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Cartographies of Violence: Women, Memory, and the Subjects of the “Internment”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Mona Oikawa
Mona Oikawa
Affiliation:
Women's Studies Program, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg (Manitoba) R3T 2T2, [email protected]
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Abstract

In 1942, 22,000 people of Japanese origin were expelled from their homes in British Columbia and moved to numerous incarceration sites. The expulsion, incarceration, dispossession, displacements, and deportations of Japanese Canadians were accomplished through Canadian law. In this article, I examine some of the spaces of incarceration and displacement produced through the law and the systems of power mobilized through these carceral spaces. I argue that in mapping out the spaces of the Internment, we begin to see how the nation of Canada was made through racial exclusion and processes of violence. As the spaces of incarceration and displacement become visible, so too do the subjects of these laws and processes. Their accounts of the incarcerations and displacements reveal the long-term effects of the violence of the Internment.

Résumé

En 1942, 22 000 personnes d'origine japonaise furent expulsées de leur demeure, en Colombie-Britannique, vers de nombreux camps d'internement. L'expulsion, l'emprisonnement, la dépossession, l'éviction et la déportation de ces Canado-Japonais eurent lieu légalement. Cet article examine quelques-unes des zones d'incarcération et de transition créées conformément à ces lois et les mécanismes de pouvoir qu'elles activèrent. En retraçant la création de ces espaces d'enfermement, on constate le rôle de l'exclusion raciale et des actes de violence dans la constitution de la nation canadienne, et on découvre les conditions des personnes soumises aux lois et procédures évoquées. Leurs récits révèlent les conséquences à long terme de la violence des internements.

Type
Law, Race and Space/Droit, espaces et racialisation
Information
Canadian Journal of Law and Society / La Revue Canadienne Droit et Société , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , August 2000 , pp. 39 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association 2000

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References

* I would like to thank Sherene Razack for her comments on the draft. I also wish to express my appreciation to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions.

1 Oikawa, M., Cartographies of Violence: Women, Memory, and the Subject(s) of the “Internment” (D. Thesis, University of Toronto, 1999) at 300 Google Scholar [hereinafter Cartographies of Violence]. Pseudonyms are used for the women cited from interviews.

2 The term Internment is a composite metonym for the events of the 1940s. Informed by a community discourse, I use it in place of euphemisms such as “evacuation.” I acknowledge, however, that its use is a contested one.

3 I use the terms internment camp and prison camp interchangeably.

4 Adachi, K., The Enemy That Never Was (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1976)Google Scholar; Nakano, T.U. & Nakano, L., Within the Barbed Wire Fence: A Japanese Man's Account of His Internment in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Okazaki, R.K., The Nisei Mass Evacuation Group and P.O.W. Camp 101, Angler Ontario, trans. Okazaki, J.M. & Okazaki, C.T. (Toronto, 1996)Google Scholar; Shimizu, Y., The Exiles: An Archival History of the World War II Japanese Road Camps in British Columbia and Ontario (Wallaceburg, ON: Shimizu Consulting & Publishing, 1993)Google Scholar; and Sunahara, A.G., The Politics of Racism (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1981).Google Scholar

5 War Measures Act, [1914] c. 2, s. 4 [hereinafter War Measures Act].

6 Michel Foucault uses the term carceral to describe various spaces where people are punished, disciplined, and monitored. Foucault, M., Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan, A. (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1995) 299.Google Scholar Alonso, A.M. also uses this term in “The Politics of Space, Time and Substance: State Formation, Nationalism, and Ethnicity” (1994) 23 Annual Review of Anthropology 394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Cartographies of violence, supra note 1.

8 The interviews were conducted in different Canadian cities and transcribed from audiotape recordings. To protect the privacy of the women interviewed, I have agreed not to use their names or disclose where they currently live.

9 I use the term “national violence” rather than political violence to indicate how this violence was perpetrated to further nation-building. I also wish to emphasize the aspect of complicity through this term, as the violence of the Internment was enacted by politicians and the state, but also involved the participation of a nation of citizens.

10 Shields, R., Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity (London & New York: Routledge, 1991) at 18.Google Scholar

11 Soja, E., Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London & New York: Verso, 1989) at 7.Google Scholar

12 Ibid. at 11.

13 Foucault, supra note 6 at 141.

14 Soja, supra note 11 at 120.

15 Goldberg, D.T., Racist Culture (Oxford & Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993) at 188.Google Scholar

16 Ibid.

17 Kobayashi, A., “The Historical Context for Japanese Canadian Uprooting” in Müller-Wille, L., ed., Social Change and Space (Montreal: McGill University, 1990) at 70.Google Scholar

18 War Measures Act, supra note 5. For a description of the use of the War Measures Act, see Sunahara, A., “Legislative Roots of Injustice” in Miki, R. & McFarlane, S., eds., in Justice: Canada, Minorities, and Human Rights (Winnipeg: National Association of Japanese Canadians, 1996) at 7–22.Google Scholar

19 Adachi, supra note 4 at 209.

20 Ibid. at 216.

21 Ibid. at 232.

22 Ibid. at 200.

23 Watada, T., Bukkyo Tozen: A History of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism in Canada (Toronto: HpF Press & Toronto Buddhist Church, 1996) at 107.Google Scholar

24 Adachi, supra note 4 at 209.

25 “The Case for Redress Information” (Toronto: National Association of Japanese Canadians, n.d.) at 2.

26 Sunahara, supra note 4 at 28.

27 Ibid. at 218.

28 Ibid. at 233.

29 See, for example, art critic Hume's, Christopher review of Danson's, Andrew photographic exhibit “Face Kao: Portraits of Japanese Canadians Interned During World War II” [Toronto] Star (11 April 1996) at 66.Google Scholar Hume states “In 1941…Pearl Harbor had just been attacked and if you were a Canadian of Japanese descent, you suddenly found yourself in a prison camp.” While Hume does add that Japanese Canadians were “interned in isolated sites where they lived in hardship,” he does not specify where these sites were, not even mentioning British Columbia as a geographical location. In addition, Hume makes an error in stating, “4,000 Japanese Canadians [were] forced into exile.” The Danson photographic exhibit also warrants further analysis which cannot be attempted here.

30 I am often confronted by people who ask me various questions on different aspects of the Internment. Their questions usually follow their admissions that they know nothing or very little about the incarcerations. The reiterative appeal to facticity and “proving” the existence of these numerous carceral sites goes to the heart of the processes of forgetting. What was done to dematerialize these spaces? Who is held responsible for remembering them and proving their existence?

31 For an analysis of how the “respectability” of bourgeois subjects depends upon their discursive and material construction of pathologized spaces, see Razack, S., “Race, Space and Prostitution: The Making of the Bourgeois Subject” (1998) 10 C.J.W.L. 341.Google Scholar Razack also emphasizes that the assertion of dominance over the subjects in pathologized spaces is a violent process.

32 Numbers cited herein are from the National Archives of Canada [hereinafter NAC], Records of the British Columbia Security Commission [hereinafter BCSC], RG 36/27, vol. 42, file 2505, part 1, Canada, Report on the Administration of Japanese Affairs in Canada: 1942–1944 (Ottawa: Department of Labour, 1944) at 8 Google Scholar [hereinafter Japanese Affairs].

33 NAC, BCSC, RG 36/27, vol. 42, file 2505, part 1, Removal of Japanese from Protected Areas (Vancouver, 1942) at 2 [hereinafter Removal of Japanese].

34 Sunahara, supra note 4 at 66–70. Also Takeo Ujo Nakano's account of being incarcerated at the Angler POW camp, supra note 4; and Okazaki, supra note 4.

35 According to Sunahara, 296 Issei (first generation) men and 470 Nisei (second generation) men were interned in prisoner-of-war camps. Ibid. at 70.

36 Ibid. at 66.

37 Adachi, supra note 4 at 232.

38 Sunahara, supra note 4 at 59, 65–76.

39 Japanese Affairs, supra note 32 at 5.

40 Numbers are calculated from the 1941 census. Canada, Eighth Census of Canada 1941, vol. 3 (Canada: Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1946) at 164.Google Scholar

41 Adachi, supra note 4 at 246. Approximately 14,000 people were sent directly to other sites.

42 Sunahara, supra note 4 at 55.

43 Removal of Japanese, supra note 33 at 8.

44 Ibid. [emphasis added]. The notion of modern Western “civilization” is a critical discourse in the legitimization of the incarceration of Japanese Canadians. Similar to the representation used in the colonial project to represent the colonized as “uncivilized” and “backward,” white Canadian officials continually referred to the need to “Canadianize” Japanese Canadians. Spatially segregating Japanese Canadians created the pathologized spaces needed as “proof” of “degeneracy.” In this way, white Canadians created colonies to be conquered within the nation, separate and largely inaccessible spaces to which they could travel physically and through the imaginary in order to reconstitute their own entitlements to nationhood.

45 Yegenoglu's, M., Colonial Fantasies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) at 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar While arguing against a conflation of European colonial technologies outside of North America as identical to practices mobilized by white settlers in Canada, I would emphasize that the technologies of genocide used against Aboriginal peoples in Canada underpin the spatial structuring of the nation and its denotation of citizenship.

46 Ibid. at 96.

47 Cartographies of Violence, supra note 1 at 150.

48 Ibid.

49 Sunahara, supra note 4 at 57.

50 Removal of Japanese, supra note 33 at 8.

51 The Canadian-born “males” were listed as numbering 3,590 and the “women and children” as 2,994, NAC, RG 36/27, vol.1, file “Distribution of Japanese.” “Memorandum Covering Japanese Movement Pacific Coast” (18 July 1942).

52 For an analysis of the relationship between space and constructions of disability, see Kitchin, R., “‘Out of Place’, ‘Knowing One's Place’: Space, Power and the Exclusion of Disabled People” (1998) 13:3 Disability and Society 343–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Removal of Japanese, supra note 33 at 11.

54 For a description of Japanese Canadian women and domestic work, see Oikawa, M., “Driven to Scatter Far and Wide: The Forced Resettlement of Japanese Canadians to Southern Ontario, 1944–1949” (M.A. Thesis, University of Toronto 1986) at 54–58 Google Scholar [hereinafter “Forced Resettlement”]; and Cartographies of Violence, supra note 1 at 227–37.

55 Cartographies of Violence, supra note 1 at 212.

56 Ibid. at 213–14.

57 See, for example, R.H. Webb, Lieutenant-Colonel of National Defence, who in 1942 argued that using the abandoned buildings in Greenwood, Slocan, New Denver, Sandon, and Kaslo would be the “best and most economic” plan. He also argued that this method would “cut down the cost of feeding [Japanese Canadians] by what they produce themselves.” Ibid. at 105.

58 See Sunahara's conclusion that the proceeds from the confiscation and sale of people's property and possessions were used to pay for the incarcerations. Supra note 4 at 105. In addition, I would argue that the labour of Japanese Canadians was used both to support the war effort and to pay for the incarcerations.

59 Foucault states “forced labour is a form of incarceration,” supra note 6 at 115.

60 “Forced Resettlement”, supra note 54 at c. 2.

61 Sunahara, supra note 4 at 82.

62 The repatriation survey is described by Ann Sunahara as having two objectives: “to repatriate or deport as many Japanese Canadians as possible, and to disperse the rest across Canada.” Ibid. at 118. As Sunahara illustrates, the survey was fundamentally coercive and was conducted under conditions of duress. The term “repatriation” is also a misnomer as most of the incarcerated were Canadian citizens and had never lived in Japan.

63 Sunahara uses this term to describe the specific events of 1946 and the pressure exerted by the government to force people to leave the camps at that time. She is not alone in the use of this term to describe the process of leaving the camps.

64 Sunahara, supra note 4 at 143. Sunahara also describes the fight against deportation at ch. 7.

65 Ibid.

66 Adachi, supra note 4 at 317.

67 For discussions of the distantiated processes of expelling racialized peoples from the nation, see Goldberg, supra note 15 at 81, 98, 137.

68 Removal of Japanese, supra note 33 at 20.

69 Cartographies of Violence, supra note 1 at 168.

70 Ibid. at 169–70.

71 The first three commissioners of the BCSC were industrialist Austin C. Taylor; John Shirras, the assistant commissioner of the B.C. Provincial Police, and RCMP Asst. Comnr. Frederick J. Mead. Sunahara, supra note 4 at 53. The BCSC was established through Order-in-Council P.C. 1665 of 4 March 1942 under the authority of the Federal Minister of Labour, Humphrey Mitchell and the supervision of the Deputy Minister, A.J. MacNamara. The BCSC was dissolved by Order-in-Council P.C. 946 of 5 February 1943. The Commission was replaced by the Japanese Division and was maintained under the authority of the federal Minister and Deputy Minister of Labour. See Japanese Affairs, supra note 32 at 8; and “Forced Resettlement”, supra note 54 at 34.

72 Removal of Japanese, supra note 33 at 25.

73 Ibid. at 26.

74 Japanese Affairs, supra note 32 at 11.

73 Cartographies of Violence, supra note 1 at 173.

76 Ibid. at 187.

77 Removal of Japanese, supra note 33 at 24.

78 Ibid.

79 Cartographies of Violence, supra note 1 at 190.

80 Kay Anderson describes “Shaughnessy” as “Vancouver's British-origin neighbourhood” emphasizing its elite spatial positioning. Anderson, K., Vancouver's Chinatown (Montreal & Kingston: McGill Queen's University Press, 1991) at 30.Google Scholar

81 While it is important to recognize how Doukhobors as a group were historically marginalized in Canada – their very existence in the “ghost town” areas marked their spatial exclusion – it is necessary to also acknowledge the hierarchical arrangement of subordinated communities within periphractic spaces.

82 Japanese Affairs, supra note 32 at 23.

83 NAC, Records of the Department of External Affairs, RG 25, Volume 2937, file 2997–40, part.l, “Japanese Population in the Dominion of Canada as of June 30, 1943” at 1.

84 Cartographies of Violence, supra note 1 at 195.

85 Ibid.

86 Benjamin, W., Illuminations, ed., Arendt, H. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955) at 257.Google Scholar

87 Cartographies of Violence, supra note 1 at 197.

88 For a description of the term shikata ga nai, see e.g. Adachi, supra note 2 at 355–56. For an analysis of this representation, see Cartographies of Violence, supra note 1 at 32–33.

89 Grewal, I. & Kaplan, C., “Introduction: Transnational Feminist Practices and Questions of Postmodernity” in Grewal, I. & Kaplan, G., eds., Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices (Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 1994) at 7.Google Scholar