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Landscapes of InjusticeA New Perspective on the Internment and Dispossession of Japanese Canadians |
eBook Available
A major reinterpretation of the internment of Japanese Canadians.
In 1942, the Canadian government forced more than 21,000 Japanese Canadians from their homes in British Columbia. They were told to bring only one suitcase each and officials vowed to protect the rest. Instead, Japanese Canadians were dispossessed, all their belongings either stolen or sold.
The definitive statement of a major national research partnership, Landscapes of Injustice reinterprets the internment of Japanese Canadians by focusing on the deliberate and permanent destruction of home through the act of dispossession. All forms of property were taken. Families lost heirlooms and everyday possessions. They lost decades of investment and labour. They lost opportunities, neighbourhoods, and communities; they lost retirements, livelihoods, and educations. When Japanese Canadians were finally released from internment in 1949, they had no homes to return to. Asking why and how these events came to pass and charting Japanese Canadians' diverse responses, this book details the implications and legacies of injustice perpetrated under the cover of national security.
In Landscapes of Injustice the diverse descendants of dispossession work together to understand what happened. They find that dispossession is not a chapter that closes or a period that neatly ends. It leaves enduring legacies of benefit and harm, shame and silence, and resilience and activism.
Contributors include: Eric M. Adams (Alberta), Will Archibald (Union of BC Indian Chiefs), Nicholas Blomley (SFU), Kaitlin Findlay (UVic), Matt James (UVic), Arthur Kazumi Miki (C.M., O.M.), Audrey Kobayashi (Queens), Ariel Merriam (UVic), Eiji Okawa (Western Washington), Yasmin Railton (Nikkei National Museum), Heather Read (Royal Ontario Museum), Josh van Es (UVic), and Trevor Wideman (SFU).
The definitive statement of a major national research partnership, Landscapes of Injustice reinterprets the internment of Japanese Canadians by focusing on the deliberate and permanent destruction of home through the act of dispossession. All forms of property were taken. Families lost heirlooms and everyday possessions. They lost decades of investment and labour. They lost opportunities, neighbourhoods, and communities; they lost retirements, livelihoods, and educations. When Japanese Canadians were finally released from internment in 1949, they had no homes to return to. Asking why and how these events came to pass and charting Japanese Canadians' diverse responses, this book details the implications and legacies of injustice perpetrated under the cover of national security.
In Landscapes of Injustice the diverse descendants of dispossession work together to understand what happened. They find that dispossession is not a chapter that closes or a period that neatly ends. It leaves enduring legacies of benefit and harm, shame and silence, and resilience and activism.
Contributors include: Eric M. Adams (Alberta), Will Archibald (Union of BC Indian Chiefs), Nicholas Blomley (SFU), Kaitlin Findlay (UVic), Matt James (UVic), Arthur Kazumi Miki (C.M., O.M.), Audrey Kobayashi (Queens), Ariel Merriam (UVic), Eiji Okawa (Western Washington), Yasmin Railton (Nikkei National Museum), Heather Read (Royal Ontario Museum), Josh van Es (UVic), and Trevor Wideman (SFU).
Details
Part of the Rethinking Canada in the World (number 5 in series)
496 Pages, 6.5 x 9.5
47 photos, 4 maps, 1 table, 3 diagrams
ISBN 9780228001720
August 2020
Formats: Cloth, Paperback, eBook
"Uprooted, interned, dispossessed, dispersed, and exiled. This volume brilliantly tracks the appalling excesses of Canadian white supremacists and the resilient responses of Japanese Canadians. As the authors of this remarkable book conclude, we all walk atop the sediment of landscapes of injustice." Constance Backhouse, University of Ottawa
"This outstanding and eminently readable volume increases by an order of magnitude our knowledge and understanding of the tragic persecution of Japanese Canadians during World War II. It should be a model for similar studies of other systems of persecution and property deprivation both north and south of the Canada-US border." Eric Muller, University of North Carolina
"This is a powerful book, marking a materialist turn in reflection on the internment of Japanese Canadians. The research collective pursues questions which, for all their focus on the details of asset liquidation-of properties, footholds, intergenerational possibilities, built up slowly and patiently-are not 'instead of' but deeply part of the human story of the internment. New ethnography and archival research with financial, community, and state records expose the variety of responses by Japanese Canadians, the multiplicity of logics into which officials folded racism, the breadth and variety of complicities. Landscapes of Injustice is vital reading for our moment of thinking about historical wrongs and the (im)possibility of reparations." Jennifer Henderson, Associate Professor, Carleton University, co-editor, Reconciling Canada: Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress
"The Japanese Canadian community owes a large debt to Jordan Stanger-Ross and the Landscapes of Injustice collective for uncovering new facts about the role that the legal system, politicians and widespread anti Japanese-Canadian racism played in our history. The release of Landscapes of Injustice is timely. Post George Floyd, Canadians are discussing systemic racism against Indigenous, Black and persons of colour. Our history is a stark reminder of the harm done by racism to individuals and communities." Maryka Omatsu, The Bulletin: A Journal of Japanese Canadian Community, History & Culture
"Well written, clearly and effectively conceived and argued throughout, and intensely moving at times, Landscapes of Injustice is a significant book that both sheds light on the processes of dispossession and racial injustice and demonstrates the utility of collaboration to historians. ... [The authors] have created a deeply important work that challenges long-held beliefs about Canadian exceptionalism. In much the same way that historians have emphasized Canada's status as a settler colonial state, opposed Canada's growing militarism, or highlighted the ways in which violence served as an organizing force in Canadian colonial history, this book serves as a clarion call to Canadians that racism, government oppression, and cruelty do not stop at the forty-ninth parallel on their way north." H-Net
"Landscapes of Injustice is a particularly impressive and unprecedented study ... [The authors] have brought a fresh take to the wartime history of Japanese Canadians, and their careful research will help convince readers of the lasting implications of the wartime policies for Canadian society." BC Studies
"This book is a remarkable and comprehensive addition to studies on Canadian history. …. The book is particularly timely and urgent [as] millions of people are currently being displaced, and 'the politics of security, migration, and race [are] perpetually entwined.' The book addresses hard questions about how states and citizens can protect human rights during times of national insecurity, and what is at stake when they fail to do so." Journal of Canadian History
"This outstanding and eminently readable volume increases by an order of magnitude our knowledge and understanding of the tragic persecution of Japanese Canadians during World War II. It should be a model for similar studies of other systems of persecution and property deprivation both north and south of the Canada-US border." Eric Muller, University of North Carolina
"This is a powerful book, marking a materialist turn in reflection on the internment of Japanese Canadians. The research collective pursues questions which, for all their focus on the details of asset liquidation-of properties, footholds, intergenerational possibilities, built up slowly and patiently-are not 'instead of' but deeply part of the human story of the internment. New ethnography and archival research with financial, community, and state records expose the variety of responses by Japanese Canadians, the multiplicity of logics into which officials folded racism, the breadth and variety of complicities. Landscapes of Injustice is vital reading for our moment of thinking about historical wrongs and the (im)possibility of reparations." Jennifer Henderson, Associate Professor, Carleton University, co-editor, Reconciling Canada: Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress
"The Japanese Canadian community owes a large debt to Jordan Stanger-Ross and the Landscapes of Injustice collective for uncovering new facts about the role that the legal system, politicians and widespread anti Japanese-Canadian racism played in our history. The release of Landscapes of Injustice is timely. Post George Floyd, Canadians are discussing systemic racism against Indigenous, Black and persons of colour. Our history is a stark reminder of the harm done by racism to individuals and communities." Maryka Omatsu, The Bulletin: A Journal of Japanese Canadian Community, History & Culture
"Well written, clearly and effectively conceived and argued throughout, and intensely moving at times, Landscapes of Injustice is a significant book that both sheds light on the processes of dispossession and racial injustice and demonstrates the utility of collaboration to historians. ... [The authors] have created a deeply important work that challenges long-held beliefs about Canadian exceptionalism. In much the same way that historians have emphasized Canada's status as a settler colonial state, opposed Canada's growing militarism, or highlighted the ways in which violence served as an organizing force in Canadian colonial history, this book serves as a clarion call to Canadians that racism, government oppression, and cruelty do not stop at the forty-ninth parallel on their way north." H-Net
"Landscapes of Injustice is a particularly impressive and unprecedented study ... [The authors] have brought a fresh take to the wartime history of Japanese Canadians, and their careful research will help convince readers of the lasting implications of the wartime policies for Canadian society." BC Studies
"This book is a remarkable and comprehensive addition to studies on Canadian history. …. The book is particularly timely and urgent [as] millions of people are currently being displaced, and 'the politics of security, migration, and race [are] perpetually entwined.' The book addresses hard questions about how states and citizens can protect human rights during times of national insecurity, and what is at stake when they fail to do so." Journal of Canadian History
Jordan Stanger-Ross, professor of history and the project director of Landscapes of Injustice at the University of Victoria, is co-editor of Witness to Loss: Race, Culpability, and Memory in the Dispossession of Japanese Canadians.
Figures | vii
Note on Landscapes of Injustice | xi
Abbreviations | xiii
Introduction | 3
Jordan Stanger-Ross with Kaitlin Findlay, Eiji Okawa, Yasmin Railton, Josh van Es, and Trevor Wideman
PART ONE The Deliberate Killing of Home
1 Property and Its Transformation for Issei during the Meiji and Taisho Periods | 53
Audrey Kobayashi
2 “Equally Applicable to Scotsmen”: Racism, Equality, and Habeas Corpus in the Legal History of Japanese Canadians | 67
Eric M. Adams
3 The Wealth of My Home: A Story of a Japanese Canadian Family | 101
Eiji Okawa
4 “My Land Is Worth a Million Dollars”: How Japanese Canadians Contested Their Dispossession in the 1940s | 129
Jordan Stanger-Ross and Nicholas Blomley
PART TWO Dispossession Required Sustained Work
5 The Unfaithful Custodian: Glenn McPherson and the Dispossession of Japanese Canadians | 161
Jordan Stanger-Ross and Will Archibald
6 “Our Deep and Sincere Appreciation … for Your Kindness to Us”: A Japanese Canadian Family and the Administrative State | 186
Ariel Merriam
7 (De)valuation: The State Mismanagement of Japanese Canadian Personal Property in the 1940s | 213
Kaitlin Findlay and Nicholas Blomley
PART THREE Reasoning Wrong
8 Promises of Law: The Unlawful Dispossession of Japanese Canadians | 255
Eric M. Adams and Jordan Stanger-Ross
9 Creating the Bird Commission: How the Canadian State Addressed Japanese Canadians’ Calls for Fair Compensation | 298
Kaitlin Findlay
PART FOUR Dispossession Is Permanent
10 The Economic Impacts of the Dispossession | 339
Jordan Stanger-Ross
11 Remembering Acts of Ownership | 366
Kaitlin Findlay, Heather Read, and Jordan Stanger-Ross
12 The Politics of Honorific Naming: Alan Webster Neill and Anti-Asian Racism in Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada | 418
Ian G. Baird
13 The Road to Redress: A Presentation to the Landscapes of Injustice Spring Institute, 2018 | 435
Art Miki and Audrey Kobayashi
14 Social Accountability after Political Apologies | 454
Jordan Stanger-Ross and Matt James
Epilogue | 485
Jordan Stanger-Ross
Contributors | 489
Index | 495
Note on Landscapes of Injustice | xi
Abbreviations | xiii
Introduction | 3
Jordan Stanger-Ross with Kaitlin Findlay, Eiji Okawa, Yasmin Railton, Josh van Es, and Trevor Wideman
PART ONE The Deliberate Killing of Home
1 Property and Its Transformation for Issei during the Meiji and Taisho Periods | 53
Audrey Kobayashi
2 “Equally Applicable to Scotsmen”: Racism, Equality, and Habeas Corpus in the Legal History of Japanese Canadians | 67
Eric M. Adams
3 The Wealth of My Home: A Story of a Japanese Canadian Family | 101
Eiji Okawa
4 “My Land Is Worth a Million Dollars”: How Japanese Canadians Contested Their Dispossession in the 1940s | 129
Jordan Stanger-Ross and Nicholas Blomley
PART TWO Dispossession Required Sustained Work
5 The Unfaithful Custodian: Glenn McPherson and the Dispossession of Japanese Canadians | 161
Jordan Stanger-Ross and Will Archibald
6 “Our Deep and Sincere Appreciation … for Your Kindness to Us”: A Japanese Canadian Family and the Administrative State | 186
Ariel Merriam
7 (De)valuation: The State Mismanagement of Japanese Canadian Personal Property in the 1940s | 213
Kaitlin Findlay and Nicholas Blomley
PART THREE Reasoning Wrong
8 Promises of Law: The Unlawful Dispossession of Japanese Canadians | 255
Eric M. Adams and Jordan Stanger-Ross
9 Creating the Bird Commission: How the Canadian State Addressed Japanese Canadians’ Calls for Fair Compensation | 298
Kaitlin Findlay
PART FOUR Dispossession Is Permanent
10 The Economic Impacts of the Dispossession | 339
Jordan Stanger-Ross
11 Remembering Acts of Ownership | 366
Kaitlin Findlay, Heather Read, and Jordan Stanger-Ross
12 The Politics of Honorific Naming: Alan Webster Neill and Anti-Asian Racism in Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada | 418
Ian G. Baird
13 The Road to Redress: A Presentation to the Landscapes of Injustice Spring Institute, 2018 | 435
Art Miki and Audrey Kobayashi
14 Social Accountability after Political Apologies | 454
Jordan Stanger-Ross and Matt James
Epilogue | 485
Jordan Stanger-Ross
Contributors | 489
Index | 495
Landscapes of Injustice website
Landscapes of Injustice narrative website
Chapter 10: The Economic Impacts of the Dispossession (Complete)
Data Guide for Chapter 10: The Economic Impacts of the Dispossession
Secondary School Teacher Resources - Teaching Japanese Canadian History
Interview, Witness to Yesterday, The Champlain Society
Broken Promises Exhibition Catalogue
Book Trailer
Landscapes of Injustice narrative website
Chapter 10: The Economic Impacts of the Dispossession (Complete)
Data Guide for Chapter 10: The Economic Impacts of the Dispossession
Secondary School Teacher Resources - Teaching Japanese Canadian History
Interview, Witness to Yesterday, The Champlain Society
Broken Promises Exhibition Catalogue
Book Trailer
Shortlist
Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize
UBC Library and the Pacific BookWorld News Society
2021
Winner
John T. Saywell Prize for Canadian Constitutional Legal History
The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History
2022
Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize
UBC Library and the Pacific BookWorld News Society
2021
Winner
John T. Saywell Prize for Canadian Constitutional Legal History
The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History
2022
