Canadian Evacuation and Nisei Identity

Abstract

Tn 1978 JAPANESE-CANADIANS numbered nearly 50,000 or roughly 0.2 percent of Canada's population. Prior to 1942, 97 percent of Japanese in Canada were in British Columbia, but World War II changed this drastically. As a direct result of the forced evacuation which occurred during the war years, the Japanese community became dispersed throughout Canada. One such community is in Toronto, Ontario. Before 1941, there were no more than 300 Japanese in the entire province of Ontario.1 In 1951, the Japanese population of this province was 8,600 more than half of which lived within the city of Toronto.2 Twenty years later the Census returns showed that 11,600 Canadians of Japanese origin were living in Metropolitan Toronto.3 As postwar Japanese immigration to Canada has been very limited, most of this growth has been caused by natural increase and internal migration. The Canadian government's wartime resettlement policy, which discouraged persons of Japanese ancestry from living together in the same geographic areas, began important new demographic patterns. For example, the 1971 Census reveals that in Metropolitan Toronto the Japanese population was widely dispersed within the area,4 which contrasts with the prewar situation in British Columbia where more than three-quarters of the Japanese clustered within 75 miles of the city of Vancouver. The Nisei, the second generation Japanese, in particular, recalling the denial of integration and assimilation in prewar British Columbia, have pushed for both. Helped by the expansion of the Canadian economy and the decreased visibility of a dispersed Japanese population, third generation Japanase Canadians (Sansei) in Toronto, seem to be no longer insulated by their ethnic community. Their patterns of friendship, dating, and marriage, for instance, show no difference between them and those of the general population.5 The author found in interviews with the Nisei that among their children, the Sansei, the rate of inter-marriage was 86 percent. This rate is probably the highest among racially defined groups in North America. Nevertheless, Japanese-Canadians in Toronto as elsewhere have persisted as a strong cultural community. Against heavy odds, why and how