Book

Landscapes of injustice : a new perspective on the internment and dispossession of Japanese Canadians / edited by Jordan Stanger-Ross.

Montréal, Québec : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2020]

©2020

ix, 501 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

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.

Rethinking Canada in the world ; 5

Rethinking Canada in the world ; 5

Japanese -- Canada -- Forced removal and internment, 1942-1945

Japanese -- Canada -- Social conditions -- 20th century

Japanese -- Canada -- Economic conditions -- 20th century

Eviction -- Canada -- History -- 20th century

Racism -- Canada -- History -- 20th century

British Columbia -- History -- 20th century

Canada -- Race relations -- History -- 20th century

Stanger-Ross, Jordan, editor

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part One: Deliberate killing of home -- Property and its transformation for Issei during the Meiji and Taisho Periods -- "Equally applicable to Scotsmen": racism, equality and Habeas Corpus in the legal history of Japanese Canadians -- The wealth of my home: a story of a Japanese Canadian family -- "My land is worth a million dollars": How Japanese Canadians contested their dispossession in the 1940s.

Part Two: Dispossession required sustained work -- Unfaithful custodian: Glenn McPherson and the dispossession of Japanese Canadians -- "Our deep and sincere appreciation ... for your kindness to us": A Japanese Canadian family and the administrative state -- (De)valuation: the state mismanagement of Japanese Canadian personal property in the 1940s.

Part Three: Reasoning wrong -- Promises of law: the unlawful dispossession of Japanese Canadians -- Creating the Bird Commission: How the Canadian state addressed Japanese Canadians' calls for fair compensation.

Part Four: Dispossession is permanent -- The economic impacts of the dispossession -- Remembering acts of ownership -- The politics of honorific naming: Alan Webster Neill and anti-Asian racism in Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada -- The road to redress: a presentation to the Landscapes of Injustice Spring Institute, 2018 -- Social accountability after political apologies.

9780228001720 (softcover)

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