For anyone interested:
In 4 days, it'll be the 65th Anniversary of the signing of EO 9066, which enabled the Japanese-American internment. Though this topic is relatively obscure in mainstream education, I thought I'd share something even more obscure: the Canadian Government had their own camps that forcibly relocated and looted the belongings of over 20,000 naturalized or native-born citizens (and a few thousand resident aliens). Unlike the American camps (which still sucked), the Canadian camps did more separation by sex, so families were actually split up by males and female/children. Conditions got so bad that even the Japanese Red Cross and Japanese citizens (the then enemies) felt compelled to provide aid.
Anyway... just thought I'd share this historical footnote
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Canadian Internment Camps
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1 comment:
I definitely think this is something to be remembered, especially because the issue of internment (read: concentration) camps in North America is something that is often erased from the public and historical imagination. It is not taught in school textbooks, etc. It also worries me because the issue wasn't adequately addressed and there are no safeguards in place to prevent this from happening again, especially in the U.S., given the political climate on issues of immigration and "enemy combatants", who, according to the Patriot act, can be arrested by any law enforcement officer (The Act reads that any law enforcement officer "is granted full power of the Attorney General", if I remember correctly) and detained under any conditions, without right to trial, for an indefinite period of time, regardless of citizenship.
The fact that a framework that effectively facilitates these kinds of human rights abuses that are clearly targeted towards non-americans (not in terms of citizenship necessarily, as was the case with the Japanese internees) is an alarming trend, and it's unfortunate that the case of the Japanese internment camps has become so "obscure" that people are unable to use that historical memory in order to put today's issues in perspective.
I haven't read much that addresses the differences of Canadian and American internment camps, so I am wary about suggesting which ones were "worse" or better, though I do know that the U.S. camps had a larger number of internees and internee deaths, as well as rapes and sexual crimes again female internees. In additon, a lower proportion of internee compensation was awarded to ex-internees living in the US, and apparently the Federal Government was unable to distribute the reparations effectively until 1992 (?!), whereas the Canadian reparation plan was undertaken in 1988 without the need for reform later on. Also, I know the Canadian government, in addition to the reparations plan, reinstated Canadian citizenship for all internees that were forcibly deported, but I have not read anywhere that the U.S. did the same. Did they?
Again, I definitely don't have expertise on the issue, but it makes me uncomfortable to draw the line between the two systems of internment, as they are equally horrible and I also think there is a political incentive in pointing fingers. I actually learned about internment camps which at McGill, and then afterwards in an anthro course, so that's another reason that my info is limited and biased, exposing the extent to which Canada and the US may have manipulated historical accounts in order to depict them in a more favourable light than their counterpart.
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