Arthur Calwell, this left 144 Japanese in Australia – 43 Australian born,

80 married to Australians, and 21 infirm or special cases (although Simpson subsequently examined 153 individuals).165 In another divergence from the Canadian process, Australia did not allow these people to resume their lives, but subjected each of them to a quasi-judicial review under the terms of the ongoing Simpson Commission.

On 20 March 1946, the Minister for Immigration Arthur Calwell suggested releasing the

Australian born with whom there were no security objections, as “it is undesirable to keep these people in internment – especially the natural born Australians – without some special effort being made to hear them.”166 Most wartime policy documents had only referred to Australian Nikkei as “Japanese”, while Italians and Germans were categorised as either “Aliens, Naturalised British Subjects, or Australian Born.”167 This acknowledgement that interned Nikkei were in fact “Australian” appears to be one of the first, if not the first such references in wartime cabinet deliberations. It shows the subtly shifting grounds of post-war ideas of citizenship.

It was still several long months before Simpson had recommendations to present, and before any of the Australian Nikkei internees were released. By September

1946, Simpson recommended that a further 20 of those initially withheld be

“repatriated”. These cases included several individuals who had requested deportation and indicate the complications and confusion felt by civilians interned for years in a country that seemed destined to always see them as foreigners, examined below.

Thirty-one-year-old Australian born James Yagura’s initial request for repatriation was based on idealistic nostalgia. On 11 September, he sought to withdraw

(November 7, 1945), all from “Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1,” National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 165 Arthur Calwell to Attorney General (March 20, 1946), “Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1,” National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 166 Arthur Calwell to Attorney General (March 20, 1946), “Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1,” National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 167 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 120. 185

this request, stating that he made it because of a wish “to see the old people who had reared me since my childhood,” however “[u]pon giving the matter careful consideration, I find that it is quite probable that they have now passed on.”168 Yasosichi

Joseph Yoshida, a 64-year-old man, resident for 50 years with an Australian born son serving in the military, similarly sought to withdraw a rash request. He told the

Commission that he asked to be deported upon hearing that his wife was living with another man and did not want him back. He also told the government that “I am not the only person in such an unfortunate position. Several of the internees who have recently been released have been disregarded by their families.”169 Roland Browne, Acting

Director General of Security, contacted Immigration to say that he was open to the release of these men, as there was no security concern with either. He had undertaken steps on behalf of Yoshida, and had contacted the Army about Yagura, who was a

P.W.J.M. on account of his work as a merchant seaman.170 Yoshida was released on 25

October 1946, and Yagura, after being unable to source work, was deported on 1

January 1947.171

There were several other cases where British subject status bestowed by birth was not enough to keep Australian Nikkei from deportation. Yasuke Pearl Minami was born in Broome in 1923, married a Japanese man and had an Australian born child in

1944.172 Browne’s report stated that “she is typically Japanese,” and on the basis of an interview “some months ago” concluded that if her husband were deported she and her

168 James Yagura (September 11, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 169 Yasosichi Yoshida (September 12, 1946), National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 170 Roland Browne to Immigration (September 24, 1946), “Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1,” National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 171 “Prisoner of War/Internee: Yoshida, Yasosichi Joseph; Date of birth – 05 February 1879; Nationality – Japanese,” National Archives of Australia, MP1103/1, QJ15628; “Prisoner of War/Internee; Yagura, James; Year of birth – 1915; Nationality – Japanese,” National Archives of Australia, MP1103/2, QJ16551. 172 “Prisoner of War/Internee: Minami nee Murakami, Yasuke Pearl; Date of birth – 12 July 1923; Nationality – Japanese,” National Archives of Australia, MP1103/1, DJF18107; “Prisoner of War/Internee: Minami, Makoto; Date of birth – 29 December 1944; Nationality – Japanese,” National Archives of Australia, MP1103/1, DJ18107A. 186

child would like to go as well. That being the case, “she is regarded as a voluntary deportee.”173 Yaeno Takemoto, “although of Japanese race, was born at Thursday

Island,” is “thoroughly Japanese in appearance and outlook” and was also noted as a voluntary deportee.174 Takemoto asked whether she and her second generation

Australian-born children would be given permission to re-enter the country at a later date. No response is offered to her query, but the fact that the question is being asked indicates a complication that does not necessarily correspond with the idea of her as a voluntary repatriate.175 Shigeru Yamaguchi was born in Broome in 1906, spent some time in Japan before re-entering Australia on a Japanese passport in 1931.176 On 1

January, all of these individuals were among the final 18 Australian residents of

Japanese ancestry deported to Japan. The Simpson Commission recommended the release of the rest of the interned Australian Nikkei.

Throughout 1946 and 1947, approximately 821 Australian Nikkei were

“repatriated” to Japan.177 This was about 85 percent of the 958 interned at the end of the war, and almost 75 percent of the 1,139 initially interned.178 As made plain by the

Ministerial contact recorded, this figure included a number of individuals who were long-term residents who were very desirous of remaining in Australia. However, the racial barrier to naturalisation in Australia, along with the decision that aliens as well as those “regarded as aliens” could be deported presented insurmountable difficulties for these individuals. But alongside this, there was a subtle shift noticeable in some of the examinations of the post-war statements of Calwell and the Simpson Commission. Even

173 Browne to Immigration (November 22, 1946), “Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1,” National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 174 Ibid. 175 H. Yamashita, Camp Leader to Commandant (December 1, 1947), “Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1,” National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 176 “Prisoner of War/Internee: Yamaguchi, Shigeru; Date of birth – 04 April 1906; Nationality – Japanese,” National Archives of Australia, MP1103/1, WJI17825. 177 Introduction, footnote 11. 178 Based on the figures of 958 and 1,139. 187

where it was not a successful determinant, the fact that Nikkei were Australian-born became a factor offering civic defences that they had not had at the time of internment, or indeed the first draft of the deportation policy. This was not established in or through a transparent civilian court, but it became a small step towards expanding notions of acceptable citizenry beyond the war.

The tribunals and commissions through which a minority of Nikkei were allowed to challenge their treatment were administrative panels beholden to the final recommendations of the Australian executive. On the one occasion that an individual made it to the court system proper, the Government backed away and allowed the challenger to remain in Australia. The history of judicial and quasi-judicial challenges mounted by Australian Nikkei during the war is illustrative of their lack of even rudimentary citizenship rights through the 1940s, regardless of their country of birth or length of residence. An executive government policy which was clear in its desire to remove Nikkei from Australia’s territories at the beginning of the war faced no real resistance during it. The effective marginalisation of the Australian judiciary meant that the Australian Government was able to pursue this policy to an extent much greater than

Canada. Nevertheless, as the Katsumata case, and several other remarkable moments during the war, showed—even with the backing of extraordinary wartime powers, the problems with Australia’s racial nationalism remained evident when challenged. The fact that Nikkei, at various times, could demonstrate their place in the Australian nation illustrated that their exclusion was unstable, even as Australia attempted to avoid acknowledging this.

188

Conclusion

Canada and Australia pursued similar anti-Nikkei policies and sought similar ends throughout most of the war, denying Nikkei residents and citizens access to any form of judicial review until the war’s end. In early 1946 a Canadian legal challenge, backed by an impressive public campaign, subjected the Canadian policy to a scrutiny that established new citizenship principles that would apply to Nikkei, and required a reformation of notional citizenship which saved thousands of Canadian Nikkei from exile. This action redirected the focus of the discourse from one ostensibly about how to meet a “foreign” security threat, to one about civil rights and the protection of citizenship. In Australia, a challenge made at a similar time, and based on a similar premise, was initially ignored by the Australian Government, and then accepted in such a way that would avoid setting a legal precedent. These different tactical responses to legal challenges led to different outcomes with regards to the development of immediate post-war citizenship development. Arthur Calwell’s post-war language, the outcomes of some of the Simpson Commission hearings, and the fact that there were other exceptions made which are not accounted for in the official documents (the post-war community numbered 335, not between 100 and 200 that were released from internment) indicate that the Australian Government did come to respect certain claims made by Nikkei on national membership. These were not formally noted as in Canada, however, and Australian citizenship reform was a more quiet and incremental process. 189

Chapter 4 Public campaigns, press and normative citizenship

If Canadians permitted one group to be “kicked around” who was to say what minority group, by the same token, might be next? What about the Jews, Ukrainians and other minority groups? —B.K. Sandwell, 19461

Australia is almost 100% white and 98% British…we may question whether the idea of racial purity is or is not a good thing. —Australian Department of Information, 19432

Several months before the Canadian Government abandoned its deportation policy in early 1947, a Cooperative Committee on Japanese Canadians (C.C.J.C.) bulletin argued that “in a democracy, where Governments are subject to parliamentary control and to the influence of public opinion, responsibility also rests upon parliament and people.”3

This chapter departs from the formal examinations of the previous two chapters to examine the role that “the people” of each nation played in the citizenship developments with implications for each Nikkei community towards the end of the war. While executives and judiciaries drafted and guarded formal citizenship, it was publics who held, practiced, and had the power to normatively define the concept, particularly in societies where formal citizenship remained complicated and flexibly interpreted.

The public sphere experiences of Nikkei in Canada and Australia present greater divergences than their treatment at the hands of the respective executive governments

(which both pursued similar objectives through most of the period examined) and judiciaries (which were both marginalised at the commencement of hostilities, then became politely assertive beyond the end of the war). Canadian Nikkei were able to

1 B.K. Sandwell quoted in “Sandwell against Jap Deportation,” Regina Leader Post, February 16, 1946, 05.3. 2 Australian Department of Information discussion pamphlet quoted in Gwenda Tavan, The long, slow death of white Australia (Carlton North: Scribe Publications, 2005), 40. 3 C.C.J.C., Bulletin #7 (September 14, 1946), Library and Archives Canada, MG28, V1, vol 1. 190

progressively build a public coalition of supporters who recast a national security driven discourse in terms of universal civil rights, while Australian Nikkei remained shut out of the Australian public sphere and were unable to add to the limited discussions about their place in the Australian nation. Canada’s discourse was given vitality by the social presence of Nikkei, and so when their treatment became a public issue, and Sandwell asked Canadians who would be the next minority group to be “kicked around,” many saw implications for themselves and others in insufficient concepts of civil rights.

Clement has illustrated how the plight of the Canadian Nikkei had a “profound impact” on the human rights movement in Canada at the time and in an ongoing sense.4 In contrast, Australia’s popular citizenship discourse remained more abstract, uncomplicated by the universally interned Nikkei population, and not relevant to the everyday lives of a population that was “98% British”.

The stark difference in their access to and responses from respective public spheres is thus presented as a major reason why most Australian Nikkei were deported, and most Canadian Nikkei were not. In the Canadian setting, it will be shown that the increasing public prominence of Nikkei during the war paralleled their increasingly sympathetic treatment by the wider Canadian public. A sympathetic response from the public and the universalisation of citizenship concerns became mutually reinforcing, providing increased resistance to anti-Nikkei policy as the deportations neared. It was no coincidence that the deportation program was abandoned, and the grievances that

Canadian Nikkei had publicly aired were slowly addressed around the time that the

Canadian Citizenship Act was passed.5 In the Australian setting, there was no similarly

4 Dominique Clement, Canada's Right Revolution: Social Movements and Social Change 1937-1982 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008), 40-2 5 The explicit reflection of Nikkei grievances in the politics of Canadian Citizenship are more thoroughly examined in Chapter 5. The C.C.J.C. continued to exist until 1951, arguing for redress in the matter of property, but its staffing and operation were wound down after the deportations were abandoned, see 191

strong link between Nikkei and developments in citizenship, but it will be illustrated that on the few occasions when the wider Australian community was presented with the complicated human outcomes of racial exclusion, they tended to support a flexible application of exclusionary policies, suggesting that things might have been different in

Australia had the Nikkei there been able to cultivate the public’s support. The emotional response of the Australian public to images of “Japanese” deportees in 1946, and the public backlash that occurred when the Australian Government attempted to deport other Asian residents after the war, were not linked to a coherent narrative of citizens rights like they were in Canada.

In both Canada and Australia, the public spheres reacted to the deportation (and prospective deportation) of Nikkei to the extent that they were able to engage with these events. In Canada, as this campaign reached its height in 1946, it was contextualised by the social presence that Nikkei had maintained through the war, a presence facilitated by the conditions of their relocation and by their English language newspaper. They used these advantages to demonstrate their loyalty and their claim to national membership. In

Australia, Nikkei deportations occurred almost in a void, created by universal internment and a strict censorship regime that cut the Nikkei off from the Australian public. Nonetheless, they were represented traumatically in the press, and in a short couple of weeks of publicity, their deportation became an issue of some contention.

When confronted with public unease about such stark racial nationalism, both national governments were required to acknowledge inconsistencies in their notional citizenships. The Canadian public’s vigorous campaign in defence of Nikkei managed to use this inconsistency to force an alteration of the deportation policy and save thousands of Citizens from exile, while the lack of a public campaign in Australia meant

Stephanie Bangarth, Voices Raised in Triumph: Defending North American Citizens of Japanese Ancestry, 1942-49 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008), 42. 192

that the government was able to more fully execute its deportation policy in the short term, and manage its inconsistencies with more incremental reform.

The “public sphere” and sources

The public sphere examined in this chapter is presented as a third body of discourse, alongside the executive/legislative and the judiciary/quasi-judiciary, which affected the situation of Nikkei, and shaped normative understanding of citizenship in Canada and

Australia during and beyond the war. The public sphere examined here is tracked largely through the media, and includes press sources, and the work of civil libertarians, academics, welfare agencies and nationalist organisations. The Canadian sources examined include a series of Department of Labour archives, which consist of thousands of newspaper articles from across Canada with reference to Nikkei policy and discourse from 1938 to 1947.6 These sources provide an overview of editorial positions, letter writers’ flashpoints, surveys, and other popular elements of debate. They are augmented by archival records of the New Canadian newspaper and the Cooperative

Committee of Japanese Canadians, the papers of Government figures, and interviews and personal accounts published in secondary sources.7 Australian materials, which are more sparse, are gathered from database searches of the Canberra Times (A.C.T.),

Sydney Morning Herald (N.S.W.), Argus (Vic.), Burra Record (S.A.), Mercury (Tas.),

Western Mail (W.A.), Army News (N.T.) and Camperdown Chronicle (Vic.) between

6 Labour files from Library and Archives Canada, MG28, V1, vol. 1, RG 27 (Public Relations and Information Services Branch), vol. 1337. 7 New Canadian materials from Library and Archives Canada, also sourced from the digital online repository at Multicultural Canada, accessed January 1, 2011, http://www.multiculturalcanada.ca/tnc; C.C.J.C. files in Library and Archives Canada, MG28, V1. 193

1940 and 1949.8 These are supplemented by relevant archive materials, direct searches of other news outlets at the times of certain events, and secondary source interviews conducted with Nikkei and other public figures beyond the war.9

The Canadian discourse is presented in three periods. The first, from late 1941 to

1944, saw Canadian Nikkei and their supporters maintain a social presence and present themselves as a loyal segment of the wider Canadian community without engaging in confrontational politics. The second, from mid 1944 to late 1945, saw the increasing prominence of civil libertarians, academics and other activists in the Nikkei cause, who began to politicise the resistance, as the Government made preparations for the deportations. The third, from 1946 onwards, broadened its appeal by invoking the citizenship rights of Nikkei and universalising concerns about the abuse of citizenship.

The Australian discourse does not present as a similar chronological progression, and is approached thematically. The Australian section begins with an examination of the absence of discussion about Nikkei or “Japanese” in the Australian press throughout the war, and the strict internment and censorship policies that enforced this. It documents increasing (though still minimal) concerns about Australia’s racial policies, and the occasional criticisms of Australia’s actions in the press. It also presents two short periods – around late 1941 and early 1946 – in which Nikkei were visible and reported on in Australia, at the time of internment and deportation.

The stark divergence of experience is reflected in the body of materials that exist for each national case study. The abundance of primary source material in Canada indicates the extent to which Canadian Nikkei and their circumstances were a public

8 Database searches from the National Library of Australia’s newspaper digitisation project, accessed January 1, 2011, www.newspapers.nla.gov.au. The scope and outline of these searched is presented in the Australian section of this chapter. 9 Repatriation files in the National Archives of Australia contain some information which is cited as used. Individual newspapers not included on the National Library of Australia database have been searched around specific dates for more information. 194

concern, and how Nikkei used the public sphere to argue for and demonstrate their normative claims to citizenship. In Australia, although there are moments of excitement,

Australian Nikkei were virtually excluded from the public sphere, and the sources that do exist are impersonal and distant. The level of exposure that each community received in their respective public spheres paralleled the outcomes they achieved, and indicates the importance of the public sphere to these outcomes.

Canada

1941-44: The establishment of a national Nikkei presence

In early 1940s Canada, where security concerns were prominent and civil liberties restrictions were accepted with little complaint, there were few opportunities for Nikkei to mount challenges to their treatment in the public sphere. Nevertheless, they responded immediately to their new situations by publicly proclaiming their loyalty to

Canada through the outlets available to them, and indicating that they saw themselves as part of the wider national community. By establishing relationships with respected individuals and groups at the beginning of the war, Canadian Nikkei laid the foundations for a more explicit resistance to exclusion from the mid-1940s. As

Lambertson indicates, this resistance was increasingly framed in terms of human rights.10

As discussed in Chapter 1, Canadian Nikkei had developed important community infrastructure in the pre-war years, and this aided in their maintenance of a social presence when the war broke. Perhaps the most strategically important piece of

10 Lambertson, Ross. Repression and resistance: Canadian human rights activists, 1930-1960 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 106-142 195

infrastructure in this regard was the English language newspaper, the New Canadian.

The New Canadian, formed in November 1938, dealt with race relations, economic issues, international trends and other issues of interest to the younger generation of

Canadian Nikkei.11 It was fiercely loyal and pro-assimilationist, asking on the front page of its first edition for “every Nisei…[to] share the vision that fires us, gird his loins with courage, and fight on till we are recognized as worthy citizens in the national and political life of the country of our birth – Canada.”12 While originally aimed at the 60 percent of the community born in Canada, the paper effectively became the press voice of the entire Nikkei community when its three Japanese language contemporaries were shut down at the suggestion of the Government in 1941.13 The New Canadian was asked to publish bilingually so that the government could communicate with the entire

Nikkei community, informing them of regulatory updates and government policies.14

This made the paper particularly influential both within the Nikkei community (as the community’s link to official information) and beyond it, as it was increasingly seen as a leading community publication by those attempting to understand and monitor Nikkei.15

The strategically important position occupied by the New Canadian complicated its editorial line, as it was naturally concerned about the restrictions applied to its community, but aware of the political importance of any opinions it aired. It understood early in the war that Nikkei would encounter discriminatory policies, and presented restrictions as inevitable and manageable. For example, in the lead-up to the announcement of the dispersal policy, the New Canadian accepted that “[d]ispersion eastward is fast becoming a reality, and we see before us the end, temporary or

11 “The New Canadian – A History,” The Bulletin: a Journal of Japanese Canadian Community, History and Culture (April 8, 2008), accessed December 20, 2009, http://jccabulletin-geppo.ca/0804-april-08/the- new-canadian-a-history/; Forrest E. La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II: A Sociological and Psychological Account (Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1948), 15. 12 New Canadian, February 1, 1939. 13 “The New Canadian – A History.” 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 196

permanent, of the Japanese community as we have known it.”16 This editorial reflected editor Tom Shoyama’s assertion that the paper’s role was “[t]o try to create some stability and to try to fill in that huge gap of the unknown”.17 The editorial was largely accepting of this process, and reflected the liberal orthodoxy in Canada at the time that

Nikkei would be well served by moving across Canada and “assimilating”.18

Throughout the early part of the war, the New Canadian presented potentially traumatic developments to the Nikkei community in positive ways. On 25 January

1942, the day after the Defence of Canada Regulations were amended to allow the removal of any person from the exclusion zone, the New Canadian reported on voluntary movers, and quoted Mitsuo Amemori as saying he was “grateful to Canada, and if the Government says we have to get out, we will cooperate”.19 On 5 March 1942, after the B.C. Security Commission was given wide powers to direct the evacuations, the paper published an opinion piece which “understandably” noted the “bitterness” of the initial reaction to the civil rights restrictions and the displacements of Japanese

Canadians, but also acknowledged “a high regard for the democratic principle” generally in Canada.20 The piece concluded that “a program of cooperation with the authorities…will ensure the best deal for ourselves in a very sorry situation.”21 The way that the New Canadian represented Nikkei stood in contrast to the caricatures often

16 New Canadian, January 5, 1942. 17 Shoyama quoted in “The New Canadian – A History.” 18 Liberal orthodoxy of the time saw the concentration of Japanese-Canadians in B.C. as a central part of their problem, and believed that dispersal and “assimilation” would aid in their acceptance within Canada. This is expressed in Norman F. Black, A Challenge to Patriotism and Statesmanship (Toronto: The Christian Social Council of Canada, 1944); Also demonstrated in Ann Gomer Sunahara, The Politics of Racism (Toronto: James Lorimer and Co., 1981), 117. 19 “Rockies ‘Better than Expected’, Second Group Heads for Geikie,” New Canadian, February 25, 1942; Order in Council P.C. 1486 of February 24, 1942. 20 “Temper Our Feeling,” New Canadian, March 5, 1942. 21 Ibid. 197

presented elsewhere, and became, in the words of La Violette, “an organ through which protest could be made articulate.”22

Although strategically important, the New Canadian was a community based bi- weekly publication, and its early war editorial was criticised by some press outlets for not sharing their fears about the disloyalty of the Nikkei community.23 Both Roy and

Ward have indicated that the mainstream press in British Columbia was certainly supportive of general restrictions and discriminations. Ward claims that the press reports tended to “sustain the prevailing mood” of fear and distrust of Nikkei, and Roy cites a body of evidence where the press agitated for restrictions and removals of

Japanese from the early stages of the war.24 La Violette argues that by early 1942 elements of the press were important in reinforcing the move towards more comprehensive Government action. He cites the Saturday Night article of 3 January

1942, “British Columbia’s Jap Controversy”, as discursively defining, revealing to the wider public that B.C. politicians, who had generally been publicly restrained, were lobbying Ottawa for firm anti-Nikkei action.25 The B.C. press, which had largely heeded the censor’s request that it “do nothing to promote over excitement” in

December, was becoming more stridently anti-Nikkei in 1942 in line with developments in the war and government restrictions.26

Beyond editorial opinion, the media began to carry reports of other public organisations which were agitating for further restrictions. For example, on 12 January

1942, the Victoria Times published a petition of white B.C. farmers seeking the removal

22 See for example, representations of “Japanese” by Ian Mackenzie in W. Peter Ward, White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy Towards Orientals in British Columbia, 3rd ed. (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 154; La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 15. 23 Patricia E. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship: the Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), 29. 24 Ward, White Canada Forever, 159; ibid., 18-29. 25 Article cited in La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 38. 26 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 18, 29. 198

of “Japanese” from the land.27 On 20 January, the Vancouver Sun announced that B.C. had the highest rates of unemployment in the country, and linked this with the

“Japanese” presence in the province.28 On 23 February, the Ottawa Citizen reported on a resolution passed by dozens of west coast organisations of “a total boycott of all

Japanese people and all individuals and businesses trading with them” were they not evacuated from the coast by 30 March 1942.29 Labour Humphrey Mitchell’s remark at the Canadian Club in Vancouver warned against “hysteria,” he said that “[t]he Japanese are on your back lawn and may arrive at your back door.”30 Most west coast papers supported strong anti-Nikkei action while liberal eastern publications like the Ottawa

Journal and the Toronto Globe and Mail had not become engaged to this time, and editorialised that precautionary action was understandably necessary.31

The newspaper editorial in support of anti-Nikkei action appears to have been widely supported, or at least not effectively opposed throughout 1942. Ken Adachi has argued that white Canadians raised “not one effective voice of protest” at the time of their evacuation, and Roy reflects that this was “almost totally correct.”32 The excitement of a new war situation and the power of emergency provisions, reinforced by a fourth estate whose editorial directions “neatly dovetailed with old desires” allowed the Government to remove Nikkei from their west coast homes with little dissent.33 In the absence of public support, it was difficult for the small Nikkei community to successfully assert their citizenship claims throughout 1942, and mainstream public discourse was generally supportive of anti-Nikkei policies.

27 “White Farmers Demand They Be Kept Off Land,” Victoria Times, January 12, 1942. 28 “Statistics on Labor Supply Under War Conditions,” Vancouver Sun, January 20, 1942. 29 “Threaten Total Boycott if Japs Are Not Removed,” Citizen – Ottawa, February 23, 1942. 30 “Mitchell Warns Against Hysteria About Japs,” Vancouver Sun, March 19, 1942. 31 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 40. 32 Ibid., 65. 33 Ibid., 24. 199

By 1943, as the real human outcomes of the displacement and dispossessions gained more publicity, minority opinions that were strongly critical of Canada’s actions were presented in mainstream papers. The existence of these opinions so early in the war, at a time when Nikkei were subject to extreme civil liberties restrictions, is indicative of the relative nuance of Canadian discourse compared with Australia’s. In

January 1943 G.E. Trueman of the Japanese Placement Division in the Department of

Labour was reported in the Vancouver Sun as saying that security was not the driving force behind the evacuation of the Nikkei, but rather “[t]he problem was one of mass hysteria and race prejudice.”34 At around the time that the property sales were to begin,

Rev. G.E. Bott, in an interview in the Ottawa Morning Journal, claimed that

The punishment of Canadian-born Japanese because of race, for crimes which they cannot be responsible is unworthy of us and may have far reaching and unworthy consequences.35

Allen Roy Evans of the Montreal Standard also criticised the anti-Nikkei policy, and invoked national maturity to claim that Canadians “fondly believe we have reached national status. Let us then outgrow village politics and in this matter of so great import, let us act our age.”36 These were exceptional opinions, which clearly did not affect anti-

Nikkei policy during 1943 – as demonstrated in Chapter 2, there were not great policy developments in the intra-war years – but they did express an unease with racial national ideas inherent in anti-Nikkei policies in the early stage of the war.

The displacement of Nikkei, while upsetting their community infrastructure and support networks, also allowed and required them to connect with individuals in various parts of the nation foreign to them when they were a contained Vancouver community.

The towns of Kaslo, New Denver and Greenwood, which were arguably kept alive by

34 “Pro-Jap Misinformation,” Vancouver Sun, January 6, 1943. 35 “Must Use Justice in Treatment of Canadian Born Japs,” Ottawa Morning Journal, June 7, 1943. 36 Allen Roy Evans, “Our Nisei Citizens,” Montreal Standard, June 19, 1943. 200

the arrival of Nikkei workers, developed good relations with their new members.37 In

April 1943 the Arrow Lakes News reported that Nikkei in Kaslo were “making the most of the situation in which they are at present [and] welcome[ing] the opportunity to show what they can do”.38 Those who moved to the interior camps were governed by a policy of “self support or full employment for all employables,” and Sunahara indicates that this led to the formation of legal committees which dealt with local businesses, welfare and church groups, and upkeep of the camps.39 These same groups aided in the provision of education to children within the camps, and work placements to others outside of them.40 Beyond B.C., in the eastern provinces, church and welfare groups settled Nikkei in various areas and encouraged them to join local church, sporting and other groups where their normative citizenry was on show.41

These developments, necessary in light of a Government policy which displaced Nikkei but did not intern them, necessitated a series of connections which would become increasingly important as the war went on.

As more Canadians came into contact with Nikkei, a growing number of support groups and networks developed across the country.42 By mid-1943 these supporters, which included the New Canadian and other liberal press (mainly in the eastern provinces) as well as welfare and church groups, took the decision to strategically align themselves under the banner of the Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians

37 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 111. 38 Arrow Lakes News, April 1, 1943 quoted in Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 82. 39 Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 82-90; La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 96- 120. 40 Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 84. After being asked to provide services in camp by the British Columbia Security Commission, the provincial government responded that “[t]he education and care of the Japanese children moved from their previous domicile, on the orders of your Commission, and the total cost of whatever educational privileges are provided, are the responsibility of your Commission, or of the Dominion Government”: Patricia E. Roy, “The Education of Japanese Children in the British Columbia Interior Housing Settlements During World War Two,” Historical Studies in Education, 4(2) (1992): 215. 41 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 78. 42 Roy outlines examples of the experiences of Nikkei in various communities in The Triumph of Citizenship, 77-111. 201

(C.C.J.C) and organise their support more systematically.43 On 15 June 1943 Tom

Shoyama addressed a delegation of C.C.J.C members about the developments in B.C., and the group resolved to undertake “a program of public education” in order to advance the Nikkei cause.44 They prepared 10,000 copies of a pamphlet entitled A

Challenge to Patriotism and Statesmanship which sought to recast the treatment of

Nikkei in terms of citizenship concerns and civil rights.45 It argued that the treatment of

Nikkei, who were in the main formally Canadian Citizens, set a troubling precedent which could be applied to others. It also linked Canada’s actions at home to the war in

Europe, alleging that there was “something horribly suggestive of European fascism in the widespread hysterical animosity towards Japanese Canadians and Japanese nationals resident in Canada.”46 After the C.C.J.C. began to direct mass popular campaigns in late

1943, the tone of reporting about Nikkei became more sympathetic, and the distinction between Japanese nationals and the majority of Canadian citizen Nikkei was increasingly noted in public discourse. This troubled the historical notions of alienage applied to “Japanese” in Canada.

Until this time, there had been no scientific national polling of opinions about

Nikkei and Government policy, only editorial and popular opinion which suggested overwhelming support for anti-Nikkei action. On 22 December 1943, the Canadian

Institute of Public Opinion conducted a poll which indicated that although the

Government probably had majority support for its actions, public opinion was more diverse and complicated than the voices which had dominated in the press suggested.

The poll asked whether respondents thought that “Japanese living in Canada should be sent back to Japan [my emphasis] after the war is over, or should they be allowed to

43 C.C.J.C., “A Record of the work of The Cooperative Committee on Japanese Canadians,” Library and Archives Canada, MG28, V1, vol. 2. 44 Ibid. 45 Black, A Challenge to Patriotism and Statesmanship. 46 Ibid., 3. 202

remain in this country?” Despite the leading question, only 54 percent agreed with the first proposition, 39 percent disagreed, and 7 percent did not know.47 These results were followed by a Gallup Poll conducted in February 1944, without such suggestive questioning, which returned results indicating that Canadians distinguished between race and the citizenship claims possessed by some Nikkei.48 While an overwhelming majority supported the deportation of “Japanese nationals” (80 percent in favour, 14 percent against, 6 percent unsure), the reverse was the case when asked about the deportation of “Canadian citizens of Japanese race”. Only 33 percent supported the deportation of this group, while 59 percent were against it and 8 percent were unsure.

These polls indicated that the actual and prospective support for Nikkei was much more widespread than had been assumed in the early stages of the war.

1944-45: Deportation policy, citizenship, and mass resistance

By the middle of 1944, the government was aware of the sort of campaigns that anti-

Nikkei activists could wage, but it was also aware of the fact that the majority of

Canadians acknowledged the citizenship claims of some Nikkei, and disapproved of the idea of deporting these people. Mackenzie King, whose political maxim allegedly was that “the best way to overcome a hurdle is to wait for it to fall,” found himself being pressured by both sides.49 A series of editorials questioned the ethics and “Christianity” of the Government’s policy, at the same time as British Columbian M.P.s began to

47 Canadian Institute of Public Opinion, poll of December 22, 1943, Library and Archives Canada, RG27 (Public Relations and Information Services Branch), vol. 1337, file 6. 48 Poll results in “Allow Japanese to Remain Here if Nationalized,” Hamilton Spectator, February 16, 1944. 49 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 288. 203

accuse the Government of “drifting.”50 On August 4 1944, the Prime Minister announced a policy intended to “balance all the conflicting views,” which hinted at much but committed to nothing, and set off another round of public discussion about the status of Nikkei in Canada.51

King’s short policy announcement was the first official outline of the principles that would guide his Government’s treatment of Canada’s “Japanese” beyond the war. He stated that no “Japanese” in Canada had been guilty of disloyalty or sabotage to that time, but the Government intended to devise a loyalty test to be taken by all Nikkei

(regardless of nationality) and deport those who did not pass it at the end of the war.52

In addition, further Japanese immigration would be banned, emigration would be

“encouraged”, and any “Japanese” remaining in Canada after the war would be dispersed across the country.53 There was no information at this time as to how the tests would be administered or how emigration would be encouraged, but the government’s desire to deport an unspecified number of Nikkei, despite the fact none had been found disloyal to that time, had been announced.

The public responses to the policy outline were immediate and predictable, with anti-Nikkei agitators reading the ambiguous statement in ways that supported their preferred outcome of mass deportation, and with Nikkei disappointed but hopeful that the Government would eventually settle on a liberal interpretation of the vagaries.

British Columbian M.P. A.W. Neill was approving, and stated that British Columbia wanted “to get rid of the Japs, dead or alive,” while the Vancouver Sun crowed that

50 “Deportation of Japs Called ‘Unchristian,’” Vancouver Sun, June 15, 1944; “Let’s Not Become Nazis,” Ottawa Evening Journal, June 19, 1944; “Reader Strongly Protests Editorial on Jap Problem,” The Amalgamator, July 1, 1944; “The Japanese Controversy Is Reviving Liberalism,” Toronto Saturday Night, July 15, 1944; Opinion of B.C. Members of Parliament cited in Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 129. 51 King quoted in Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 113. 52 Canada, Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, August 4, 1944 (W.L. Mackenzie King, Prime Minister), 6,062. 53 Ibid. 204

The gallant fight of the British Columbia MP’s [sic] and the Vancouver Sun to remove the Japanese Old Man of the Sea from the shoulders of that province has been crowned with success.54

The Vancouver Province reported that there was general approval of the policy in B.C., with the exception of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F.), which wanted a more liberal approach, and fishing groups, who wanted the total exclusion of

“Japanese”.55 A Tom Shoyama piece published in the Vancouver Province the following day illustrated the feelings of resigned acceptance within the Nikkei community, arguing that despite the evidence, B.C. had “convinced itself that it has a very large Japanese problem and there seems no way of showing them the problem is largely a psychological one.”56 Both Shoyama and the C.C.J.C. stated that notwithstanding their disappointment, the Nikkei community would continue to cooperate with the government’s aims and policy.57

The Government had not materially acted on this policy when the circumstances of Nikkei across Canada’s border to the south were altered, which complicated the political situation in Canada. In December 1944, the U.S. Supreme Court found that

America did not have the power to keep American Nikkei from their west coast homes, and this group began returning from January 1945.58 Some Canadian press and other public organisations acknowledged the ability of U.S. action to set a precedent, and responded accordingly. The Vancouver Sun noted that industry had been doing well

54 A.W. Neill quoted in Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 133; “Jap Immigration Banned; Disloyal to be Deported,” Vancouver Sun, August 4, 1944. 55 “Jap Dispersal Plan Wins Wide Approval,” Vancouver Province, August 4, 1944. 56 “Japs in Canada Support King Dispersal Policy As Solution,” Vancouver Province, August 5, 1944. 57 C.C.J.C., “A Record of the work of The Cooperative Committee on Japanese Canadians,” MG28, V1, vol. 2, 3. 58 Ex parte Endo, 323 U.S. 283 (1944) found that “[a] citizen who is concededly loyal presents no problem of espionage or sabotage. Loyalty is a matter of the heart and mind, not of race, creed, or color.” On December 17, 1944, the day before this decision was handed down, the U.S. Government announced it would be closing all of its camps and allowing Japanese Americans to return to their homes as of January 2, 1945. 205

without Nikkei; the Canadian Legion argued their return would threaten the “standard of living”; and the Kamloops Board of Trade felt the Government should be seeking the deportation of “every person of Japanese origin”.59 The Vancouver Province noted the elephant in the room that was the forced sale of Nikkei homes and property on a front page which rhetorically asked “Go Back to What?”60 The Windsor Star reported that

U.S. action had “placed authorities [in Canada] in a difficult position”, but other outlets including the Montreal Herald and Hamilton Spectator reported that the Government would not be influenced by developments in the U.S.61 The U.S. action had caused some embarrassment, publicising the fact that the U.S. was no longer keeping Nikkei from their west coast homes, that they had not appropriated and sold Nikkei property, and that they had publicly acknowledged the Citizenship of American-born Nikkei.

Nevertheless Canada recommitted itself to a continuation of its own policy within days.

Just after the U.S. Supreme Court case was acknowledged in the Canadian press, two further opinion polls reinforced the relatively sophisticated views about citizenship held by Canadians, and indicated a strong objection to the deportation of Nikkei who were British subjects. On 17 January 1945, a Canadian Institute of Public Opinion

Survey published in the Ottawa Evening Citizen found that almost six in 10 thought that

“loyal” Japanese or “those born in Canada” should be allowed to remain, and only one third found the deportation of this group acceptable.62 On 14 January, a High View

Farm Forum Group poll found that 61 percent supported allowing “Canadians of

Japanese parents who were born in Canada” to remain in Canada, while 23 percent were

59 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 138-39. 60 “‘Go Back to What?’” Vancouver Province, December 16, 1944. 61 John Marshall, “Today in Ottawa,” Windsor Star, December 19, 1944; “Jap Policy Unchanged,” Montreal Herald, December 19, 1944; “Canadian Policy on Japs Stands,” Hamilton Spectator, December 19, 1944. 62 From “Three in Every Ten Canadian Voters Would Repatriate All Japs After War,” Ottawa Evening Citizen, January 17, 1945. 206

against this proposition and 16 percent were unsure.63 This poll found support more evenly divided on the question of the deportation of naturalised Canadians (44 percent support, 35 percent opposed, 21 percent unsure) and overwhelming support for the deportation of Japanese nationals resident in Canada (71 percent support, 12 percent opposed, and 17 percent unsure).64

Increasing evidence of the real and perceived complexity of the place that

Nikkei occupied in Canada was one of the reasons why the Canadian Government sought to divide the “loyal” and “disloyal” through its administration of repatriation surveys. But rather than offering an viable solution, this process raised further questions, and further publicised the campaign in defence of the citizenship rights of

Nikkei. When large numbers of Canadian born Nikkei signed on for relocation, Nikkei and their supporters used the U.S. situation as a basis on which to argue against citizenship abuse. The New Canadian argued that that “[f]or many, the decision [to accept repatriation] has been made in disillusionment and defeat, without a true and accurate appreciation of what is involved.”65 Elsewhere it compared the 6 percent of

American Nikkei who had voluntarily chosen repatriation, and the 43 percent of

Canadian Nikkei, alleging that the process was flawed and “a large majority of the

‘repatriates’ have no desire of being repatriated.”66 The Vancouver News-Herald conducted interviews with Nikkei in the major relocation centres of Greenwood, Kaslo,

New Denver and Slocan in order to provide context.67 It reported the Greenwood council’s position that Nikkei

63 Poll of Farm Forum Opinion, January 14, 1945, Japanese General Correspondence, Library and Archives Canada, RG27, vol. 40, file 23-2-1, vol. 1. 64 Ibid. 65 Editorial, New Canadian, April 23, 1945. 66 “Intimidation,” New Canadian, June 9, 1945; “Effect of the Repatriation Survey,” New Canadian, June 23, 1945. 67 “Rebuke to Haters,” Vancouver News-Herald, March 26, 1945. 207

homes and property were taken from them, many of them lost the savings of a lifetime and they were herded around more or less like cattle. In spite of this, they have been cheerfully awaiting the end of the war...and we feel that, given an opportunity, they would be loyal citizens of Canada.68

The Quebec Chronicle Telegraph was also unhappy with the idea that Canadian citizens could be deported by such a process, and called for “fair play”.69

The engagement of more mainstream media outlets in questions surrounding

Nikkei at this time coincided with the professionalisation and restructuring of the

C.C.J.C., which now counted academics George Tatham and Jarvis McCurdie, C.C.F. activist and lawyer F.A. Brewin, and publisher B.K. Sandwell among its leading figures.70 The Committee printed 10,000 copies of a pamphlet entitled “What About the

Japanese Canadians?” and circulated these around the country, with a copy going to each Member of Parliament and others going to the press, welfare and church groups.71

This was followed by the distribution of 75,000 copies of a pamphlet entitled “From

Citizen to Refugees: It’s Happening Here!”72 This pamphlet quoted from the

Declaration of Independence, the United Nations Charter and the Atlantic Charter, to construct an ideal of liberal citizenship to which Canada had claimed to adhere.73 It then outlined, in eight short points, how the treatment of Canada’s Nikkei failed to meet its moral and legal obligations. It listed the wartime restrictions to which Nikkei had been subjected, including forced sale of property and restricted freedom of movement, and claimed that because of these restrictions “several thousand felt compelled to accept the government’s offer to go to Japan.” It stated that most “voluntary” repatriates wished to remain in Canada but were being ignored by the Government and that the

68 Ibid. 69 “Fair-Play for Canadian Japanese,” Quebec Chronicle Telegraph, March 19, 1945. 70 Bangarth, Voices Raised in Protest, 60. 71 C.C.J.C, “A Record of the work of The Cooperative Committee on Japanese Canadians,” MG28, V1, vol. 2, 5. 72 Ibid. 73 C.C.J.C, “From Citizen to Refugees: It’s Happening Here!” (1945), Library and Archives Canada, MG28, V1, vol. 1. 208

“10,347” who had allegedly agreed to repatriation included many children who “have no desire to be sent to a foreign land.” It contrasted the treatment of Canadian Nikkei to that of Italian and German Canadians, claiming that Canadian policy was driven by racism. It also contrasted Canadian policy with the treatment of American Nikkei, and concluded by arguing that the deportation of Nikkei set a dangerous precedent with regards to the way Canadian citizenship functioned.

Elsewhere the C.C.J.C. began giving talks and organising letter writing campaigns which put pressure on the Government to act to normalise the legal status of

Nikkei, encouraged by the end of the Pacific War.74 Rather than moderating its policy, however, the Government sought to speed up plans for deportation. On 17 December

1945 the Government passed Orders-in-Council P.C. 7355, 7356 and 7357, which allowed the revocation of individuals’ citizenship rights, the ordering of deportations, and the establishment of a loyalty commission to further investigate those remaining.

The campaign in defence of Nikkei responded in kind, with Sandwell, Brewin and others approaching the Ontario Supreme Court, and backing their legal campaign with another extension of the public campaign. 75

1946 onwards: “Repatriation” vs. citizenship

By 1946, the public discourse surrounding Nikkei and their treatment in Canada had shifted immensely from where it began in 1942. Nikkei were no longer a small geographically contained community, but had a presence across Canada, in contact with

Canadians in a variety of social situations. They were no longer represented in the press by economic competitors who framed their concerns in terms of historic racial politics,

74 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 189. 75 Clement, Canada’s Rights Revolution, p. 41. Notes the intensification of the civil rights campaign after this time. 209

but had a series of individual, political and philosophical supporters who responded with human and citizenship rights based arguments. And they were backed by an increasingly active public movement, which raised the dangers to all Canadians of the precedent that the Government was setting. This movement acted as an increasingly effective lobby group to counter British Columbian exclusionists. The development in the discourse from weak protest to a robust discussion of citizenship rights is evident in a Gallup poll, published on 5 January 1946, which diverges in frame and outcome from the first national opinion poll, conducted by the Canadian Institute of Public Opinion in

1943. The first poll made no mention of Canadian nationality or citizenship, while the

Gallup poll asked whether “Japanese living in Canada who are Canadian citizens” [my emphasis] should be allowed to remain in the country. Sixty-two percent wanted

Canadian citizen Nikkei to be allowed to remain, and the accompanying editorial claimed that “Demands that [Nikkei] be sent back to Japan voiced by some political leaders recently do not represent the views of the majority of voters.”76

The C.C.J.C. began to tell its supporters that it was their “responsibility” to make their case publicly, and Sandwell claimed that the Government “does not want to deport Japanese Canadians but will be forced to if the people who desire the deportation are the ones who make all the noise.”77 On 4 January the National Federation of Labor

Youth stated that the deportation policy was “fully worthy of the Nazi regime”, the same day as F.R. Scott, professor of constitutional law at McGill and noted poet, wrote in the Ottawa Morning Citizen that

At the very moment when Parliament is trying to give some secure status to Canadians by the citizenship bill, we should not treat fellow citizens in this fashion. It makes a farce of citizenship.78

76 “The Gallup Poll,” Winnipeg Free Press/Winnipeg Tribune Special Combined Edition, January 5, 1946. 77 C.C.J.C., Bulletin #7 (September 14, 1946), Library and Archives, Canada, MG28, V1, vol. 1; “Jap Deportation Order Scored by B.K. Sandwell,” Kingston Whig-Standard, March 2, 1946. 78 “Jap Policy Scored,” Vancouver Sun, January 4, 1946; Ottawa Morning Citizen, January 4, 1946. 210

On 9 January the Civil Liberties Association of Toronto and the C.C.J.C placed an advertisement in the Globe and Mail claiming that 23,000 Japanese had been displaced and dispossessed; 74 percent of these were Canadian citizens and more would like to be; no charges of sabotage had been laid against any Nikkei; their only “crime” was being “of Japanese racial origins”, and that thousands were “being forced to move to

Japan – a country over half of them have never seen.”79 Also on 9 January, prominent

Rabbi A.L. Feinberg illustrated the implications of Canadian policy in the Toronto Star, claiming that “once the citizens of one country condone unfairness to any group, no matter how small, the whole structure of ordered and organised justice is imperilled.”80

Sunahara argues that the Canadian Government was not particularly impressed by the legal arguments presented by Brewin and the C.C.J.C. to the Supreme Court at the end of January, but was more impressed by the public campaign which now counted Liberal

Senators A.W. Roebuck and Cairine Wilson as well as Saskatchewan Premier T.C.

Douglas among its supporters.81 As noted in Chapter 3, on 20 February, the Court returned divided opinions that unanimously accepted the power of the government to deport Japanese nationals and naturalised Canadians, but had voted five to two in favour or deporting natural born Canadians of Japanese ancestry, and four to three against deporting dependents of signatories.82 As was the case after the policy announcement in

1944, this important decision was read in different ways. The Vancouver Sun claimed that the government had been “vindicated”, and that

what remains now to be seen is whether the committee of Easterners who sought to block the movement will continue their case to the Privy Council and whether

79 “Canadians Condemned,” Globe and Mail, January 9, 1946. 80 “Be Fair To Jap-Canadians Rabbi Feinberg Demands,” Toronto Star, January 9, 1946. 81 Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 122. 82 Discussed in Chapter 3. 211

the Privy Council will have the temerity to interfere with the policy of the Dominion Government.83

In contrast, the Calgary Herald and others questioned the ethical implications of the policy, and asked whether the government would now “take it upon itself the task of separating Japanese wives and children from their husbands and fathers?”84 According to Roy, the opinions were “confusing” to many, and the Government’s ability to carry out its policy as it had intended had been highly compromised.85

With legal and public opinion complicating the Government’s position, politicians reportedly expressed “resentment” at the “belated” nature of the public criticism of its actions.86 On 4 March, Mackenzie King’s assistant R.G. Robertson told him that his department had “received in the vicinity of 700 to 1000 letters” critical of the anti-Nikkei policy in the first part of the year, and on 15 April, a Maclean’s article claimed that “[p]rivately the Government wishes very heartily that the Supreme Court had quashed its orders-in-council” or accepted them fully.87 The political hurdles in front of King had not yet fallen, and so his Government agreed to refer the Supreme

Court opinions to the Privy Council for review. In a private interview with Brewin,

King basically acknowledged that he was equivocating, telling him that if his arguments were successful in London

it will be a feather in your cap. If you don’t win, time will go by and there will be less bitterness. By then public opinion may have changed and it may be all right for us to rescind the orders. It will be easier at that time than if we tried to do it now.88

83 “Jap Policy Vindicated,” Vancouver Sun, February 20, 1946. 84 Reginald Hardy, “Jap Deportation Findings May Create Moral Issue,” Calgary Herald, February 20, 1946. 85 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 199-200. 86 Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 123. 87 Gordon Robertson, “Memorandum for the Prime Minister” (March 4, 1946), R.G. Robertson fonds, Library and Archives Canada, MG31, E 87, file 2, vol. 1; “Backstage in Ottawa, by the Man with the Notebook,” Maclean’s Magazine, April 15, 1946. 88 Brewin’s recollection of an exchange with King quoted in Janice Patton, The Exodus of the Japanese (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973), 32. 212

The increasing success of the public campaign, and the C.C.J.C.’s interpretation of

King’s position, led B.K. Sandwell to tell Nikkei and their supporters that “[i]f you make a noise your government will listen. Go to it and make all the noise you can.”89

After reviewing the Supreme Court opinions to the Privy Council, Canada altered its definition of “voluntary” repatriates – now not deporting those who had requested permission to stay – but began to deport the others. The C.C.J.C and liberal press outlets continued their criticism of this policy, offering humanising and contextualising stories about the complex situation that many Nikkei still faced. On 9

May the Toronto Star interviewed 35 Nikkei families and found that the majority were

being broken apart by the repatriation, [with] most children over 16 refusing to accompany their parents to a country they claim is completely foreign to them. Many of the younger children, too, are shedding tears because they must accompany their parents.90

On 15 May the Winnipeg Tribune continued with this theme, reporting on a number of aged, long-term residents of Canada who regarded Japan as a preferable destination to parts of Canada which were foreign to them, and the young Canadian citizens who were required to unwillingly accompany them.91 One such individual, Mr Eyemoto, a

Canadian resident for 46 years, said:

All right for me to go to Japan. I want to see sister. No good for old man to come from B.C. to Manitoba. Too cold here. In B.C. see mountain all time. In Manitoba no see tree. In Japan I get little farm. I been farmer all my life.92

His son Jackie told the paper “I don’t want to go to Japan, but my father says we must go”. Two other children indicated their intent to return to Canada when they were able,

89 “Jap Deportation Order Scored by B.K. Sandwell,” Kingston Whig-Standard, March 2, 1946. 90 “Most Children Over 16 Refuse to Go – Alberta,” Toronto Star, May 9, 1946. 91 “Bewildered Japs Head for ‘Home,’” Winnipeg Tribune, May 15, 1946. 92 Ibid. 213

with one claiming that “I can neither speak nor write Japanese. They can’t keep us there.”93 These people – Canadian born minors and students – made up 60.7 percent of all “voluntary repatriates.”94 Even beyond this clear majority, there were reports of others whose voluntary status was clearly questionable. On 17 June The Windsor Star reported that one shipment of repatriates included “a busload of mental patients from the Essondale Mental Hospital”, and it was later revealed that among these was Kosho

Matano, a naturalised Canadian who had served in World War I, had been in hospital since 1933, and had not personally signed a repatriation order.95 Such examples allowed civil libertarians and Nikkei to illustrate the complex ethical concerns alongside the legal arguments being contested to a broad national audience.

The fact that the arguments of supporters of Nikkei rights had broadened beyond legalism into an ethical critique of the government’s concept of citizens’ rights had altered the dynamics of public discourse in Canada. This meant that Nikkei and their supporters could continue their campaign while awaiting a court opinion. The Toronto

Telegram’s August report on Kosho Matano (also discussed in Parliament) and the

Winnipeg Tribune’s September examination of young Canadians who unwillingly chaperoned elderly parents to Japan are examples of articles which kept the deportation controversy alive in the second half of 1946.96 When the Privy Council returned its perhaps inevitably conservative opinion, that the Canadian Government had the legal power to enforce deportations under the War Measures Act, supporters of Nikkei had done much to suggest that an ultimate outcome had ethical dimensions beyond the dry legal decision. The fact that an outcome which was objectionable to so many had

93 Ibid. 94 La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and World War II, 273. 95 “1,100 Japanese Leave Canada,” Windsor Star, June 17, 1946; “Jap Repatriated but did not apply,” Toronto Telegram, August 12, 1946. 96 “Jap Repatriated but did not apply,” Toronto Telegram, August 12, 1946; “Girl Wants to Stay in Canada,” Winnipeg Tribune, September 17, 1946. 214

proved legally sound suggested that wartime notions of Canadian citizenship were unsatisfactory.

The timing of the Privy Council decision, just weeks before the Canadian

Citizenship Act was due to come into force, was advantageous for Nikkei. The Privy

Council opinions, and the future of the Government’s policy, were examined with a view to the new era of Canadian Citizenship in both main Vancouver publications. On 3

December, the more liberal Vancouver Province argued that

There are certain rights which are fundamental and vital and should not be subject to revocation. Citizenship is among these. Canada has a new Citizenship Act which aims, quite properly, to give a new prestige to Canadian citizenship. But the Act is futile and meaningless while citizenship is subject to revocation on frivolous grounds like that of racial origin.97

The Vancouver Sun also editorialised that its “main objection” had been dealt with via the deportations and dispersion effected to this time, and that anti-Nikkei voices “would be wise to exercise the utmost restraint and tolerance in considering what is to happen next.”98 Internally, the government acknowledged that “the character of the problem has altered somewhat in the past year”, and with the tempering of anti-Nikkei voices emanating from B.C., the government decided to abandon further planned deportations.99

Fittingly, the government’s cautious populism remained evident even as it wound down its anti-Nikkei policy. After the announcement that it was rescinding the deportation orders in January 1947, Mackenzie King charged R.G. Robertson with monitoring the public’s reaction. On 1 February, Robertson reported that responses fell into one of two groups, “those approving of the government policy, and those criticizing

97 “Cloud on Citizenship,” Vancouver Province, December 3, 1946. 98 “Japanese Settlement,” Vancouver Sun, December 13, 1946. 99 R.G. Robertson, “Memorandum for the Prime Minister” (December 3, 1946), R.G. Robertson fonds, Library and Archives Canada, MG31, E87, vol. 1. 215

government policy for not going far enough towards the total removal of discrimination.”100 He went on to say that “[n]o newspaper items, nor any letters have yet been received suggesting that the original policy of deportation should have been retained.”101 With the public’s approval assured, the government continued the process of normalising relations with its Nikkei community.

As more Canadians accepted the claim of Nikkei to national membership, they logically questioned a concept of citizenship which marginalised certain individuals on the basis of race. As deportation approached, civic notions of citizenship were more forcefully asserted, at which time many of the justifications for the deportations fell away. The public campaign waged by Nikkei and their supporters was central to the acknowledgement of Nikkei citizenship, as it transformed a discourse which had been driven by security concerns into one where civil liberties and ethics became central.

When legal opinion confirmed the power of the Government to act against Canadian

Nikkei, the deficient notions of Canadian citizenship were laid bare, requiring an important reimagining at the time of the formal creation of Citizenship.

Australia

Public discourse surrounding Australian Nikkei in the 1940s was wholly different.

While Canadian Nikkei linked with individuals and organisations to trouble historical perceptions of their alienage and present claims to national membership, Australian

Nikkei were interned, ignored by most of the press, and in the main deported without being given the chance to interact with the Australian public. Nevertheless, the

100 Robertson to King (February 1, 1947), R.G. Robertson fonds, Library and Archives Canada, MG31, E87, vol. 1 101 Ibid. 216

Australian government was required to execute its deportation policy in relative secrecy, and when there were press representations of Nikkei around the time of the deportations, they were complicated, confused and sometimes sympathetic. Public opinion in Australia may never have asserted itself as it did in Canada, but the government’s management of the media and Australian Nikkei ensured that it never reached its potential. It did not and could not openly challenge ultimate executive authority over Australia’s deportation policy.

As context for the arguments below, I will first briefly address the primary materials on which they are based. The majority of the Australian sources are gathered from database searches of select newspapers, using the Australian National Libraries newspaper digitisation project.102 Several wide sweeps of this database reveal the paucity of public discussions of Australian Nikkei during the war. A keyword search for

“Japanese” and any derivative of “intern” indicates the existence of several thousand articles in the years between 1940 and 1949, however on closer inspection there is very little mention of the Australian internment policy or process, or Australian Nikkei, among these findings. The vast majority of these results pertain to Australian Prisoners of War in Japan and the conduct of the Pacific war more generally, while others deal with Japanese P.O.W.s (as opposed to civilian internees) in Australia, and the internment situations in the U.S.A., Russia and other places overseas. Looking more closely at the results, of 736 matches in 1941, 11 articles contain mention of the arrests and internment operations in December of that year. Of 781 results for 1942, there are

12 short articles with some reference to the internment camps. More direct searches reveal 12 mentions of “Tatura” (the camp where most Nikkei were held) and “Japanese” between 1940 and 1945 and no information about the living conditions or any

102 National Library of Australia, www.newspapers.nla.gov.au. The newspapers examined are Canberra Times (A.C.T.), Sydney Morning Herald (N.S.W.), Argus (Vic.), Burra Record (S.A.), Mercury (Tas.), Western Mail (W.A.), Army News (N.T.) and Camperdown Chronicle (Vic.). 217

individual Nikkei. Combing the papers at the time of known events, such as the internments, illustrates the total absence of opinion or analysis of the Australian actions at the time.

There are two periods when the situation of “Japanese internees” is mentioned with greater regularity, and these are examined in more detail. In late 1941, 11 short articles describe the internment operations; and throughout 1946, several dozen articles describe the deportations. But even among these articles, the content remains descriptive rather than analytical, and none carries a first hand account, or even a single quotation from an individual Nikkei. The reports use the same basic facts, presumably because of censorship restrictions, leading to a one dimensional media commentary.103

As historical records, these press sources speak louder about the situation of Australian

Nikkei by their absence of comment rather than through any information they provide.

The public marginalisation of Australian Nikkei

Several factors set the situation of Australian Nikkei apart from that of Canadian

Nikkei, presenting extra barriers between them and the Australian public sphere.

Although there were fewer Australian Nikkei than Canadians in 1941 (about 1,000 as opposed to 22,000) these communities were both minute in the context of the wider national populations (about 0.002 percent and 0.0002 percent) and this difference was not in itself a reason for the different outcomes. Australian Nikkei faced additional complications in their geographic isolation and lack of community infrastructure

(compared to the concentration of Nikkei in B.C.), the policy of universal internment,

103 The extent of Australia’s censorship regulations is outlined in John Hilvert, Blue Pencil Warriors: Censorship and Propaganda in World War II (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1984). Hilvert indicates the extent to which the Australian censor controlled what was allowed into the news, and calculates that there were thousands of censorship instructions conveyed to Australian outlets during the war, averaging more than one per day until 1945. 218

and the extreme censorship provisions, which precluded them from presenting themselves to the public and linking with any sympathetic support. These issues will be examined in turn.

Australian Nikkei were scattered and without any central political leadership at the beginning of the war. Of the 1,139 Nikkei registered in Australia in 1941, at least

900 were living in remote parts of Australia, and the majority of these were involved in the pearling industry and other working-class occupations.104 Although Vancouver was generally hostile to Canadian Nikkei, it was still a major Canadian city with the sort of social and political infrastructure that did not exist in places like Thursday Island and

Broome, where Australia’s largest Nikkei communities were located at the beginning of the war. Being removed from the power centres of Sydney and Melbourne meant that most Australian Nikkei had very little to do with the national politics and opinions emanating from these places.

Geographical distance was compounded by the fact that only a small number of the 1,139 Nikkei were Australian born and educated residents.105 Although as illustrated in Chapter 2 many more were long term residents or otherwise connected to Australia, these numbers compared unfavourably to the number of Canadian Nikkei who could formally claim British subjecthood. The lack of a sizable post-immigrant generation also meant that Australian Nikkei did not have a sub-culture analogous to that which led political integration in Canada, agitated for the franchise in the 1930s and formed the

104 Australian security agencies compiled a breakdown of the home states and districts of Nikkei on July 12, 1941. They state that 317 lived in Thursday Island, 412 elsewhere in Queensland, 101 in Western Australia, 70 in the Northern Territory, 188 in New South Wales and 51 in Victoria. Department of Defence Minute Paper (July 28, 1941), National Archives of Australia, MP729/6, 65/401/135; Nagata notes the occupational breakdowns in Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 31. 105 Nagata’s analysis of those released during the war, and security documents examining the Australian born at its conclusion gives her an estimated figure of 100 Australian born internees. From Yuriko Nagata, “Certain Types of Aliens: The Japanese in Australia 1941-1952,” in Relationships: Japan and Australia, 1870s-1950s, ed. Vera Mackie and Paul Jones, 217-40 (Parkville: University of Melbourne, 2001), 223, note 21; O’Brien has only identified 45 Australian born among a total of 1,114 of “Japanese origin,” in Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien, “Citizenship, Rights and Emergency Powers in Second World War Australia,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 53(2) (2007): 216. 219

New Canadian in 1938. Oliver’s recent work has suggested that there were good individual and business relationships between Australian Nikkei (seen as “good citizens”) and the wider community, but she also notes that in a monocultural nation

“Australians were struggling for a means to express their sense of appreciation” for these relationships.106 Without a geographically or socially organized bloc, and in the absence of integrated and savvy youthful leaders, the Australian Nikkei community had not been able to develop a political presence before the war, and would find it difficult to do so during it.

When the war broke out, the relative political powerlessness of Australian

Nikkei was reinforced by the implementation of a universal internment policy.107 The fact that 97 percent of Nikkei were interned meant that there was virtually no personal interaction between Nikkei and other Australians after December 1941, another divergence from the situation of Canadian Nikkei, who were required to engage in a series of new relationships all across the nation.108 Even within the camps, Australian

Nikkei were outnumbered almost three-to-one by “foreign” civilian “Japanese,” which marginalised them again, this time within a group whose common trait was their

Japanese ethnicity.109 Nagata has indicated how some of the most affectively Australian of the interned local Nikkei – who may have been community leaders in a different situation – clashed with civilian Japanese nationals interned from New Caledonia and

106 Pam Oliver, “Japanese Relationships in White Australia: The Sydney Experience to 1941,” History Australia 40 (2007). 107 The Australian internment policy mandated the “[i]nternment of all Japanese males over 16 years within Australia and its territories, except those with diplomatic or consular privileges [and the i]nternment of all Japanese women until they could be transferred out of the country,” from Department of Defence, “Report on the Directorate of Prisoners of War and Internees at Army Headquarters, Melbourne. 1939-1951” (1953), National Archives of Australia, A7711, vol. 1, 4-5. 108 According to Noel Lamidey, 97 percent of the Japanese population of Australia was interned during the war, see Noel W. Lamidey, Aliens Control in Australia: 1939-46 (Sydney: Noel W. Lamidey, 1974), 53. 109 Department of Defence, “Report on the Directorate of Prisoners of War and Internees at Army Headquarters, Melbourne. 1939-1951” (1953), National Archives of Australia, A7711, vol. 1, 93. 220

other places.110 Given perceptions of “Japanese” in Australia at this time, their physical isolation made it almost impossible for Australian Nikkei to create or present an independent identity that reflected their long membership of various Australian communities.

Geographical distance, a lack of community infrastructure or political power, and universal internment essentially cut Australian Nikkei off from any personal contact with the rest of the Australian community in 1941. This human dislocation was then reinforced by Australia’s strict policy of censorship, which meant that Nikkei did not have a media presence or any contact with other parts of the Australian community through which to present any indeed normative citizenship credentials or demonstrate their loyalty. Hasluck has argued that the Australian censor was a particularly powerful officer who

became the protector of what was called the “public morale”. The public must not be alarmed or incited. It had to be protected from bad news and from anything that might shake confidence.111

Hilvert indicates the extent of influence that the Department of Information and censor had, as well as the close relationship between the Department and the press in

Australia.112 Bell has suggested that wartime censorship was such that the press functioned as government propaganda, reinforcing Hilvert’s argument that

Governments from both sides of Australian politics used the censor politically.113 Given the pre-war fears and general perceptions of “Japanese” in Australia, as well as the strength of the anti-Nikkei policies, the relationships between the Government, censors

110 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 173-75. 111 Paul Hasluck, The Government and the People: Australia in the War of 1939-1945 (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1970), 401. 112 Hilvert, Blue Pencil Warriors, 1-9. 113 Roger Bell, “Censorship and War: Australia's Curious Censorship Experience, 1939-1945,” Media Information Australia 6 (1977): 1-3; ibid., 4. 221

and press make it unsurprising that there was little mention, and no criticism, of the way that the Australian Government treated its Nikkei population during the war.114 There were of course popular representations of Japan and “Japanese” in wartime Australia, but these were dominated by the perception of a feared yellow peril, and compare unfavourably to the Canadian discourse which was slowly broadening its concept of citizenship, and understanding of the national claims of Canadian Nikkei.115

Without the opportunity to establish an identity as a loyal, local presence in the public sphere, Australian Nikkei remained “Japanese”, and were not acknowledged as an acceptable part of the Australian national community. In January of 1942, when

Japan hit New Guinea a month after its attacks on Pearl Harbor and Hong Kong, Prime

Minister Curtin claimed that “[a]nybody in Australia who fails to perceive the immediate menace to Australia which this attack constitutes must be lost to all sense of reality.”116 Attacks on Darwin, the east coast, and particularly Sydney, brought the conflict directly into the lives of many Australians in 1942.117 Stanley states that although Australian leaders knew of a Japanese decision not to invade by April 1942,

Curtin and the Australian press continued to warn of the threat throughout the war.118

To most Australians, who had not had any contact with Nikkei before the war, those

114 In addition to general censorship, the internment camps were subject to a particularly “rigourous” set of regulations, meaning that there was no substantive mention of them during the war. See E.T. Dean, Interment in South Australia: History of Loveday (Adelaide: Advertiser Printing Office, 1946), 11; Department of Defence, “Report on the Directorate of Prisoners of War and Internees at Army Headquarters, Melbourne. 1939-1951” (1953), National Archives of Australia, A7711, vol. 1, 38-39. Chapter 10 of the “Report on the Directorate of Prisoners of War and Internees” generally illustrates censorship regulations for internees and points 22-26 illustrate the more onerous rules to which Japanese were subjected. 115 Populist wartime representations of Japanese in Australia and Australian press in Lisa Margaret Ford, “Picturing the Enemy: Race and Gender in World War II Cartoons” (MA Diss., University of Queensland, 2001). 116 “Peril to Australia Increases,” Argus, January 22, 1942. 117 Lamidey, Aliens Control in Australia, 5-6. 118 Peter Stanley, “‘He’s (not) coming South’: the invasion that wasn’t,” in From a hostile shore: Australia and Japan at War in New Guinea, ed. Steve Bullard and Tamura Keiko, 44-57 (Canberra: Australia-Japan Research Project, 2004), 52. 222

interned were part of a feared foreign enemy population, whose incarceration was for the good of Australia.

1941-45: The absence of Nikkei voices

As illustrated in Chapter 2, Australia’s security agencies had carefully planned for

Japan’s entry into the war so they were able to act immediately when this occurred. The mass internment action across Australia on 8 December 1941 was a large public operation which could not be kept out of the press, but still it received only passing and descriptive coverage.119 On 9 December 1941, the Canberra Times acknowledged the size and scope of the internment operation, noting that many “Japanese” had left

Australia in the preceding months, and incorrectly estimating that “that there are only about 700 [“Japanese”] in Australia”.120 The same paper also carried a report from

Queensland, stating that the internment operation there was a success, and that “every man sought was accounted for”.121 Elsewhere, the Argus noted that most of those arrested had been working on Thursday Island or in Darwin as pearlers, and commented on the ease with which the arrest warrants were executed.122 The Sydney Morning

Herald reported that some crowds gathered around the places where arrests were made in Sydney where “some people hissed and booed”, but “[a]ll [“Japanese”] submitted quietly”.123 On 10 December, the Mercury, from , carried a photo of two men and a 23-word article which read “Japanese in Sydney were speedily rounded up and interned after the declaration of war. A Japanese man is escorted to the police

119 Nagata gives an overview of the operation in which nearly all of the 1,139 “Japanese” in Australia registered at the outbreak of the Pacific War in Unwanted Aliens, 64-72. 120 “Only few Japanese in Australia,” Canberra Times, December 9, 1941. 121 “Japanese in Queensland Interned: Statewide Roundup,” Canberra Times, December 9, 1941; “Japanese Detained in Sydney,” Sydney Morning Herald, December 9, 1941. 122 “Round-up of Japanese,” Argus, December 9, 1941. 123 “Japanese Detained in Sydney,” Sydney Morning Herald, December 9, 1941. 223

station.”124 None of these pieces offered any context or analysis of the operation, or the individuals interned.

The closest thing to a contextualising story that exists in the examined press is a bizarre article published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 11 December 1941 entitled

“Returning the Laundry: Japanese Internees”.125 This piece acknowledged the occupation of some of those interned, as well as the fact that they obviously had some degree of relationship with non-interned members of the Australian community. The

Herald revealed that after some consternation on the part of individuals whose laundry arrangements were effected by the internments, laundry owners were temporarily released to “sort out the collars, shirts, suits, and other property of their customers.”126

This article is also descriptive and the absurdity of releasing individuals interned as part of a national security blitz, just days after their capture, in order to deal with laundry was not further examined. However, this piece was about as humanising as the

Australian press got in its examinations of Nikkei at the time of internment. There was no Nikkei press like the New Canadian or sympathetic public figure offering a balancing view, so Australians merely heard about the successful internment of a large number of “foreigners”.

In the wake of the internments, there were several brief reports which acknowledged the existence of “Japanese” internees in Australia in the first months of

1942, but again, these were detached or pejorative, and none offered contextualising voices. On 1 January 1942, the Canberra Times devoted several lines to conveying the disapproval of some evacuees from Darwin who were transported away from the dangerous area on a ship which also contained “Japanese internees”.127 On 4 February

124 “Round Up,” Mercury, December 10, 1941. 125 “Returning the Laundry: Japanese Internees,” Sydney Morning Herald, December 11, 1941. 126 Ibid. 127 “Darwin Muddle,” Canberra Times, January 1, 1942. 224

1942, the Canberra Times reported that the Minister of the Army Frank Forde disclosed that “a substantial number of Japanese had arrived in Australia for internment.”128 No numbers were announced, and the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Forde “could not divulge the countries from which the internees came”.129 There were brief pieces in the Times, Herald and Argus, which clearly drew on the same material, indicating that

Japanese internees were being fed a special diet, which included rice, fish and soybeans, and were being treated in accordance with international regulations.130 All of these reports had a detached anthropological curiosity about them.

On 14 July 1942, the Argus reported on an exchange of some “Japanese” internees for eight Australian officials and 30 civilians.131 In April of 1943, the Sydney

Morning Herald reported, via information gained from German radio, that negotiations were underway for an exchange of internees with Japan.132 Frank Forde was unaware of, or unwilling to admit to, the extent of negotiations, saying only that “until authentic information was received he would make no comment”.133 On 18 October, 30 October and 9 November, the Argus and Sydney Morning Herald contained short pieces on small internee exchanges.134 On 8 April 1944 the Canberra Times reported on the work being done by POWs in Australia. At the end of the piece it was noted that “500

Japanese merchant seamen are prisoners of war but they cannot be compelled to work because of their status.”135 Universal internment and censorship meant that the sort of short uncontextualised pieces above, which were only marginally connected to the

128 “Jap Internees: Arrival in Australia,” Canberra Times, February 4, 1942. 129 “Japanese Arrive for Internment,” Sydney Morning Herald, February 4, 1942. 130 For example “Japanese Taste in Food: Internees Like Rice in Husks,” Sydney Morning Herald, February 5, 1942; “Japanese Internees Create Diet Problems,” Argus, February 3, 1942; “Japanese Internees,” Canberra Times, February 5, 1942. 131 Argus, July 14, 1942. 132 “Proposed Exchange of Internees,” Sydney Morning Herald, April 29, 1943; “No Confirmation of Jap Offer of Internee Exchange,” Argus, April 30, 1943. 133 Quoted in “Exchange of Internees,” Sydney Morning Herald, April 30, 1943. 134 Sydney Morning Herald, October 18, 1943, October 30, 1943 and November 9, 1943; Argus, October 30, 1943 and November 9, 1943. 135 “War Prisoners Utilised on Productive Work,” Canberra Times, April 8, 1944. 225

interned Nikkei, were as close as the Nikkei got to the Australian public sphere during the war.

Cursory public examinations of the outcomes of racial nationalism

Although Nikkei, or even “Japanese”, issues were not examined in the Australian press, there was an emerging discourse which would have an influence on the post-war notions of citizenship in Australia. Throughout the 1940s aspects of the white Australia policy came under greater scrutiny, as (generally abstract) arguments about the conflict within Australia’s racial liberalism began to appear in several forums. Along with the occasional public reactions to more egregious discriminations in the later part of the decade, press and academic enquiries began to question the sustainability of such a stark maintenance of a white Australia in the post-war period. This emerging discourse indicates that some Australians did nurse a latent unease with national discriminatory policies which may have been exploitable by the small Nikkei community had it been able to access the public sphere.

In 1947, W.D. Borrie wrote that the national attachment to a white Australia was irrationally “dogmatic,” while accepting that it had widespread support.136 Despite this support, the increasing number of press examinations throughout the decade indicate that various aspects and applications of the policy came into question as the 1940s wore on. A database search of the abovementioned papers indicates that there were 53 mentions of “white Australia” in 1940/1, 251 in 1944/5, and 684 in 1948/9.137 Tavan

136 W.D. Borrie, Immigration: Australia’s Problems and Prospects (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1949), 65; A.P. Elkin, “Rethinking the White Australia Policy,” in A White Australia: Australia’s Population Problem, ed. W.D. Borrie et al., (Sydney: Australasian Publishing, 1947), 174. 137 This search was conducted across the same sources searched for reports of the internment policies, using the search term “white Australia” in the body of newspaper articles dated between 1940 and 1949. See National Library of Australia, Australia Trove: Digitised newspapers and more, accessed October 17, 226

has noted that international implications, including how the racial policy would be justified in its application to Australia’s wartime ally China, how it would effect post- war issues of trade with Asian nations, and how it related to Australia’s prominent involvement in the formation of the United Nations, were all considered during the war.138 Lloyd and Hall confirm the existence of similar considerations in government circles.139 At issue were the complications that racial policies could cause for

Australia’s international dealings, rather than the ways that they affected the small local minorities. Nonetheless, the sheer increase in discussion of the white Australia policy suggests the existence of some unease within existing national frameworks.

Whereas the Canadian discourse about discrimination was led and supported by the real circumstances of Nikkei, the Australian discourse generally remained abstract.

There were occasional criticisms of exclusion mounted by religious groups during the war who noted that racial discrimination was in conflict with the idea of the

“brotherhood of man.”140 As Australians began to look beyond the war these calls increased, with Methodist Ministers decrying racism, and a Presbyterian conference arguing that Christian doctrine would require an “Asiatic quota” in any future immigration regime.141 In February 1946, concurrent with but not linked to the deportations, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Christian Peace Congress found “the White Australia policy is one of the most provocative and mischievous

2010. http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/search?searchTerm=%22white+australia%22&textSearchScope=ful l&facet=decade:194. 138 Tavan, The long, slow death of white Australia, 37-41 139 Fred Smith, a senior member of the Canberra press gallery during the war, indicates that there were internal discussions about the white Australia policy with regard to China, trade and the United Nations in Clem Lloyd and Richard Hall, Backroom Briefings: John Curtin’s War (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1997), 155, 168, 175. 140 See “White Australia Questioned,” Argus, September 12, 1942; “White Australia Policy: Position After the War,” Argus, September 24, 1942; “White Australia Policy Criticised,” Argus, February 26, 1943; “White Australia Policy: Insult to Eastern Countries,” Argus, May 10, 1944. All reports contain repudiations of the white Australia policy by religious figures. 141 “White Australia Policy: Methodist Views,” Argus, January 15, 1945; “Quota of Asiatic Migrants: Presbyterian Support,” Argus, September 19, 1945. 227

pieces of legislation in the world”.142 The Catholic Church and the Australian Council of Churches also advocated policy review.143 None of these pieces directly linked the plight of the interned Nikkei or indeed other specific minorities to the white policy, but their existence indicated that Australia’s anti-European policies did not have the universal support that is often assumed.144

Public unease about Australian race policies reached its zenith towards the end of the decade, exhibited by responses to several public harsh and inflexible applications of racial exclusion. Between 1947 and 1949 Australia attempted to deport 21 Malay refugees who had married Australians during the war; to deny re-entry to Sargeant

Gamboa, a U.S. citizen of Filipino background, married to an Australian woman and with two Australian children; and to deport Annie O’Keefe, a widowed British subject by marriage born in Indonesia. All of these cases have been examined in detail by

London, Rivett, Brawley and Tavan among others, and their specifics do not add to the argument here.145 These cases, though tangential to the issue of the almost unknown

Australian Nikkei population of the 1940s, caused public outrage, and further indicate a latent body of support that a pro-Nikkei campaign in Australia may have had in the

Australian public sphere.

142 “Bar to Peace Seen in Racial Bias,” Sydney Morning Herald, February 9, 1946. 143 H.I. London, Non-White Immigration and the “White Australia” Policy (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1970), 107. 144 W.D. Borrie, Immigration, 65; Elkin notes support for the White Australia policy in “Rethinking the White Australia Policy,” 174; Both “Does Australia Dare to Risk Remaining White,” Mercury, April 27, 1946 and “White Australia Can be Discussed,” Sydney Morning Herald, July 11, 1945 mention the popular support for the policy, but acknowledge its inconsistencies with Australia’s international obligations and the reality that the policy could not be administered in the future in the same way as they had been previously. 145 H.I. London, Non-White Immigration, 181-87; Kenneth Rivett, Australia and the Non-White Migrant (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 1975); Sean Brawley, The White Peril: Foreign Relations and Asian Immigration to Australasia and North America (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1995), 248-55; Tavan, The long, slow death of white Australia, 53-59. 228

1946: Signs of a repressed discourse in defence of Nikkei

Against a backdrop of greater interest in racial elements within its national politics,

Australia began the process of concluding its wartime internment processes in late 1945 and early 1946. In conjunction with the surrender of Japan, the return of Australian

POWs, and the relaxation of censorship regulations, these actions prompted the second

“wartime” period in which there was minimal discussion of Australian Nikkei. This discourse remained impersonal and devoid of analysis, however reportage of even the most minimal details of the deportations (along with the first images of Nikkei internees since their arrests) encouraged a wave of public sympathy. This sympathy was devoid of years of development like in Canada, and was not organised or structured in a similar way.

From late 1945, as Australian POWs returned home, and the conditions of camps in Japan became more widely known, the Australian press was given more information about local camps in contrast. On 27 August 1947, a report of the number of Japanese internees was carried in the Mercury and Canberra Times. The Mercury quoted the Director General of Security Simpson as saying that there were 1,000

Japanese, 500 civilians, and 500 “merchant seamen now classed as prisoners of war”.146

The report claimed only eight “Japanese” internees had been released from internment to this time, and the rest would be deported “as soon as shipping and other arrangements could be made”. The Canberra Times took a more sensational approach in its 80-word piece, claiming that

the Director-General of Security (Brigadier Simpson) disclosed in the week-end that 1000 dangerous fanatical enemy aliens were interned in Australian

146 “1000 Japs held in Australia,” Mercury, August 27, 1945. 229

camps...Included in the 1000 are 82 married women living in family camps with their husbands. Some of these women were known to be dangerous.147

On 20 October, the Argus offered some context on how these internees lived during the war. It acknowledged that “[u]ntil the surrender of Japan very little information was made available to the public, for security reasons, concerning these camps,” however

“internees and prisoners of war in Australia lived on a far more liberal and varied diet than the bulk of the civilian population”.148 It stated that internees were not forced to work, that conditions were periodically reviewed, and that the camps were administered smoothly. Although this article offered more information on the conditions in the camps than had been publicly conveyed throughout the war, it still did not carry the account of a single internee, Nikkei or otherwise.

On 5 November 1945, the Sydney Morning Herald published one of the first brief public reports regarding the post-war deportation policy.149 It announced that a loyalty commission would hold hearings as a preliminary step, to “give those who desire an opportunity to prove if they can that they were wrongly suspected as Nazis,

Fascists, or supporters of the Japanese.” It also stated that “a clearing by the inquiry will not give these aliens a right to remain here, but it will almost certainly be demanded as one condition.”150 Beyond this report, very little information on the hearings or workings of the Commission discussed in Chapter 3 was reported publicly. On 9

November, in 60 words, the Canberra Times acknowledged the commencement of the hearings.151 On 24 November a brief report stating that 48 Italians and 78 Germans had been seen to this date was filed by a columnist who bragged that s/he was “the only

147 “1000 Enemy Aliens Held in Camps,” Canberra Times, August 27, 1945. 148 “How We Treated Their Prisoners of War,” Argus, October 20, 1945. 149 “Internment Inquiry: Chance to Clear Names,” Sydney Morning Herald, November 5, 1945. 150 Ibid. 151 “Inquiry into future of enemy internees,” Canberra Times, November 9, 1945. 230

press and civilian onlooker” at the proceedings.152 No Nikkei internees had been heard by the Commission before February 1946, when the majority of Australia’s remaining pre-war Nikkei community was deported, denying them perhaps a final chance to access the public sphere in Australia.153

The organisation and execution of the deportation of several thousand

“Japanese” internees (ex-Australia and overseas destinations) could not be achieved with the same degree of secrecy that had surrounded wartime internment policy. For several weeks around February and March 1946, the government’s internment and deportation policies received more press coverage than they had throughout the war.

Several remarks made by reporters, and the public outpouring of sympathy as individuals were herded aboard one particular vessel, indicate the complications that

Australian policy makers may have faced had Australian Nikkei been able to establish a connection with the wider public during the war.

On 6 February 1946, the Canberra Times reported that “Jap ships” were

“coming to repatriate nationals” from Australia to Japan.154 These were the Koei Maru, which carried 2,562 (mainly) internees from Melbourne to Japan, and the Daikai Maru, which took 2,691 P.O.W.s.155 These two ships transported most of the 821 civilian internees and P.W.J.M.s previously resident in Australia who were deported. On 15

February, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that “applications from a number of civilian Japanese internees who wish to remain in Australia have yet to be considered by Mr. Justice Simpson.”156 Chapter 3 of this thesis details the scramble at the time from internees attempting to contact the government and be exempted from deportation, as well as the confusion within government about just who would be deported. On 21

152 Melbourne Herald, November 24, 1945, National Archives of Australia, A472, W29728, part 1. 153 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 208. 154 Canberra Times, February 6, 1946. 155 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 197-99. 156 “2500 Japs in Australia for Home,” Sydney Morning Herald, February 15, 1946. 231

February the Canberra Times reported on the belief that “[a]ll Japanese POW and internees will be out of Australia by March 1”, and over the following two days the

Times, Herald, Argus and Mercury all ran several small pieces on the arrival and state of the ships.157 On 22 February, the Argus ran one of the few extended descriptive pieces on the deportations, packed with hinting indications of the discourse that

Australia had never had about this group of people. As Australian Nikkei were being loaded aboard the Koei Maru, the writer noted that

Young Japanese smiled as if to say ‘It’s all over now’ as they helped elderly men onto the deck…The Japanese leaving Australia gave no indication of their feelings. There was no laughing or talking as they filed from their trains to the ship. Soldiers who travelled on the trains as guards said that some of the older men, who had lived here for years, openly admitted they would sooner remain…doll like children of three or four years of age, Australian born and still perhaps technically British subjects, looked through the rails before being taken below.158

This piece approached vital issues surrounding notions of citizenship several times before choosing to avoid examination of any of them, much in the way that the

Australian polity had done throughout the war. Japanese seamen smiling at elderly residents previously of Australia and other Pacific Islands were interpreted as offering some sort of familial welcome to those returning to their “home”. The fact that there was “no laughing or talking” and several individuals professed a desire to remain in

Australia was interpreted as “no indication of their feelings”. And tellingly, the voiceless “doll like” Australian-born British subjects are mentioned, and then whisked out of sight, below the deck. In one of the most descriptive and sympathetic contemporaneous reports of the Australian Nikkei to appear in the Australian press, the individual voices and stories hovering behind the description were not presented. The

157 Canberra Times, February 21, 1946. 158 “Jap ship leaves with 2500 ex-internees,” Argus, February 22, 1946. 232

complex and possibly historically disorienting claims that Australian Nikkei had to membership of the Australian nation were again not examined. Similar complexity is hinted at on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald on the same day, which contained a quarter page picture of a soldier pointing a hesitant Japanese man onto a ship, alongside the headline “But we think you ought to go.”159 The man is not otherwise identified, and there is no accompanying story examining the implication that he would like to stay.

These late February deportations were followed by another round in early

March, when the Daikai Maru, and a third ship the Yoizuki, “repatriated” another several thousand “Japanese”. On 1 March, the Sydney Morning Herald remarked upon the “insufferable stench” on the Daikai Maru, noting the overcrowding and making the claim that “conditions promise to be intolerable”.160 The ship left on 2 March, and its departure was shadowed by brief pieces which acknowledged that some of the repatriates were “sullen and disconsolate”, and pictured a man who “perhaps doesn’t want to go home” [my italics].161

Yet the curiosity and glimpses of sympathy exhibited in the examinations of the

Koei Maru and Daikai Maru paled alongside the coverage of a third smaller ship, the

Yoizuki. The Yoizuki was to transport 1,005 people, including several hundred

“Japanese” women and children, who would soon be acknowledged as Formosans.162

That this basic fact was only acknowledged at the time of deportation, after these individuals had been interned for years, indicates just how complete had been the absence of press coverage of Japanese internment. As individuals were loaded onboard,

159 “But we think you ought to go,” Sydney Morning Herald, February 22, 1946. 160 “Jap Ship Discomforts,” Sydney Morning Herald, March 1, 1946. 161 “2700 More Jap POWs embarked,” Argus, March 4, 1946; “Jap POWs, internees leave for home,” Mercury, March 4, 1946; “Warning,” Mercury, March 6, 1946. 162 All of these individuals were held as “Japanese” during the war, and were reported as such in the early stages of the controversy. “Japanese Warship Arrives to Embark POWs,” Sydney Morning Herald, March 5, 1946; “Sydney’s Reaction to Jap Ships: POWs Being Taken Home,” Argus, March 5, 1946. 233

there were reports of their distress, and the Yoizuki was quickly dubbed the “hell ship”.163 It departed on 6 March, and the following day, the Sydney Morning Herald reported of the “public indignation,” claimed that “[d]isgrace [was] inflicted on

Australia”, and compared the ship to Belsen, invoking Nazi Germany in Australia’s treatment of its own racially undesirable subjects.164 On 8 March, the Herald printed a letter from an Australian P.O.W. M.K. Jones, who argued that “were there no women and children on board, and were the component wholly Japanese Prisoners of War, or rather internees, the conditions would still be appalling.”165 The presentation of some of the human faces behind Australia’s internment and deportation policies led to a hasty understanding that not all of the internees were dangerous, or even enemy nationals, as acknowledged by a Canberra Times article, which reported that the Yoizuki left

“crowded with Formosan and Korean internees.”166 On 11 March, the same paper indicated that M.P.s visiting their electorates that weekend were “astounded at the widespread public abhorrence” that greeted them.167 This event presents more evidence that on the rare occasions when the press was able to report on the plight of Australia’s wartime “Japanese” internees, there was a tendency to sympathise with the human difficulty, rather than racial politics. Occurring, as it did, after the deportation of most

Nikkei, this event could not act as impetus for the establishment of the sort of discourse that had taken years of agitation to develop in Canada.

The Australian Government was stung by the public response, and immediately reverted to its wartime tactics, placing potential causes of embarrassment beyond the reach of the public. Minister of the Navy Makin blamed “press barons” for the

163 Sydney Morning Herald and Argus, March 5 and 6, 1946. 164 “Public Indignation: Harrowing Scenes on Wharf: Women Herded in with POWs”; “A Barbarous Outrage”; “Disgrace Inflicted on Australia: Comparison with Belsen”: Sydney Morning Herald, March 7, 1946. 165 Sydney Morning Herald, March 8, 1946. 166 “‘Yoizuki’ Film at Canberra Theatres tonight,” Canberra Times, March 8, 1946. 167 Canberra Times, March 11, 1946. 234

controversy, and one M.P. was reported to have claimed that “the Government should have forbidden the press to cover the story”.168 Elsewhere the government suggested that General MacArthur was to blame for the conditions on the Yoizuki, which it asserted were in any case better than “Japanese” were accustomed to.169 An enquiry was launched, to be conducted at Rabaul by Justice Simpson and P.O.W. Adrian

Curlewis.170 Journalists were blocked from travelling to Rabaul to inspect the ship themselves, meaning that the Government had reasserted its control over the information which would be allowed into the public realm.171 Simpson ultimately found that the ship was dirty and slightly overcrowded, but that in general its condition was

“satisfactory”.172 Calwell then claimed that the “incident, from start to finish, has been nothing but a huge newspaper stunt,” and the Argus agreed.173

The popular excitement surrounding the deportations aboard the Koei Maru,

Daikai Maru and the Yoizuki, indicated what Australia’s wartime discourse about

Nikkei internment, deportation, and claims to national membership might have been, but also what they were not. The sympathy exhibited in the public debate was based on the way that deportees were being treated and transported, rather than their claims to citizenship or residence. They prompted no examination of the legal or ethical requirements of the government, largely because they were unable to. The way that the

Australian government had conducted its exclusionary policy meant that Australian

Nikkei had no contact with the wider Australian community on the individual level or through the press from late 1941 until just before they were deported. The sensational

168 “Navy Minister says Australia not Responsible,” Canberra Times, March 8, 1946; “Hellship,” Time Magazine, March 18, 1946. 169 “Navy Minister says Australia not Responsible,” Canberra Times, March 8, 1946. 170 “Hell Ship Ordered into Island Port for Check,” Sydney Morning Herald, March 8, 1946. 171 “Press Refused Permission to See Yoizuki,” Daily Telegraph, March 11, 1946; “Press Flight to Rabaul blocked,” Sydney Morning Herald, March 11, 1946. 172 “Full Text of Yoizuki Report,” Sydney Morning Herald, March 21, 1946. 173 Calwell quoted in “Events which led to Report,” Sydney Morning Herald, March 21, 1946; “So Now We Know,” Argus, March 21, 1946. 235

details surrounding Nikkei deportations were of interest to the press, but were robbed of context by internment and continuing censorship. The sympathetic and transformative discourse, which required years of cultivation to assert itself in Canada, could not be recreated in days in Australia.

The deportation of the majority of Australian Nikkei did not lead to immediate gains for those allowed to stay, who remained in detention for several months, and were reported on in the media as policy developments were announced. On 9 May 1946, the Sydney

Morning Herald and Argus noted the 153 “Japanese” were being held pending examination for “war crimes”.174 On 27 July, The Advertiser noted that the internment camps were to be closed and that only a small number of “Japanese” internees remained, consisting of “Japanese with either Australian born wives, Australian born children, or both, and some sick and aged Japanese unable to travel.”175 On 5 October it was announced that some pearl divers were to be released, and on 24 October, the Argus expected that of 85 individuals expected to be released, most “were engaged in business in Australia before the war and so were not repatriated to Japan.”176 On 3 December, in a few lines, the Argus almost represented several individuals, noting that “Ten Japanese who can speak only English were among the passengers who arrived in yesterday by train from the eastern states. They included a man and woman and their seven children” and a 68-year-old station cook.177 This is about as personal as the post- deportation press got in 1946 Australia.

174 Argus, May 9, 1946; Sydney Morning Herald, May 9, 1946. 175 “Internment Camps to be Closed,” The Advertiser, July 27, 1946. 176 “Jap Pearl Divers to be released,” Canberra Times, October 5, 1946; “Jap Internees to be released Here,” Argus, October 24, 1946. 177 “Japs go home to WA after internment,” Argus, December 3, 1946. 236

Conclusion

Public discourse surrounding the Nikkei populations of wartime Canada and Australia were completely different affairs. From the beginning of the war, Canadian Nikkei had access to and support within the Canadian press, as well as contacts throughout the nation. In contrast, Australian Nikkei were interned en masse and isolated further by extensive censorship regulations. These different circumstances led to very different wartime experiences, whereby Canadian Nikkei made a series of normative claims to citizenship through their everyday activities, and demonstratively loyal behaviour, and

Australian Nikkei were not given the opportunity to illustrate any claims they may have had as part of the national Australian community.

Canadian Nikkei had a vital piece of social infrastructure in the New Canadian which allowed them to communicate both with other Canadians, while they were being removed from the community, and with support networks they had established over decades. The fact that they were able to maintain a media presence combined with their new wartime social connections aided in publicising their plight. At the end of the war, as the Government began organising the deportation of about 10,000 people, the

Canadian Nikkei and their supporters mobilised these networks, and launched a campaign of resistance in the name of universal citizenship rights. This public campaign led to notable judicial challenges and political reconsiderations which saved about 6,000 individuals from deportation, and advanced the concept of, and discourse surrounding, citizenship in Canada.

Once the deportation policy was abandoned in Canada, relations in Canada and public representations of Nikkei quickly normalised. The Nikkei population of British 237

Columbia was only 6,776 in 1947, and most of these were in the interior.178 The most stridently anti-Nikkei press had achieved a victory of sorts with the dispersal policy, and most press began to further emphasise the Citizenry of Nikkei and agitate for the final removal of discrimination. The Saskatoon Star Phoenix announced that “[t]he Canadian government has retreated from its untenable position” and the Calgary Herald that “the treatment of Japanese Canadians by a so-called Liberal government has been nothing short of disgraceful.”179 Representations of Nikkei had been shifting in Canada throughout the war, so no great effort was required when the press clearly acknowledged their Citizenry at the beginning of 1947.

Unlike in Canada, Australia’s public relationship with its post-deportation

Nikkei population merely became tolerant (in a pejorative sense). This was a positive development when compared to the policy, which had envisaged a near total removal of

Nikkei after the war. Yet it also illustrated great reluctance on the part of the Australian

Government to make great structural reforms to citizenship. Rather, there was a quiet evolution in the relationship between Australia and its post-deportation Nikkei, reflected by more accepting rhetoric and the granting of permanent residence to non-Europeans of 15 years’ residence. The wartime treatment of Nikkei can be seen as a traumatic experience which unsettled Australian notions of citizenship, but it took some time for the nation to embrace real change in the post-war years.

Two incidents reported in the press in 1947 illustrate the confused nature of

Australian understandings of citizenship as it applied to Nikkei who attemped to re- engage with the Australian public after internment. The first occurred in January, when

Australian born ex-internees Jimmy Chi and Jukichi Murakami tried to return home to

Broome. There was a “stormy” local meeting, at which the Interior Minister said that

178 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 210. 179 “Japanese Canadians,” Saskatoon Star Phoenix, January 28, 1947; “Mr. King’s Bargain Sale,” Calgary Herald, January 30, 1947. 238

they were “free to move wherever they wish, in the same way as any other citizen” [my emphasis].180 The second incident occurred towards the end of the year, when Suyekichi

Yamada, a Japanese born long-term Australian resident, made his third application for naturalisation. The Australian Legion for ex-Servicemen claimed he was “un-

Australian”, and asked why he had waited 43 years before making an application.181

Arthur Calwell, incorrectly on both counts, claimed that “no Japanese had been naturalised since Federation, and that record would stand”.182 Yamada’s application was rejected, and on 18 November 1947 the Canberra Times reported that

Suyekichi Yamada, 74, has taken the rejection of his application for naturalisation in the typical stolid Japanese way. He commented, in fairly good English, ‘Oh Well, I thought I’d have another go after the war ended’. He added that he had made an application about 30 years ago and it had been refused. He came to Queensland 51 years ago to cut cane. Yamada claims to be a good Australian as he pays rates and income tax. He said he met Japs in an internment camp who had been naturalised.183

The obvious questions about Yamada’s situation – how and where he made an application 30 years ago, how and why a non-citizen pays rates and tax, who the naturalised “Japs” he met were, and many others – were not asked. An archival record of his official contacts indicate that Yamada had in fact applied for naturalisation twice

– in 1911 and 1921 – and had been supported by friends, a landlord, and his bank, but none of this was reflected in the papers at the time.184

The way that individuals like Yamada and Chi were represented in the

Australian post-war press, unencumbered by wartime censorship, indicates that the press’ lack of curiosity or interest in Nikkei continued beyond the war. Where the

180 “Broome Talks of Boycotting Japs Who Return,” Argus, January 9, 1947. 181 Quoted in Sunday Telegraph, November 16, 1947. 182 “Jap Application for Citizenship causes Stir,” Mercury, November 17, 1947; The Australian Yearbook 1946/47 indicates that 11 naturalisation certificates were granted to Japanese in 1945/6. Commonwealth of Australia, Official Yearbook of the Commonwealth of Australia No. 37 (1946/7), 704. 183 “Japanese Refused Naturalisation,” Canberra Times, November 18, 1947. 184 National Archives of Australia, A435, 1947/4/4265. 239

situation of individuals in 1947 differed from 1941, these were driven by the

Government, rather than the public in Australia. It was the Government which acknowledged the claim to permanent residence of those non-Europeans who had lived in Australia for over 15 years, and the Interior Minister who referred to Chi as a

“citizen”. The sort of broad-based “bottom-up” movement agitating for a reconstitution of Canadian citizenship did not occur in Australia either during the war or beyond it, and so the reimagining which occurred in Australia with its Citizenship Act of 1949 was not as progressive as Canada’s was in 1947. The exclusion of Australian Nikkei from the public sphere meant that Australia was not required to examine its historic racism in the same way that Canada was. It quarantined the incoherence of its claim to liberalism alongside its discriminatory policies by making exceptions where necessary, thereby containing prospective complications. Ironically, as we shall see, Australian citizenship reform was affected more by the Canadian Nikkei than by local Japanese Australians. 240

Chapter 5 Post-war Citizenship reform and the influence of Nikkei

The State consists of a plurality of men, but of different kinds; you cannot make a state out of men who are all alike. —Aristotle1

As the preceding chapters of this dissertation have demonstrated, perceptions of the status of Nikkei in the 20th century national communities of Canada and Australia were unstable. Citizenship was not a concept bound by any clear formal definition, but rather infused with meaning by contestable categories like race and British subjecthood, and applied through a loose blend of legislation and popular interpretation. Non-European subjects within each nation were identified as undesirable by immigration restrictions and social exclusion, and this helped to constitute the white ex-European settler as embodiment of national character. This utopia, however, did not reflect the more nuanced complexity of the two societies, and the continued existence of undesirable subjects as “outsiders within” troubled the liberal notion of universal civil rights. This was best illustrated by the continued existence of Nikkei at the conceptual borders of each nation, whose status was addressed in nationally important ways through the

1940s.

The presence of Nikkei in pre-war Canada and Australia was a national identity forming counterpoint, but also a nagging ideological incoherence that had become increasingly pressing over a number of decades. Curthoys, citing Hindess and Foucault, wrote of the development of colonial liberalism as “Janus faced.” Her description of the dual extension of political rights to desirable subjects, and the exclusion of those considered unworthy, equates roughly with Bosniak’s examination of the tensions

1 Aristotle, The Politics: revised edition, trans. Trevor J. Saunders (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981), 104 241

inherent in contemporary liberalism.2 The empirical realities of pre-war Canada and

Australia, where Nikkei existed as outsiders within, provide textbook examples of these ideas.3 Nikkei were individuals who lived and worked within each national community, but were unable to access the formal privileges of citizenship like naturalisation (in

Australia), the franchise (in both states) and other signifiers of national membership.

This situation was unsustainable, and so, after the failure of Curthoys’ first ideological face to achieve a resolution through the extension of exclusion (examined in the previous three chapters), the second ideological face turned its gaze inwards, seeking resolution through evolving notions of a more inclusive citizenship. This chapter will illustrate the role that Nikkei and their wartime treatment played in citizenship reform, in Canada, Australia, and throughout the Commonwealth.

Redirecting its focus towards formal definitions, this chapter examines the enactment of Citizenship in Canada in 1947 and Australia in 1949, and illustrates how each nation began to accommodate the presence of post-deportation Nikkei around this time. It suggests that resistance to the wartime treatment of Nikkei in Canada played into and was reinforced by a political climate sympathetic to citizenship reform, demonstrating the inadequacies of pre-war citizenship, and reinforcing the arguments in support of its reform. Through examinations of the Canadian and Australian Citizenship

2 Ann Curthoys, “Liberalism and Exclusionism: A Prehistory of the White Australia Policy,” in Legacies of White Australia: Race, Culture and Nation, ed. Laksiri Jayasuriya, David Walker and Jan Gothard, 8- 32 (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2003), 9, 32; Linda Bosniak, The Citizen and the Alien: Dilemmas of Contemporary Membership (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Linda Bosniak, “Universal Citizenship and the Problem of Alienage,” Northwestern University Law Review 94(3) (2000): 973; Linda Bosniak, “Citizenship Denationalized,” Indiana Journal of Global Law Studies 7 (2000). 3 See Curthoys “Liberalism and Exclusionism”; Marilyn Lake, “Equality and Exclusion: The Racial Constitution of Colonial Liberalism,” Thesis Eleven 95 (2008); Patricia E. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship: The Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67 (Vancouver and Toronto: UBC Press, 2007), 5-7; for Canadian examples of the centrality of anti-Asianism to the development of politics and institutions in B.C. and Canada generally see W. Peter Ward, White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy Towards Orientals in British Columbia, 3rd ed. (Montreal and Kingston: McGill- Queens’s University Press, 2002); Patricia E. Roy, A White Man’s Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1858–1914 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1990). 242

Acts and their surrounding politics, this chapter illustrates how Canadian action in particular, rippled around the Commonwealth, arguably transforming Australian

Citizenship from without even as the mass deportation of Australian Nikkei made relatively little impact from within. Dealing with the wartime history of Nikkei and their presence in each nation, then, played an important part in the reimagining of post-war

Commonwealth Citizenship.4 By 1949, Canadian Nikkei faced only minor legal discrimination because of their ancestry, and Australian Nikkei were historically acknowledged as legal permanent residents, no longer required to periodically justify their presence in the nation.5 These developments presented stark shifts in the perceptions of the statuses of Nikkei in Canada and Australia, illustrating the changes underway, and the potential for greater inclusion that was gradually realised throughout the second half of the 20th century.6

The international argument for Citizenship reform

At a time when nations began looking to a post-war world of realigned political relations and international cooperation, factors beyond the domestic began to impact

4 Roy notes that pro-Nikkei politics in Canada encouraged a growing interest in the meaning and importance of citizenship. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 188. 5 With the exception of the immigration restrictions that applied to “Japanese” generally, which discriminated against Nikkei in terms of family immigration processes, the Nikkei community had many of their other grievances addressed. They were acknowledged as Canadian Citizens by 1947, and had provincial voting and movement restrictions lifted by 1949. See Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 228, 239. This is examined in more detail below; Non-Europeans who had been resident in Australia for over 15 years – which was the majority of those Nikkei not deported in 1946 – were no longer required to apply for C.E.D.T.s. See Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Fact Sheet 8 – Abolition of the ‘White Australia’ Policy (Canberra, 2009). 6 It has rightly been argued elsewhere that the formal Citizenships enacted in the 1940s were substantively thin (and were later articulated by action like the Canadian Bills of Rights, the dismantling of white policies, and immigration reforms). The announcement of clearly articulated formal Citizenships began to disentangle British racialism from notional citizenship, and was the beginning of a structural reordering leading to progressive reforms throughout the second half of the 20th century. See Kim Rubenstein, “Citizenship and the Centenary – Inclusion and Exclusion in 20th Century Australia,” Melbourne University Law Review 24 (2000); Gianni Zappala and Stephen Castles, “Citizenship and Immigration in Australia,” Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 13 (1998-1999): 278-80; Cynthia Williams, “The Changing Nature of Citizen Rights,” in Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada, ed. Alan Cairns and Cynthia Williams, 99-127 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985). 243

upon national citizenship discourses. The outcomes of the war presented an extreme but logical conclusion to racial-nationalist ideologies, which were increasingly juxtaposed against the universal human rights envisaged by treaties and forums like the Atlantic

Charter and the United Nations established in opposition to the Axis powers.7 Images and understandings of what was happening in Europe travelled around the world, thus complicating domestic policies that sought to exclude residents from the benefits of national membership on the basis of race. This obviously affected nations like Canada and Australia which presided over long-term, well-entrenched discriminatory policies.

While the U.N. was developing broad interpretive ideals, Canada and Australia’s profiles as leading liberal nations connected to the new international body created domestic and international perceptions of inconsistencies on account of their own racial policies.8 Canada’s Minister for Justice, Louis St Laurent, foresaw the pressure that would be placed on Canada to afford full rights to its Asian residents by the international community, and used this to argue for the deportations of Canadian Nikkei until the eve of the policy’s abandonment around the beginning of 1947.9 Doc Evatt, one of the U.N.’s founding fathers and a strenuous defender of Australia’s racialism, curiously claimed that the “principle of White Australia…[was] fully recognised by the

United Nations as absolutely necessary.”10 The tension evident in these positions was clear, and although both nations continued to defend their sovereign right to define their own migration and domestic affairs, international developments encouraged a reappraisal of the conceptions of citizenship that allowed such discriminatory action.

7 Franz Cede and Lilly Sucharipa-Behrmann, The United Nations: Law and Practice (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2001), 6. 8 The Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians cited the United Nations and Atlantic Charters in its prominent public campaigns, and Australia’s Attorney General, Doc Evatt, was central to the early operation of the United Nations. See C.C.J.C. pamphlet, “From Citizens…To Refugees: It’s Happening Here!” (1945) Library and Archives Canada, MG28, VI; Ken Buckley, Barbara Dale and Wayne Reynolds, Doc Evatt: Patriot, Internationalist, Fighter and Scholar (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1994), 302-18. 9 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 161, 207 10 Evatt quoted in Buckley, Dale and Reynolds, Doc Evatt, 223. 244

On the domestic front, populations and policy makers began to look abroad as these ideas permeated national discourses. The previous chapter illustrated how, in Canada, parallels between the domestic treatment of Nikkei and European Fascism were mobilised by civil libertarians to resist deportations. This argument demanded an expansion of the concept of civic nationalism able to encompass at least some of the previously racially “undesirable” subjects and citizens of Canada, creating a link between the war, the exclusion of Nikkei, and the coming Citizenship reform movement. Across the Pacific in Australia, the notion of an acceptable immigrant – long the basis for access to Australian “citizenry” – was also in flux, even if it was not so directly prompted by Australia’s discrimination against the Nikkei. This discourse was driven by a realisation that the post-war migration boom for which Australia was planning required a reconceptualisation its pre-war notions of citizenship, as Australia tentatively looked beyond Britain to “white aliens.” Evatt’s statement indicates that there was still strong support for the idea of a white Australia, but the concept of who was “white” and acceptable in Australia was shifting. It was against this background

Calwell raised the idea of creating Australian Citizenship in Cabinet in February 1945, about two months before Canada’s new Secretary of State, Paul Martin, assumed his new portfolio armed with a desire to drive Canadian Citizenship reform.11

Nationality, Britishness and the Canadian break

The post-war citizenship discourses sparked within formal circles by Calwell and

Martin were not entirely new concerns. The inherent complications and confusions

11 National Archives of Australia, “Citizenship in Australia: A Guide to Commonwealth Records,” Chapter 2; Paul Martin, “Citizenship and the People’s World,” in Belonging: the meaning and future of Citizenship, ed. William Kaplan, 64-78 (Toronto: McGill-Queens University Press, 1993). 245

caused by defining Canadian and Australian nationality through British subjecthood had been the subject of periodic discussions for decades. Britain was increasingly viewed as a distant foreign power, and subjecthood of Britain was a designation shared with many non-white subjects from Dominions around the globe. In 1903, Australia’s Postmaster

General stated that “[t]he particular rights and privileges of British subjects as against aliens is a matter that is not very clear in any British country.”12 In 1910 and 1921

Canada identified “Canadian Citizens” and “Canadian Nationals” in legislation before a legal definition of either independent category was outlined.13 In 1931, the Canadian

Secretary of State proposed the creation of Canadian Citizenship along similar lines to the 1946 Act, but his draft Bill never progressed through parliament.14 And in 1935,

Australian Attorney-General Bob Menzies, in brushing away concerns about “the exact legal status of his Government,” noted the incoherence of British Australia.15 Both nations had identified inconsistencies, but not the desire or support to structurally resolve them before the war.

Debates in the Dominions about British subjecthood were also of concern to

Britain, as any alteration in the definition of Dominion nationality or citizenship had the power to alter the composition of the Commonwealth. In the pre-war years, Britain had played an active role in resolving inconsistencies that were periodically raised by the absence of a clear definition of citizenship in the Dominions. They had allowed steady progress towards independence while retaining increasingly tenuous links to the

Commonwealth. For example, concerns about sovereignty raised at the 1926 and 1930

Imperial Conferences led to reforms which made Governors-General more accountable

12 Quoted in John Chesterman, “Natural Born Subjects? Race and British Subjecthood in Australia,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 51 (2005), 32. 13 J. Donald Galloway, “The Dilemmas of Canadian Citizenship Law,” Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 13 (1998-1999): 212. 14 Ibid., 213. 15 Menzies from a 1935 parliamentary debate, quoted in John Warhurst, “Nationalism and republicanism in Australia: The evolution of institutions, citizenship and symbols,” Australian Journal of Political Science 28(4) (2003): 105. 246

to their own national parliaments rather than to Great Britain.16 In 1937 more substantive reforms were foreshadowed after the Nationality Committee of the

Commonwealth Conference found that British subjecthood, as it was then understood, was causing “practical difficulties…with regards to such matters as immigration, deportation, diplomatic action, extraterritorial legislation, and treaty rights and obligations.”17 Unsurprisingly, these concerns lost their urgency as conflict intensified in Europe, and open moves towards reform were not made until the war’s end.

In October 1945, Paul Martin introduced his draft Citizenship Bill into Canadian

Parliament for discussion, and Britain swiftly re-engaged in the process.18 In November,

Britain called a meeting of all Dominion governments to discuss the implications of any reforms, scheduled for early 1946.19 The timing of Britain’s intervention suggests that it did not initiate reform, rather it reacted to Canada’s unilateral action in at least two definite moments. First, its re-engagement in discussions occurred in the immediate wake of Canada’s parliamentary debates; and second, it organised a Commonwealth conference to overhaul the form of British subjecthood one month after the enactment of Canadian Citizenship.20 Canada’s initiation of the process of Commonwealth

Citizenship reform is confirmed in the minutes of the 1947 Commonwealth Conference.

16 Ibid., 109. 17 Imperial Conference (1937), Summary of Proceedings, 23, quoted in George T. Tamaki, “The Canadian Citizenship Act, 1946,” The University of Toronto Law Journal 7 (1947): 71. 18 Paul Martin, “Citizenship and the People’s World,” in Belonging: The meaning and future of Canadian citizenship, ed. William Kaplan (Ottawa: McGill-Queens University Press, 1993), 64-78. 19 Calwell had proposed the introduction of independent citizenship to the Australian Cabinet in 1945, and Canada had bills pertaining to citizenship before parliament in October of that year. National Archives of Australia, “Citizenship in Australia: A Guide to Commonwealth Records,” Chapter 2. See also David V.J. Bell, The Roots of Disunity: A Study of Canadian Political Culture (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992), 62-91; Ann-Mari Jordens, “Promoting Australian Citizenship 1949-71,” Administration, Compliance and Governability Program Working Paper No. 22 (Australian National University, 1994). 20 Randall A. Hansen, “The Politics of Citizenship in 1940s Britain,” 20th Century British History 10 (1999), 77. 247

These documents indicate that Britain’s response was not only prompted by Canada, but its own reforms were guided by the structure of the Canadian Citizenship Act.21

In its opening passage, the report of the British Commonwealth Conference on

Nationality and Citizenship acknowledged that its brief was to examine a new formulation of Commonwealth relations. This was necessary on account of the fact that

“the common code system was becoming unworkable” and Canada had found it necessary “to lay down the conditions for the acquisition and loss of Canadian citizenship.”22 A record of proceedings indicates the scheme for future legislation was drafted with reference to the Canadian Act, and that upon reaching an agreeable format, the conference Chairman, Sir Alexander Maxwell, asked the delegates to compare it to the Canadian Act to see if they “wished to draw attention to any divergencies which had not already been brought to light in discussion [sic].”23

The importance of Canada’s action for Commonwealth reform is not a new discovery, and has been examined elsewhere by Creighton and Brown.24 However,

Creighton and Brown have not emphasized that the Nikkei struggle to demonstrate their place in the nation was itself a vital link in the chain in a wider Citizenship reimagination in Canada.25 Following this logic, the wartime history of Canadian Nikkei had an importance not just to the lives of those affected by discriminatory policies,

21 Creighton argued in 1976 that Canadian action “virtually forced Great Britain and the other Dominions to accept the new Canadian principles.” Donald Creighton, The Forked Road: Canada: 1939-1957 (Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1976), 129; See also Robert Craig Brown, “Full Partnership in the Fortunes and Future of the Nation,” in Ethnicity and Citizenship: The Canadian Case, eds. Jean Laponce and William Safran, 9-25 (London: Frank Cass and Co., 1996). 22 British Commonwealth Conference on Nationality and Citizenship, “Report” (February 26, 1947), National Archives of Australia, A467, SF40/1, 2. It further claimed that “[a]s a result of the enactment of this statute, it was arranged that discussions should be held to decide whether the system thus adopted by Canada should be followed generally throughout the Commonwealth.” 23 Minutes of the Seventh Meeting of the British Commonwealth Conference on Nationality and Citizenship, National Archives of Australia, A467, SF40/1, 37. 24 Creighton, The Forked Road, 129; Brown, “Full Partnership in the Fortunes and Future of the Nation,” 9-25. 25 Roy has demonstrated the centrality of the defence of Nikkei to civil rights and citizenship movements in Canada. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 197-99. 248

deportation and the subsequent normalisations, but also to Australia and the other

Commonwealth countries who reinvented citizenship after World War II.

The Citizenship legislation

The Canadian Citizenship Act 1946, and Australia’s Nationality and Citizenship Act

1948 were historic announcements of national maturity and development. They were both complex pieces of legislation which reflected historical and cultural connections to

Britain. Yet they also, to varying degrees, outlined more expansive principles of citizenship less bound to racial ideas. These Acts did not represent overnight post-racial reimaginations of each national community, but they began to influence and interact with more progressive notions of citizenship emerging in the post-war years.

The Canadian Citizenship Act extended the scope of citizenship and outlined the subjects to whom this category would apply. It defined natural-born and naturalised citizens in commonly accepted post-war terms.26 Naturalisation was open to British subjects, and those domiciled in Canada in a way that began to normalise the idea that

Asian residents could be, and were in fact, Canadian Citizens.27 The new Act confirmed, in Federal legislation, that the majority of Canadian Nikkei (including a majority of the deportees), along with domiciled East Indians and naturalised Chinese, were formally Canadian Citizens. They also offered the possibility of Citizenship to external non-Europeans including Indians and those from Hong Kong, who were of course British subjects, although in reality, immigration restrictions would continue to exclude most non-Europeans from physical entry into the country until the reforms of

26 The Canadian Citizenship Act, R.S.C., (1946) (Can.), Parts I and II. 27 Ibid., Part II, section 10. 249

the 1960s.28 Towards the end of the text, after stating how Citizenship could be attained and lost, the Act stated that “[a] Canadian is a British subject.” According to Paul

Martin, this was an undesirable addition that was required in order to gain enough support for the passage of the Bill, but it essentially created the new concept of

Commonwealth membership, whereby a Citizen of a Commonwealth country became a

British subject by virtue of that primary Citizenship.29

The Canadian Act contains one Part which was not replicated in the subsequent

British Nationality Act or the Australian Nationality and Citizenship Act. Part V, deals with the “Status of Aliens,” and its inclusion in the Canadian Act but not the others suggests domestic rather than international concerns, as Canada prepared for a more demographically diverse future. The Part included important anti-discrimination measures in defence of territorially present foreigners, and can be read as almost a direct response to the wartime experience of Nikkei.

The first provision in this section states that

Real and personal property of every description may be taken, acquired and disposed of by an alien in the same manner and in all respects as by a natural- born Canadian citizen; and title to real and personal property of every description may be derived through, from, or in succession to an alien in the same manner in all respects as through, from, or in succession to a natural-born Canadian citizen.30

Section (2)(a) sought to “qualify an alien for any office or for any municipal, parliamentary, or other franchise”; and (2)(b) qualified aliens to be the owner of

Canadian ships. The next section declared that “[a]n alien shall be triable at law in the

28 Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 314. 29 Martin, “Citizenship and the People’s World.” 30 The Canadian Citizenship Act, R.S.C., (1946) (Can.), Part V, section 29(1). 250

same manner as if he were a natural-born Canadian citizen.”31 In light of the political situation unfolding at that very moment in Canada, it is not a great stretch to imagine that the drafters considered the seizure of Nikkei boats, the forced sale of Nikkei property, the long practiced political and social exclusions of Asian residents, and their difficulties in gaining judicial review when constructing these provisions.

In January 1947 the Canadian Citizenship Act came into force and with its enactment, Canada altered the structure of Commonwealth relations. Its citizens became

Canadians first and Britons second. This rejection of the central legal category of belonging universally applied throughout the Dominions necessitated a British response which occurred in the form of the conference noted above. The conference findings formed the basis for the British Nationality Act 1948, which was explained in a white paper as

giving a clear recognition to the separate identity of particular countries of the Commonwealth…[and enabling] each country to make alterations in its nationality laws without having first, as under the common code system, to consult the other countries of the Commonwealth.32

In essence, the self-governing dominions were given a green light to define their nationality and citizenship independently, while also retaining links to Great Britain and the wider Commonwealth. This position was gratefully accepted in Australia.

Calwell had first raised the idea of Citizenship reform in Cabinet in February

1945, some months before Martin had started working towards the passage of the

Canadian Act, but Australia had since fallen behind the Canadian lead. While Canadian

Citizenship discourse was reinforced by a public enthusiasm, and driven by wartime mobilisation of defenders of civil rights, a 1947 Gallup poll found that 65 percent of

31 Ibid., Part V, section 30. 32 British White Paper quoted in Robert R. Wilson and Robert E. Clute, “Commonwealth Citizenship and Common Status,” American Journal of International Law 57 (1963), 567-68. 251

Australians preferred the retention of a British nationality over the creation of a separate

Australian identity.33 The enthusiasm gap between the Canadian and Australian processes is well illustrated by the way that each Act was framed by national leaders upon their respective passages. In Canada, Martin presented his state’s bill as a mark of national progress, stating that

For the national unity of Canada, and for the future and greatness of this country, it is felt to be of the utmost importance that all of us, new Canadians or old, have a consciousness of a common purpose and common interest as Canadians; that all of us are able to say with pride and with meaning: ‘I am a Canadian Citizen!’34

In Australia, Arthur Calwell’s speech went to great lengths to assure his audience that the new conception of citizenship was “not designed to make an Australian any less a

British subject,” because “to say that one is Australian is of course, to indicate beyond all doubt that one is British”.35

Australia’s more conservative approach is reflected in the text of its Citizenship

Act. From its full title – An Act relating to British Nationality and Australian

Citizenship [my emphasis] – onwards, the Australian Act gave greater emphasis to its history and connections to Britain than new definitions.36 The historic approach of defining the Australian political community by exclusion remained evident from the first substantive provision which announced that an alien is “a person who is not a

British subject, an Irish citizen or a protected person”, from which a definition of a

Citizen was implied.37 The Act then immediately confirmed that “[a]n Australian

33 Quoted in Neville Meaney, “Britishness and Australia: Some reflections,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 31(2) (2003): 129. 34 Canada, Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 20th Parliament, 2nd Session, Vol. I, April 2, 1946 (Paul J. Martin, Secretary of State), 502. 35 Quoted in Helen Irving, “Citizenship and Subject-Hood in Twentieth Century Australia,” in From Subjects to Citizens: A Hundred Years of Citizenship in Australia and Canada, ed. Pierre Boyer, Linda Cardinal and David Headon (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2000), 12. 36 The short title is Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948. 37 Ibid., section 5(1). 252

citizen…shall, by virtue of that citizenship, be a British subject”, placing this provision in a much more prominent place than the Canadian Act.

In turning to the issue of how Citizenship was attained (and lost), the Australian

Act broadly followed Canadian practice but it also noted racial restrictions in a way that

Canada did not. Birthright Citizenship was granted to those born in Australia, or born overseas to an Australian father (or mother “in the case of a person born out of wedlock”). Citizenship by “registration” was available to British subjects who had lived in Australia for five of the prior eight years, were of good character, had a good grasp of

English (or 20 years residence) and an “adequate knowledge” of the “responsibilities and privileges” of citizenship. Citizenship by “naturalization” was open to aliens who were required to make a pre-application after one year’s residence, then make an application between two and seven years after this.38 The Act also continued to restrict

“prohibited immigrant[s]” and those in receipt of a “certificate of exemption” from the dictation test from attaining Citizenship except by Ministerial discretion.39 In addition, section 40 stated that “[t]he Minister may grant or refuse an application made to him without assigning any reason.”40 This did not open Australian Citizenship to non-

Europeans in the way that the Canadian Act did, but it did clarify the bounds of formal citizenship and Australia’s discriminatory powers in its inaugural Citizenship Act in a way that would increasingly be questioned and challenged.

A final divergence between the Australian and Canadian Acts was their treatment of the status of aliens. This formed perhaps the most telling and progressive part of the Canadian Act, but a similar acknowledgement and examination of aliens was

38 Ibid., sections 10, 12 and 14. 39 Ibid., section 25(6). 40 Ibid., section 40. 253

absent in Australia.41 The Canadian Act clearly enunciated a series of positive rights that would be held by aliens in the country, including the right to hold property, engage in the political process, and access the legal system.42 The only mention of aliens in the

Australian Act is definitional – they were not British, Irish or protected persons. This absence was a reflection of the demographic reality of an almost monocultural Australia at the war’s end, and its lack of a mainstream critical discourse about the position of aliens in the nation, compared to the relatively multi-ethnic Canada.43 But alongside its formal reticence to extend rights to non-Europeans, the Act offered defences to normative foreigners, as indicated by Annie O’Keefe’s complicated but successful defence of her rights as an Australian resident and citizen at the High Court. O’Keefe had argued that she had become an Australian under the powers of the Act because

she was a British subject immediately prior to the date of the commencement of the Act, had prior to that date been married to an Australian citizen, and had entered Australia prior to that date.44

The claims that Australia was making to “growing maturity” and an “inherently democratic nature” required it to make exceptions to it racial-nationalism which began the slow process of realigning citizenship.45

In spite of the textual differences acknowledged, the Canadian and Australian

Citizenship Acts were important developments, illustrative of the influence that wartime events and post-war national visions were having on each national community. Canada,

41 See Ann-Mari Jordens, “Alien Integration: The Development of Administrative Policy and Practice within the Australian Department of Immigration since 1945,” Administration, Compliance and Governability Program Working Paper No. 6 (Australian National University, 1992), 38. 42 Aliens could hold property in Canada before the war and ostensibly had access to the legal system for much of Canadian history, but these references can be read as a post war response to wartime action. 43 The 1947 Census found that Australia’s non-European population measured 0.25 percent, while about 90 percent of all Australians were of Anglo-Celtic background: James Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 9; Charles A. Price, “Ethnic Groups in Australia,” in The Challenge of Diversity: Policy Options for a Multicultural Australia, ed. James Jupp (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1989). 44 Quoted, and case discussed in Tavan, The long, slow death of white Australia, 55-57. 45 Ibid., 50. 254

buoyed by a wartime civil rights movement which engaged its citizenry, and aware of the historic nature of its independent action, passed an Act which extended its application of Citizenship and acknowledged many of its previously marginalised subjects, both Citizens and aliens. Australia, still coming to terms with its geographic position in Asia, and preparing for a post-war migration program with a lingering unease, passed a more conservative Act that nevertheless acknowledged a new independence, and clarified certain national bounds. Each Act served as the beginning of a new process of citizenship conceptualisation, offering relatively thin definitions of their respective national communities, while proclaiming an independence and maturity that would be built upon over the following decades.

New Citizenship and everyday life

For the vast majority of subjects in each nation, who as white Europeans satisfied both the pre- and post-war requirements of “citizenship,” the post-war reforms made little difference to their everyday lives as Canadians and Australians. However at the margins of each national community, where individuals had existed in a grey area as resident aliens and “denizens,” the Citizenship Acts altered lives and communities by extending conceptual bounds and encompassing previously undesirable subjects. The powers of the Acts intersected with national institutions, laws and politics in ways that clarified national boundaries, and exclusionary legislation was relaxed in ways that suggested that new understandings of national communities were being created. In the case of the

Nikkei who had for decades embodied alienage, and to varying extents survived attempts to remove them from each territory during the war, post-war understandings of 255

nationality and citizenship gradually allowed for the extension of rights denied them either during the war or beforehand.

As previously suggested, Canada encountered tensions between its pre-war nationalism, wartime actions and emergent understandings of citizenship before the formal passage of its new Act, on account of the arguments made by civil libertarians and Nikkei throughout the war. The plight of the Nikkei by the mid-1940s, on the eve of the deportations and citizenship creation, gave civil libertarians real examples of what was at stake, and found an increasingly sympathetic audience as the public encountered both issues in the press. At the end of 1946, when the Privy Council decided that

Canada had the power to effectively exile its Nikkei citizens to a foreign country just weeks before the Canadian Citizenship Act became law, civil libertarians and the liberal press immediately linked the two events. Andrew Brewin told the press that the government had claimed a “sweeping…extraordinary power” over its citizens, setting a precedent which endangered all Canadians, and the Vancouver Province editorialised that the decision rendered the Canadian Citizenship Act about to come into force “futile and meaningless.”46

Despite the legal support for the deportations that Canada had gained by late

1946, the politics surrounding Citizenship creation, themselves influenced by arguments presented in support of Nikkei, made continued discrimination along these lines untenable. Igartua has suggested that the response to Nikkei policy was at the first of three issues which began to identify the new bounds of post-war citizenship in

46 Brewin quoted in “Drop Jap-Canadian Restrictions – Brewin,” Toronto Star, December 2, 1946; Brewin drafted two press releases prior to the Privy Council’s announcement which framed his defence of Nikkei in terms of citizenship rights. He was to claim a win as a victory on behalf of “the civil rights of all Canadians,” while a loss would confirm the power of the government to “exile Canadian citizens.” See “Draft Press Statement Re Privy Council Decision: 1. If we win; 2. If we lose,” Cooperative Ctte on Japanese-Canadians: Appeal to the Privy Council, Library and Archives Canada, MG28, V1; Vancouver Province, December 3, 1946. 256

Canada.47 Within weeks of the Privy Council finding (and within days of the enactment of Citizenship), the Government announced that it was abandoning its deportation policy. On 10 January 1947 a Cabinet Committee recommended that those “Japanese who do not wish to be repatriated be not deported,” but that exclusion from British

Columbia and general movement restrictions should remain until “Japanese-Canadians” were “more settled in their new locations.”48 When the government announced this policy in late January, a response was again offered in terms of citizenship rights. The

Montreal Star interpreted the policy as a patronising reassertion of second class citizenship, telling Nikkei that they could be “Canadian to [their] heart’s content, but

[they] can’t be a Canadian in British Columbia”, while the Calgary Herald simply stated that “either the Japanese-Canadians are citizens, or they aren’t.”49 By April 1947, further restrictions were lifted for those living east of the Rockies, who were given the right to move between districts without special permission, but Ian Mackenzie and his supporters argued successfully for an extension of exclusions within B.C., claiming that any changes would harm the Liberal Party’s chances in looming by-elections.50 In spite of the ongoing and allegedly politically advantageous discrimination, the Cooperative

Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F.) – the party most supportive of Nikkei and the civil liberties movement – went on to win both seats, removing another justification for continued discrimination.51

After this time a series of legislative and popular actions historically opened the way for Nikkei to engage with Canadian national life. In 1947, the B.C. Special

Committee on Elections extended the franchise to Canadians with Indian and Chinese

47 Jose Igartua, The Other Quiet Revolution: National Identities in English Canada, 1945-71 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006) 36-8 48 “Cabinet Committee on Japanese Questions, Agenda and Minutes of Meetings 1945-1948” (January 10, 1947), RG27, vol. 3026. 49 Both dated January 27, 1947 and quoted in Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 210. 50 Ibid., 212-14. 51 Ibid. 257

heritage, and then in 1949 to Nikkei.52 The granting of these franchises also removed the raft of exclusionary legislation tied to their absence, like the ability to sit on municipal councils and school boards, and engage in various occupations.53 In 1948,

The International Woodworkers of America Union (I.W.A.) and the B.C. Federation of

Labour along with employers groups successfully challenged an attempt to exclude

Asian labourers from employment of Crown lands, allowing them re-entry into another profession from which they had been long excluded.54 In March 1949 the War Measures

Act expired, and movement restrictions on Nikkei were lifted. From 1949 small numbers of Nikkei fishermen rejoined the B.C. fishing industry with high levels of unionisation and the cooperation of union leaders.55 All of these developments illustrate that in the few years since the creation of Canadian citizenship, Nikkei had gone from a position where they were national pariahs subject to deportation legislation, to one where they were Canadian citizens accepted by some of their most strident opponents of the recent past. This is well reflected by an editorial run in the “anti-Japanese”

Vancouver Sun, which stated on 11 March 1949 that they had found Nikkei

willing and anxious to be Canadian, owing this country their first loyalty. We shall do well to accept their resolve at its face value and to remove all obstacles from their path to citizenship.56

Canadian Nikkei had successfully rid themselves of the “foreignness” that they were ascribed in the pre-war years, and had become normatively, and in most cases formally,

Canadians.

52 Ibid., 228, 239. 53 W.S. Tarnopolsky, “Discrimination and the Law in Canada,” University of New Brunswick Law Journal 41 (1992): 221-223. 54 Operator of the Boundary Sawmills at Midway quoted in Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 219. 55 Ibid., 223. 56 Vancouver Sun, March 11, 1949, quoted in Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 307. 258

Canadian ideology shifted remarkably in the post-war years, and Roy notes that

“[i]nclusion replaced exclusion as Canada’s policy towards its citizens and people of

Chinese and Japanese ancestry.”57 This was an evolution in the functioning of Canadian liberalism, as it came to terms with a group previously so racialised as to be considered incompatible with national membership. The liberalisation of notional citizenship had not weakened national borders – until the 1960s, Japanese immigration to Canada remained in the dozens per annum – but rather the Canadian Citizenship Act had created a mechanism by which internal “Japanese-Canadians” could satisfy certain criteria and become acceptable members of the national community.58 Given the history of “the

Japanese” in Canada, this development prominently proved that race was not an insurmountable barrier to becoming Canadian, and was a precedent for further post-war liberalisations.

Two years after the introduction of Canadian Citizenship, at about the same time that Canada was acknowledging its Nikkei community, enfranchising them and removing other civil discriminations from resident subjects, Australia’s Nationality and

Citizenship Act came into force on 26 January 1949. Not only did this trail the Canadian action, it also occurred about three years after Australia had deported the majority of its

Nikkei community in early 1946. Historical fears of Japan, compounded by Australia’s wartime experience, were not balanced by the sort of sizeable and politically eloquent

Nikkei community that existed in Canada. Given that there were only 335 Nikkei in the country in 1947, the opportunities to develop personal networks or use these to resist popular marginalisation were limited. Nevertheless, the reality of the ongoing presence of “undesirable” subjects at a time of formal citizenship definition challenged

Australia’s pre-war perceptions of citizenship.

57 Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship, 309. 58 Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 57; Mae Ngai, “Birthright Citizenship and the Alien Citizen,” Fordham Law Review 75(5) (2007): 2,521. 259

Publicly, the Australian Government remained vehemently opposed to Japan and anything associated with it throughout the 1940s and beyond. It did not rhetorically distinguish between Nikkei and foreign Japanese during the war (as illustrated by its internment policies) and nor was there a formal or normative acceptance that the small

Nikkei community were part of the Australian national community in the post-war period. In the absence of other possible perceptions, government attacks on Japan or

“the Japanese” were read as attacks on those Nikkei remaining in Australia.59 The ongoing presence of these people confused the wider Australian public when Arthur

Calwell made announcements like his 1947 claim that “[w]hile I remain Minister for

Immigration no Japanese will be permitted to enter this country”.60 The following year, in refusing applications from Japanese wives of Australian servicemen, he claimed that

“it would be the grossest act of public indecency to permit a Japanese of either sex to pollute Australian shores.”61 Such statements led a discourse unconducive to an extension of formal citizenship to Australia’s Nikkei. Harris found, in 1947 that

“Australia does not want Japanese,” on account of a white Australia policy that was

“uninfluenced by changing circumstance, and unprepared to examine facts and careful calculations.”62

The Australian Government, however, continued the practice of making pragmatic exceptions to its exclusions where necessary, and these led a slow process by which the presence of non-Europeans was acknowledged in new ways within the

59 General hostility encountered by Nikkei post war documented in Yuriko Nagata, Unwanted Aliens: Japanese Internment in Australia (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1996), 227-235; Regina Ganter, Julia Martinez and Gary Lee, Mixed Relations: Asian Aboriginal Contact in North Australia (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2006), 228-235. 60 Quoted in A.C. Palfreeman, The Administration of the White Australia Policy (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1967), 44. 61 Quoted in Neville Meaney, Towards a New Vision: Australia and Japan through 100 Years (NSW: Kangaroo Press, 1999), 107. 62 H.L. Harris, “Australians From Overseas” in A White Australia: Australia’s Population Problem, ed. (Sydney: Australasian Publishing, 1947), 136; Elkin, A.P. “Is White Australia Doomed?” in A White Australia: Australia’s Population Problem, ed. W.D. Borrie et al. (Sydney: Australasian Publishing, 1947). 260

Australian community. At the moment of the deportations, Calwell had defended those

Nikkei allowed to remain on account of their claims to citizenship.63 In 1947, Calwell permitted non-Europeans who had been resident in Australia for at least 15 years to remain in the country without applying for periodic extensions of their permits.64 The decision did not extend the legal rights and obligations of Australian Citizenship to non-

Europeans, but it recognised that a limited number of previously undesirable individuals were legally acceptable members of the national community.

The repressed discourse surrounding Australia’s racial policies noted in the previous chapter (which manifested itself when Australians gained rare glimpses of the human outcomes of policies from which they were often quarantined) was evident again in the post-war period. The cases of the Malay seamen, Gamboa and O’Keefe produced waves of public sympathy, and Tavan explains that these deportation controversies damaged Australia’s reputation and led to the Liberal Party’s promise to oversee a

“more humane and commonsense administration” of the white Australia policy.65

Ideological pressure for reform was coming from several directions by this time, with

Communists claiming that exclusion prevented international working class solidarity, and various churches seeing the discrimination as a denial of Christian principles.66 This resistance was a far cry from the civil liberties movement in wartime Canada, but its

63 Arthur Calwell to Attorney General (March 1946), Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1, National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72, 2. See Chapter 3 for a discussion of the lead up to the formation of the commissions. 64 Ann-Mari Jordens, Alien to Citizen: Settling migrants in Australia, 1945-75 (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1997), 210. This was perhaps an expression of his aborted attempt to acknowledge the resident status of those “Japanese” who had lived in Australia for 40 years in the days before the deportations of February 1946, and effectively gave resident status to all Nikkei in Australia who had not been deported. See CIB to Defence, “Memo” (February 18, 1946), Japanese internees (a) Release in Australia (b) Deportation – Part 1, National Archives of Australia, A437, 1946/6/72. 65 Tavan, The long, slow death of white Australia, 64-65. 66 See H.I. London, Non-White Immigration and the “White Australia” Policy (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1970), 78-80, 116-118; David Johanson, “Introduction” to Immigration: Control or Colour Bar the background to "White Australia" and a proposal for change (Parkville: Melbourne University Press, 1962); Keiko Tamura, “Home Away from Home: The Entry of Japanese War Brides into Australia,” in Relationships: Japan and Australia, 1870-1950, ed. Paul Jones and Vera Mackie, 240- 64 (Parkville: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 258. 261

existence was evidence of embryonic resistance to the white Australia. This undercurrent was reinforced by increasing ad hoc contact that Australians had with non-

Europeans beyond the war.

The Australian archives are filled with examples of post-war interactions which do not reflect the virtual silence of political discourse. It is true that these examples were few, and were perhaps too extraordinary to indicate significant political change. They did, however, begin to chip away at Australia’s “great white walls,” and slowly build a non-European population which became increasingly difficult to exclude from the developing citizenship. In 1951 – four years after Calwell ruled out the possibility of

“Japanese” entering Australia, and two years after the enactment of Australian

Citizenship – Cabinet decided to allow former Nikkei residents of Australia and short- term commercial visitors to enter the nation.67 Some long-term residents and Australian- born Nikkei who had been exiled in 1946, like Mr and Mrs Iwanaga, and others who found themselves out of the country when the war broke out, like Australian born Kenji

Hirodo, were quietly allowed re-entry after contacting authorities in Japan and

Australia.68 Officials again dealt with these cases as exceptions. There is no great discussion or examination of the cases in the Australian archives, and brief government documents merely acknowledge the individuals, note their technical British subject status, and admitted them into the country.69

At about the same time, Australian ex-servicemen who were either waiting for their Japanese wives to be allowed entry or living overseas with their families in Japan, began to lobby the government for a relaxation of its hardline approach to Japanese

67 Yuriko Nagata, “‘Certain Types of Aliens’: The Japanese in Australia, 1941-1952” in Relationships: Japan and Australia, ed. Jones and Mackie, 217-39. 68 Ibid., 233; External Affairs, “Memo” (November 16, 1951), National Archives of Australia, A446 1966/45427. 69 National Archives of Australia, “Admission of Japanese wives of Australian Servicemen: Part 1” A446 1966/45427. 262

exclusion.70 The traditional arguments about exclusion based on national defence or economic dangers carried less weight when applied to the wives and children of ex- servicemen. Some of the men contacted Britain seeking U.K. passports, and the media began to report on their cases.71 The Sunday Herald argued that “[t]he Federal

Government should not hesitate any longer to allow Australian servicemen to bring

Japanese wives back here,” the Daily Telegraph quoted the Rev. Dr. P. Ryan as calling the exclusions “quite unreasonable”, and the Melbourne Herald asked if Australians would approve of its government facilitating divorces.72 On 28 March 1952 Cabinet lifted the ban on Japanese War brides, and 376 women were able to join their families in

Australia over the next three years.73

A developing trade relationship saw Australia admit Japanese wool, wheat, barley, coal and mineral purchasers in limited numbers.74 From 1952, pearlers were allowed re-entry, as Australia sought to rebuild that industry.75 By 1956, Japanese were not treated differently from other non-Europeans for immigration purposes, and from

1957, non-Europeans with 15 years residence were allowed to naturalise.76 In both legal and normative senses, Australia still trailed Canada in its national acceptance of its

Nikkei community, but by the late 1950s Australia had accepted a limited presence of

Asian residents in the nation, removed overt anti-Japanese discrimination (within what was still an anti-Asian immigration policy), and created a legal mechanism for Japanese nationals to become naturalised Australians. Yarwood notes that in the 1960s there was

70 Dozens of letters from Robert Robinson, B.E. Drover and other servicemen pleading their case are contained in National Archives of Australia, A446 1966/45427. 71 Australia House, London to External Affairs (October 26, 1951), National Archives of Australia, A446 1966/45427. 72 The Daily Telegraph, December 4, 1951; The Sunday Herald, December 9, 1951; The Herald, November 29, 1951. 73 Immigration to the Australian Mission Tokyo (December 28, 1952), National Archives of Australia, A446 1966/45427; Meaney, Towards a New Vision, 107. 74 Nagata, “Certain Types of Aliens.” 75 Garter, Mixed Relations, 234; By 1955, 106 pearlers had been allowed into Australia. 76 Ibid., 235; Tetsuo Mizukami, The Soujourner Community: Japanese Migration and Residency in Australia (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2007), 69. 263

still “no strong feeling in favour of radical change,” but changing opinions were measured by Gallup polls. In 1954 one poll found that only 31 percent favoured the admittance of small numbers of non-Europeans, but by 1962 this had more than doubled to 64 percent.77

Alongside these gradual normalisations, there was also a small community of several hundred remarkable individuals who were able to remain in Australia beyond the war. Work done by Nagata and Oliver is particularly useful in examining this group and their experience of early post-Citizenship Australia.78 Their research indicates that on a personal level, individuals were often accepted within small communities, and by those with whom they interacted. In wider society they were often shunned, and in a political sense, they continued encounter discriminatory treatment.

Nagata’s interviews with ex-internees in both Australia and Japan reveal that while most interviewees encountered hostility, they also seemed to be able to live for long periods in single communities, indicating a certain stability and acceptance. Jimmy

Chi – an Australian born man with a Chinese father and Japanese mother – had his property in Broome stolen and destroyed while he was interned, and was received with hostility when he returned home after his release. He was refused a union ticket, and travelled to Perth where he lodged a successful complaint, and then returned to Broome where he worked and lived until his death in 1993.79 Masuko Murakami attempted to return to her birthplace in Darwin three times, before finally being allowed to resettle in

1956.80 She remained in Darwin until her death in 1988. The Takagaki family’s farm in

Mackay was looked after in their absence, and they were able to resume normal life

77 Polls cited in A.T. Yarwood, Attitudes to Non-European Immigration (North Melbourne: Cassell Australia, 1968), 129. 78 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 226-40; Pam Oliver, “Who Is One of Us? (Re)discovering the Inside-out of Australia's Japanese Immigrant Communities, 1901-1957,” Japanese Studies 22(3) (2002). 79 Nagata, Unwanted Aliens, 227. 80 Ibid., 228. 264

upon their release. Jack Takagaki said that his “neighbours were good to us. We didn’t lose anything.”81

These interviews indicate some level of stability, but the psychological impact of

Australia’s treatment of its Nikkei is clearly conveyed by others. Ruby Lum refused to talk about her wartime experiences, merely telling Nagata that “I was born and educated in Australia. I am an Australian”.82 Hannah Suzuki spoke of the “sad and futile war” and begged Nagata not to contact her brother Joe for fear of the hurt that this would cause him decades later.83 Joe Murakami said that Japanese-Australians tended to avoid discussion of their treatment as “a sort of conditioned reflex attributable to our experience in the early post-war era.”84

In both Canada and Australia, there remained a hostility to Japan beyond the war, as illustrated by the ongoing immigration restrictions, but internally, Nikkei residents previously perceived as “Japanese” were viewed in new ways. In Canada, the

Citizenship Act acknowledged that Nikkei were part of the Canadian community, and discriminatory legislation which had restricted their involvement in national life for decades was quickly repealed. The fact that the community still numbered over 20,000 in 1947, was supported by a coalition of civil liberties organisations, and had repeatedly responded by word and deed to charges of disloyalty, meant that the removal of the legislative barriers to inclusion quickly facilitated the integration of Nikkei into

Canadian life. In Australia, the Australian Citizenship Act extended the narrow understanding of pre-war citizenship, but also legislated for continued racial restrictions.

Australia’s 335 post-deportation Nikkei (and any other non-Europeans of 15 years residence) did not have the size or power to be able to publicly argue for their place in

81 Ibid., 232. 82 Ibid., 235. 83 Ibid. 84 Murakami quoted in ibid., 236. 265

the broader imagined community as Canadian Nikkei had, but they were no longer required to hold C.E.D.T.s. After the war, the government mounted defences of individuals on account of their “citizenship,” and over the post-Citizenship decade, discriminations were wound back to the point where by 1958, Japanese immigrants were allowed to enter the country, and the dictation test was abandoned.

Conclusion

In both Canada and Australia, the treatment of Nikkei immediately beyond the war remained assimilationist, but both countries made important moves towards the more liberal citizenships which developed over the following decades. The actions of each government were “de-racialising” rather than integrationary, and cannot really be interpreted as some sort of proto-multiculturalism. Nevertheless, against the histories of pre-war racial-nationalisms and wartime actions, notions of post-war citizenship (both formal and normative) that did not reject Nikkei were historic developments. Groups of individuals who had embodied a popular alienage for decades were accepted as parts of each national community, setting precedents which allowed for the development of more inclusive citizenries in the post-war era.

Canada’s post-war Citizenship Act was more progressive than Australia’s in both content and application. The wartime experiences of Canadian Nikkei were an important part of that country’s citizenship discourse, encouraging both an examination of the implications of Canada’s wartime racism on the development of the post-war nation, and the expansion of a civic concept of citizenship. The Canadian Citizenship movement actively sought independence from Britain, and in achieving this, its legislative expression expanded the scope of formal Citizenship in a way that 266

encompassed those who were not considered racially British. This included the majority of Canadian-born Nikkei, as well as other non-white British subjects, and aliens able to satisfy the civic requirements outlined in the Act.

Canada’s new, inclusive formal Citizenship was followed by liberalisations to other pieces of discriminatory legislation that appeared ideologically incoherent alongside the new conceptualisation of citizenship. The wartime civil liberties movement, and Nikkei themselves, continued to present their discriminatory treatment in terms of civil rights which encouraged a more broadly liberal imagination of the national community, in which Nikkei became Canadians. By 1949, most of the legislative discriminations that had been on Federal and Provincial books in Canada for decades, and had reached a crescendo during the war, had been repealed.

In comparison to the Canadian experience, Australia’s citizenship reform was more conservative by almost every possible measure. Australian reform was not driven by a broad-based movement, and in fact, polling indicated that Australians were largely uninterested in a new concept of Citizenship in 1947. In framing and content, the

Australian Act emphasised its pro-British nature, and the Act retained the historic exclusion of “prohibited immigrants” from the national community. The thin conception of Citizenship reflected a nation newly aware that its pre-war notion of Citizenship was inadequate for dealing with its post-war reality, but insecure about its more inclusive future. Nevertheless, Australia did extend historic acknowledgement to Nikkei and other non-Europeans after the passage of its Citizenship Act – non-Europeans of 15 years residence were exempt from C.E.D.T.s in 1947, and allowed to naturalise from 1957.

Post-war interactions illustrated that Australia was become increasingly engaged with non-European nations, as immigration liberalisations paralleled ideological developments. 267

Both Canada and Australia had only begun to reimagine their post-war nations in the late 1940s and 1950s. But in both instances the formal creation of Citizenship was a foundational act, and a step towards the independent construction of each nation.

Underlying agitation for citizenship reform can be traced to wartime politics, and the growing mismatch between racial discrimination and post-war liberal ideals of inclusion. In the post-war years, ideological developments were built upon by immigration reforms, and the white policies which had been central to Canadian and

Australian nationality throughout most of the 20th century were considered obsolete within a generation of the creation of Citizenship in each nation.85 These reforms to the post-war notions of citizenship built upon the struggle of marginalised groups like

Nikkei, who lived as Canadians and Australians in spite of each nation’s desire to exclude them, and were slowly extended the rights and privileges of citizenship in the post-war period.

85 Hawkins cites important developments in Canada as the 1962 Fairclough Regulations which removed most racial discrimination from the immigration policy, and the reforms of 1966/7 when a points system for prospective immigrants was introduced, at which point the white Canada policy could be considered concluded. In Australia, the dictation test was abolished in 1958, skilled migration was introduced in 1966, and all discrimination in immigration, residency and citizenship was removed in 1973 at the conclusion of the white Australia policy. Freda Hawkins, Critical Years in Immigration: Canada and Australia Compared (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989), 39, 94-108. 268

Conclusion

As citizens of a country fixated on the military experience of war, there have often been only limited places where the voices of civilians affected by war might be heard. We need to listen to these stories if only to remind ourselves that the reach of war extends far beyond the immediate battlefield and that the costs of war do not belong to the military and their families alone. —Christina Twomey1

In her 2007 examination of Australia’s “forgotten prisoners,” Twomey noted that the experiences of Australia’s interned civilians compare unromantically with the iconic histories and images of emaciated military Prisoners of War.2 Her book tells of the struggle to contextualise the role that civilians prisoners played, the treatment they received and how it affected their lives in an ongoing sense.3 One man, Ian Begley, spoke of his lack of recognition philosophically, noting that it was understandable “in the light of the experiences of the Diggers in Changi and the Burma Railway and the heroic work of Sir Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop.”4

Like Australian civilians interned overseas, both Canadian and Australian

Nikkei also count among the “almost forgotten” subjects within each nation’s history.

This thesis has demonstrated that while thousands of Nikkei were deported in the name of security when “the reach of war” extended beyond the battlefield, the process of

“almost forgetting” them began much earlier. The lack of formal recognition over a period of decades had denied Nikkei a place among either acknowledged citizenry, and meant that they lived as outsiders within each nation. The expansion of notional citizenship in the post-war years slowly normalised the situation of those who were not deported, but the traumatic effects of the longer term histories of exclusion lingered. In

1 Christina Twomey, Australia’s Forgotten Prisoners: Civilians Interned by the Japanese in World War Two (Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 18 2 Ibid., 1. 3 Ibid., 208. 4 Ibid. 269

Canada, the redress movement of the 1980s began to address this issue, as more

Canadians understood and came to terms with an important part of their recent history.

In Australia, despite the efforts of Nagata, Oliver and Jones, the role of Australian

Nikkei has not been similarly recognised. Perhaps the basis for the inability to come to terms with the historic marginalisation of Nikkei is the strength of long nurtured racial nationalisms that have echoed across time in Canada and Australia, and remain present in the periodic public panics about multiculturalisms.5

This thesis has used the contemporary ideas of Bosniak as an analytical tool to examine the importance of the liminal national positions that Nikkei occupied in

Australia and Canada through the first decades of the 20th century. It has concluded that the way that each pre-war nation imagined itself in relation to its Nikkei population was unsustainable, and the resolution of the incoherence presented by Nikkei was the beginning of post-war national restructurings. The mass post-war deportations tell us much about two nations in transition, and from different vantage points can be seen as the beginning of the end of the racial-national ideologies of the early 20th century, or an early liberalisation paving the way towards the increasingly diverse and inclusive futures of Canada and Australia.

I have followed the developing concepts of citizenship and nationalism in order to examine how they interacted with Nikkei and other non-Europeans around the 1940s.

Chapter 1 provided historical context, looking back at the pre-war development of racial-national ideas from the time of the arrival of substantial groups of non-Europeans to Canada and Australia in the mid-19th century, where it saw the ideological roots of wartime anti-Nikkei action. Chapters 2 to 4 examined attempts to resolve the incoherence of the presence of Nikkei in white Canada and Australia by more

5 See Scott Poynting and Barbara Perry, “Climates of Hate: Media and State Inspires Victimisations of Muslims in Canada and Australia since 9/11,” Current Issues in Criminal Justice vol 19 (2007-2008): 151-171; “Is Multiculturalism on the Right Track?”, Around the Globe, Vol 2, No 1, (2005): 24-30. 270

substantial exclusion. Chapter 5 looked at the reconstitution of formal citizenship beyond the war with its gradual extension of each national community’s bounds.

The notions of citizenship that developed in each pre-war nation were closely allied with Canada and Australia’s developing identities as white British states comprised of ex-European subjects. Associated legislation, regulation and judicial outcomes such as the Commonwealth Franchise Act and the Naturalization Act in

Australia (which excluded “natives of Australia, Asia, Africa, and the Islands of the

Pacific”), the Provincial Voters Act in British Columbia (which denied the vote, and through it, other civic engagement to “Chinamen, Japanese or Indians”) and cases like

Tomey Homma and Jiro Muramatsu’s (which confirmed that racial exclusions existed even where individuals had had their British subject status acknowledged) demonstrated the undesirability of non-European subjects within either pre-war nation.6 Despite these realities, many Nikkei were able to demonstrate normative citizenship credentials, and exist as “good citizens.”7 For example, Australian Nikkei like Muramatsu, Hirokichi

Nakamura and Kenji Hirodo present as well-integrated migrant and post-migrant

Australians with many normative claims to citizenship; Canadians like Tom Shoyama,

6 See Maryka Omatsu, Bittersweet Passage: Redress and the Japanese Canadian Experience (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1992), 58-60; Pam Oliver, “A Matter of Perspective: two Australian-Japanese families’ encounters with white Australia, 1888-1946” in Unexpected Encounters: Neglected histories behind the Australia-Japan relationship, ed. Michael Ackland and Pam Oliver, 113-134 (Vic: Monash University Press, 2007), 119-126. 7 Recent historiography has demonstrated that popular notions of an all encompassing yellow peril do not sufficiently account for the complexity of the pre-war experiences of Nikkei. See for example Regina Ganter, Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia (Crawley W.A.: University of Western Australia Press, 2006); Pam Oliver, Raids on Australia: 1942 and Japan’s Plans for Australia (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010), 23-184; Pam Oliver, “Citizens without certificates or enemy aliens? Japanese residents before 1947,” in Under Suspicion: Citizenship and Internment in Australia during the Second World War, ed. Joan Beaumont, Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien and Mathew Trinca, 125-41 (Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2008); Noreen Jones, Number 2 Home: A Story of Japanese Pioneers in Australia (Freemantle: Freemantle Arts Centre Press, 2002); Sean Brawley, “‘They came, they saw, they conquered’: The Takaishi/Saito tour of 1926/27 and Australian perceptions of Japan,” Sporting Traditions 26(2) (2009); Louis Fiset and Gail M. Nomura, eds., Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005); Patricia E. Roy, The Triumph of Citizenship: the Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2007). 271

Tomey Homma and Ryuichi Yoshida led similarly complex existences.8 These sorts of individuals were the “outsiders” who, in living, working and behaving as citizens, challenged the political systems which excluded them from national membership on the basis of race. Notwithstanding the challenges they presented, recognition as full formal citizens was not granted in the pre-war period. The experiences of Nikkei at the borderline of the ideas of universalism and particularism left them in complicated positions when the war in the Pacific broke in 1941. In the absence of formal acknowledgement as Canadians or Australians, they retained an untenable perception (if not formal status) of alienage, allied with an enemy nation, suggesting that more complete inclusion or exclusion was required.

During the war, Canada and Australia attempted to address the inconsistency of the presence of Nikkei as outsiders within by attempting to place them beyond national bounds. Both Canada and Australia centralised power in their executive governments, and applied their new powers in ways which reinforced, then extended notions of alienage applied to Nikkei. Each nation regulated for the registration, internment, displacement, dispossession and deportation of various Nikkei in aggressive extensions of pre-war restrictions. Resolving the ideological incoherence through mass deportations proved impossible, however, and in attempting to extend racial exclusion, the insufficient concepts of liberal citizenship were highlighted. As emergency legislation was rescinded, more inclusive notions of citizenship were required to fill the void.

8 See Pam Oliver, “A Matter of Perspective: two Australian-Japanese families’ encounters with white Australia, 1888-1946” in Unexpected Encounters: Neglected histories behind the Australia-Japan relationship, ed. Michael Ackland and Pam Oliver, 113-134 (Vic: Monash University Press, 2007), 119- 126; Oliver, Raids on Australia: 1942 and Japan’s Plans for Australia (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010), 162-83; Takata, Nikkei Legacy, 21-23; Maryka Omatsu, Bittersweet Passage: Redress and the Japanese Canadian Experience (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1992), 42-43; Sunahara, The Politics of Racism, 5. 272

Part of the reason for the uncovering of these tensions was the reassertion of the judicial voices in each state, which quietly emphasised the problems with the legislative overreach in the lead-up to the deportations. The opinions of the Canadian Supreme

Court and Privy Council, as well as the habeas corpus order in the case of Katsumata, illustrated that each nation’s judiciary held more substantive ideas of citizens rights than executive governments. These opinions, although not definitive legal orders, problematised the idea that Nikkei were an inherently alien presence in each nation, and suggested that each government pay more heed to established notions of citizens rights.

Such decisions suggested normative and legal problems with the looming deportations, requiring concessions in ways that began to acknowledge the claims to citizenship held by Nikkei.

The tensions uncovered were addressed in a more timely fashion in Canada than

Australia thanks to the engagement of the wider public. Canada was a more demographically diverse nation than Australia in the 1940s, and arguments about the dangers of minority discriminations fell on more fertile ground. Canadian Nikkei had been able to progressively build a public coalition of supporters throughout the war, on account of their social presence and support of civil liberties organisations. Australian

Nikkei had a less prominent pre-war position in Australian society, were universally interned, and governed by strict censorship regulations. The mobilisation of public support in Canada presents as a major difference between the two situations, and was an important factor in the developments throughout 1946 and early 1947 which led to the abandonment of the Canadian deportation policy. The absence of a similar movement in

Australia meant that a popular defence could not be mobilised, and the majority of

Australia’s pre-war Nikkei community were deported in 1946. It is notable, however, 273

that on the rare occasions that non-Europeans presented their discriminatory treatment to the wider Australian public, an inarticulate unease was evident.

These wartime events, which drew upon racial-nationalist ideas developed in the previous decades, could not provide structural resolutions to the incoherent notions of citizenship that they highlighted, and suggested the need for further action beyond the war. The passage of the Canadian Citizenship Act 1946, and Australia’s Citizenship Act

1948, and the British Nationality Act 1948 were reflections of these inadequacies. This is not to say that the history of Nikkei in the mid 1940s was the spark for Citizenship creation, but rather that the politics and formal structures at the time indicate the developments in each nation that facilitated future evolutions. Chapter 5 illustrated the fact that the plight of the Nikkei in Canada was a factor in the Citizenship discourse, and that Canada’s creation of Citizenship required Australia and the rest of the

Commonwealth to create similar organs. These Acts encouraged a process of citizenship reimagination through their gradual extension of accompanied social and political rights. In 1947, the majority of Canadian Nikkei were formally and prominently acknowledged as Citizens, and most of Australia’s post-war Nikkei community were given permanent residents status.

The reformulation of Canadian and Australian Citizenship beyond the war did not herald an overnight reimagination of post-racial nations, as each remained overwhelmingly populated by white ex-Europeans. But by realigning their national bounds in a way that accepted some of the previously most undesirable subjects, both

Canada and Australia signalled their intention to develop progressively more inclusive notions of citizenship in the post-war period. This was reinforced by increasingly liberal immigration policies, which extended the logic of the post-war liberal nationalisms.

Australia admitted Balts, then Europeans from more diverse sources, as well as 274

increasing numbers of non-Europeans throughout the post-war decades.9 In 1957 it allowed non-Europeans with 15 years residency to become Australian Citizens, and in

1958 the Immigration Restriction Act was replaced by the Migration Act, indicating

Australia’s acknowledgement of its changing reality.10 The final vestiges of the White

Australia policy, in force from the late 19th century, were removed throughout the

1960s and early 1970s, at which time Prime Minister Gough Whitlam declared it time for Australia to “turn a decent face to the world.”11 In Canada, as early as 1950, the report of the Massey-Lévesque Commission argued that ethnocultural diversity was an essential ingredient of Canadian identity.12 In 1962, Immigration Regulations introduced into parliament by Ellen Fairclough removed most racial discrimination from

Canada’s immigration policies. These Regulations proclaimed the end of the white

Canada policy, with their statement that

any suitably qualified person from any part of the world could be considered for immigration to Canada, without regard to his race, colour, national origin, or the country from which he comes.13

9 Australia’s immigration program underwent an historic diversification as it accepted hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Baltic states as part of the Displaced Persons resettlement scheme, and concluded bilateral immigration agreements with West Germany, Malta, Holland, Italy, Greece and Austria by the end of 1952. See Michael J. Proudfoot, European Refugees: 1939-52, A Study in Forced Population Movement, (London: Faber and Faber, 1957) 426; Frank Meissner, “Australia’s Postwar Immigrants,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 19, No. 2, 169-177 (1960), 173-74 10 Freda Hawkins, Critical Years in Immigration, 1989, 33; Department of Immigration and Citizenship, National Communications Branch, Abolition of the White Australia Policy, Fact Sheet no. 8 (2007), http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/08abolition.htm, 04.09.07 11 Department of Immigration and Citizenship, National Communications Branch, Abolition of the White Australia Policy; Whitlam quoted in David Marr and Marian Wilkinson, Dark Victory, (NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2003), 35. 12 Canada, “Canadian Diversity: Respecting our Differences,” http://www.canadianheritage.gc.ca/progs/multi/respect_e.cfm, 04.09.07; Canada. Report: Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences 1949-51. (Ottawa, 1951), http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/massey/h5-400-e.html, 23.02.08 13 Discussions of the Regulations in David Corbett, “Canada’s Immigration Policy,” Canadian International Journal, vol. 18, no. 2 (1963): 166-80; William L. Marr, “Canadian Immigration Policies since 1962,” Canadian Public Policy, vol. 1, no. 2 (1975): 196-203 275

In 1971, Canada became the first state to adopt an official multiculturalism policy, two years before Australia followed.14 These developments built on discoveries that were progressively uncovered beyond the war. At the root of them all was the understanding that neither Canada or Australia were exclusively white British nations, an idea which presented itself at various times throughout each national history. This included during the war and post-war period, when Canada and Australia were required to accept the fact that each state was home to communities of the “Japanese” that they had been so strenuously trying to reject through the war.

It is easy to be shocked by Australia and Canada’s treatment of the small alien minorities that each allowed into their nations, then treated as second class citizens for decades, excluding, interning, dispossessing and deporting many. But as Curthoys suggests, when examining this history, it is also worthwhile considering the positive face of liberal ideologies that seek inclusion within their boundaries and have slowly extended this inclusion in practice.15 In response to their exclusion, Nikkei presented the injustice of their treatment to each national government and, in doing so, enunciated important national principles in both Canada and Australia. By passionately demonstrating their claims to national citizenship, Nikkei demonstrated the ultimate failure of each nation’s white policy, and the need to reimagine national bounds in a more inclusive way.

14 Citizenship and Immigration Canada, “Canadian Multiculturalism: An Inclusive Citizenship,” Accessed on 20 January 2011, http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/citizenship.asp; Jerzy Zubrzycki, “The Evolution of the Policy of Multiculturalism in Australia 1968-95,” 1995 Global Diversity Conference, http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/multicultural/confer/06/speech29a.htm.

15 Ann Curthoys “Liberalism and Exclusionism: A Prehistory of the White Australia Policy,” in Legacies of White Australia: Race, Culture and Nation, ed. Laksiri Jayasuriya, David Walker and Jan Gothard, (Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 2003), 31 276

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Relations. Canberra: Australian Government Printing Service, 1978.

Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Fact Sheet 8

– Abolition of the ‘White Australia’ Policy. Canberra: 2009.

Dominion of Canada. Parliamentary Debates.

Dominion of Canada. Report on the Re-Establishment of Japanese in Canada, 1944-

1946. Ottawa: Department of Labour, 1947.

Dominion of Canada. Canada Yearbook 1957-58. Ottawa: Dominion Bureau of

Statistics, 1958.

Dominion of Canada, “Canadian Diversity: Respecting our Differences,”

http://www.canadianheritage.gc.ca/progs/multi/respect_e.cfm, 04.09.07

Dominion of Canada. Report: Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts,

Letters, and Sciences 1949-51. (Ottawa, 1951),

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/massey/h5-400-e.html, 23.02.08

Dominion of Canada, “Canadian Multiculturalism: An Inclusive Citizenship,” Accessed

on 20 January 2011,

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/citizenship.asp; 312

Newspapers and Magazines

Advertiser.

Amalgamator.

Argus.

Army News.

Arrow Lakes News.

Burra Record.

Calgary Herald.

Camperdown Chronicle.

Canberra Times.

Citizen – Ottawa.

Colonist.

Courier Mail.

Edmonton Journal.

Fortnightly Review.

Globe and Mail.

Hamilton Spectator.

Kingston Whig-Standard.

London Free Press.

Maclean’s.

Melbourne Age.

Melbourne Herald.

Mercury.

Montreal Gazette. 313

Montreal Herald.

Montreal Standard.

Montreal Star.

New Canadian.

New W. British Canadian.

News-Herald.

Ottawa Evening Citizen.

Ottawa Evening Journal.

Ottawa Morning Citizen.

Ottawa Morning Journal.

Quebec Chronicle Telegraph.

Regina Leader Post.

Saskatoon Star Phoenix.

Strait Times.

Sunday Telegraph.

Sydney Daily Telegraph.

Sydney Morning Herald.

Toronto Daily Star.

Toronto Saturday Night.

Toronto Star.

Toronto Telegram.

Trail Daily Times.

Vancouver News-Herald.

Vancouver Province.

Vancouver Sun. 314

Victoria Times.

Western Mail.

Windsor Star.

Winnipeg Free Press.

Winnipeg Free Press/Winnipeg Tribune Special Combined Edition.

Winnipeg Tribune.

Theses

Ford, Lisa Margaret. “Picturing the Enemy: Race and Gender in World War II

Cartoons.” MA Thesis, University of Queensland, 2001.

Griffiths, Phillip Gavin. “The making of White Australia: Ruling class agendas, 1876-

1888.” PhD Thesis, Australian National University, 2006.

Marie, Gillian. “Attitudes Towards Chinese Immigrants to British Columbia, 1858-

1885.” MA Thesis, Simon Fraser University, 1976.

Nishiguchi, G. “Reducing the numbers: the transportation of the Canadian Japanese,

1941-1947.” MA Thesis., Carleton University, 1993.

Websites

Early Canadiana Online. Accessed December 11, 2007.

http://www.canadiana.org/view/9_08048/0002

Japanese American National Museum. Discover Nikkei. Accessed November 12, 2010.

http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/about/what-is-nikkei

Multicultural Canada. Accessed January 1, 2011. http://www.multiculturalcanada.ca/tnc

National Archives of Australia. Documenting a Democracy. Accessed January 18, 2008.

http://foundingdocs.gov.au/resources/transcripts/cth5i_doc_1902.pdf 315

National Library of Australia. Trove. Accessed March 1, 2011.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper