“From Citizens to Refugees”: Japanese Canadians and the Search for Wartime Sanctuary

Abstract

AbstractBeginning in 1942, almost 22,000 Japanese Canadians were removed from their homes on the West Coast of British Columbia. While some citizens privately understood their situation as akin to other histories of displacement, they never discussed their situation publicly using the language of refugeehood or exile. By contrast, the Cooperative Committee on Japanese Canadians, which protested the federal government’s deportation of Japanese Canadians in 1946, cloaked the wartime experience of Japanese Canadians using these very terms. To understand these variations in approaches, this article focuses on the question of what is signified when the term refugee is used in public debates about citizenship and state responsibilities. It begins by framing the stakes of this question by highlighting the debate over the term refugee in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It then explores the experiences of journalist Muriel Kitagawa and her family as they sought refuge in Toronto and the activism of religious leaders who advocated on behalf of Japanese Canadian internees (with reference to a parallel history in the United States). The article concludes by considering the ways in which histories of internment have been memorialized in relation to other accounts of mass displacement. In doing so, the article advances the concept of “refugee distancing” as a way of understanding the reaction of citizens to the idea that they might become refugees. In the context of the Second World War, supporters’ use of the term refugee was a calculated political strategy meant to evoke the promises of citizenship, but it was also one that inadvertently highlighted the vulnerabilities at the core of racialized citizenship experiences, to the detriment of the very citizens the language was meant to assist.