Japanese Internment in Canada 1941 - 1946 - A Postal History

Ken Ellison
Released May 2006. Exhibit series # 39.
86 pages, 8.5x11, spiral bound.
Colour C$ 24.00 [ISBN 0-919854-78-8].

In December of 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and Manila in the Philippines, 22,000 persons of Japanese origin were living on Canada's West Coast. Within a few months every one of them, whether Canadian born, naturalized citizen or new immigrant, were stripped of all civil rights and removed from the Coastal Defence Zone to at least 100 miles inland. Here they were interned in camps, or allowed to go to farms in the interior of British Columbia or the rest of Canada.

During this period, no person of Japanese origin ever committed, or was accused of committing, a single act of espionage or sabotage, yet their farms, homes, stores and fishing boats were confiscated and they were banned from the British Columbia Coastal area.

Mail from these internees was deposited at the local post offices, where it was segregated and sent directly to the censor, usually in Vancouver but sometimes in Ottawa. Censorship of mails began in Vancouver on September 8, 1939 when the war with Germany began, and was stepped up on Japan's entry two years later. Censorship ended with the cessation of hostilities with Japan on August 16, 1945.

JAPANESE INTERNMENT IN CANADA 1941 - 1946 - A POSTAL HISTORY tells the postal and censoring story through a selection of mail from Japanese internees during their period of incarceration in various Canadian locations, and includes other related items.

Ken Ellison is the author/exhibitor of three recent BNAPS books - British Columbia Agricultural Exhibitions (2003), British Columbia Hotel Covers, 1880 to 1920 (2004) and Force 'C' - The Canadian Army's Hong Kong Story 1941-1945 (revised in colour, 2005). He has also written or co-edited several local histories, including Price Ellison - History Of An Okanagan Pioneer Family (1988), Valley Of Dreams, an illustrated history of Vernon, BC - 1992), Irrigation Is King! (the story of water/irrigation in Oyama, BC - 2000) and A Family Album (an Ellison family pictorial history - 2001).