Canadian Japs

Migration Policy, Similar to That of USA, Removes Them From Pacific Coast

WHEN Japan attacked the United Nations last December, there were 150,000 Japs in Hawaii, 109,000 in the western part of United States, and 23,400 on the coast of British Columbia.

Canada.

We do not know how the Hawaiian problem was handled; but (as described in the “PIM” in August) USA authorities already have carried out one of the big gest jobs in Pacific history by shifting the 109,000 Japs away from their Pacific region.

“Far Eastern Survey,” of July 27 reports that, following USA example, Canada has removed the whole of the Japanese from her Pacific coastline Although a large proportion of them were Canadian-born, they had remained Japanese, preserving their language, institutions and allegiances. Most of them were coastal fishermen, and they clearly constituted a grave danger. So they were gathered from all along the coast into special camps in Hastings Park, Vancouver; and from that point they are being distributed elsewhere— “re-located,” it is called.

Some 2,000 men have been sent to road-making camps, 3,100 (all ages and both sexes) to the sugar-beet industry of Alberta and Manitoba; others to agricul tural and lumbering industries in Ontario.

These compulsory, large-scale migra tions have imposed hardships on the United States and Canadian Japs. But, having learned the true character of the Japanese, no democratic nation dare take any chances with the Jap communities already within their boundaries. For tunately, there are no Japanese com munities in the Pacific, south of the equator.

Lieutenant A. Wardrop, formerly Port Moresby’s chief of telephones, is now serving in the Army Service Corps. He is a highly qualified engineer, and is doing useful work at a military camp near Sydney. * H