Written by Nima, 2021 Cohort
It’s 7 o’clock in the morning, on the seventh of December 1941. Once again the sun has risen from behind the Hawaiian Tropical forest. It’s one of those normal Saturdays where everyone waits for the full sun to rise and reach the golden beach. Even those 420 Japanese pilots who boarded the planes did not know that the lives of several generations of their compatriots were to be irreparably changed by them in less than an hour, at the behest of politicians.
It is now 7:55 and the tragedy has occurred! The first dive-bomber appeared over Pearl Harbor and was followed by waves of torpedo planes, bombers, and fighters.
Due to Americans not being fully prepared and the fact that many vessels were undermanned since it was a Sunday morning, the base was unable to mount an effective defence. The Arizona was completely destroyed; the Oklahoma capsized; the California, Nevada, and West Virginia sank; more than 180 aircraft were destroyed, and numerous vessels were damaged. In addition, more than 2,300 military personnel were killed. The “date which will live in infamy,” as U.S. Pres. Franklin Roosevelt termed it. But the question is: “Do all these catastrophes become convincing reasons why the suffering of racial discrimination for many years has affected a community of innocent people?” Of course not! But this is tragic true history.
When Pearl Harbour was bombed in December of 1941, all of them were taken away. Soon after the federal government ordered Japanese- Canadians who lived within 160 kilometres of the B.C. coast to be relocated further inland. This order targeted about 22,000 Japanese- Canadians who were then labelled as “enemy aliens” despite the many of them have lived and worked in Canada for generations.
In the early 1800s, after 300 years of feudalism and self-isolation in Japan, a new government came up and people started to feel freedom and many of them dreamed about their perfect opportunities across the boundaries of the land. Many of those dreams reached many Japanese who immigrate to Canada and mainly worked in the resource industries such as fishing, forestry, mining, and farming. The fishing industry in Steveston was dominated by the Japanese Canadian community (Gulf of Georgia Cannery and Britannia Shipyards National Historic Sites). Japanese-Canadians held the majority of fishing licenses along the B.C. coast. But suddenly after the disaster happened a flood of racist behaviour came to them, and all their houses and boats were taken from them and they were all sent to distant camps with their kids and wives. Although later all these unpleasant behaviours were not forgotten by the people and they did a lot of work to compensate them, the oppression of the Japanese will not be forgotten.
At the start of this semester, when Aida explained the “Gulf of Georgia Cannery” project to us, I had no precise idea of how many cultural, historical, and social points I will learn alongside the project. Going deeper into this project and studying what happened in the history of
Canada, and especially its West coast had two very important considerations for me.
One is that it helped me a lot to help my team come up with a practical digital solution for the museum, which also has a strong educational intention behind it, for younger generations. And it will also lead to the museum having more visitors and more people to visit the cannery and be able to hear about its valuable history. Another important achievement was to learn more about and think more critically about different atrocities committed against different peoples throughout human history.
Canada is a country very well known for accepting immigrants, and it is no secret that in 2021, we are living in a free country that offers a lot to its newcomers. For example, I myself set foot on this beautiful land as an immigrant with a very different history, and I see a very bright future ahead of me, given the good context that exists here. But as I study more history as well as the current state of the world in which we live, the question that comes to my mind is how far are we from the day when not a single human being will shed a tear because of racial differences!