In our ASTU class these past few weeks we have been reading and focusing on the novel Obasan by Joy Kogawa. One of the important events that we brought up while discussing this book was when Prime Minister Brian Mulroney used excerpts from Obasan in his formal apology to Japanese-Canadians, made in 1988. In our class discussions, we mainly focused on how big of a step this was towards recognizing the hardships that Japanese-Canadians were faced with during and after world war two, and didn’t look at it with a critical eye at all really. However, in our class visit to the Joy Kogawa Fonds I found a couple of interesting archival pieces that struck an interest in looking at what exactly led up to or inspired, so to speak, PM Mulroney’s address made in late September of 1988.
One of the documents that I found was a letter sent in February of 1988 from students at the University of Windsor who had recently read Kogawa’s Obasan. It was sent to PM Mulroney, requesting that he make a formal apology to the surviving Japanese-Canadians that had endured the internment during the second world war. It reads, “Please make this apology from Canadian citizens to Canadian citizens. It is long overdue”. This rhetoric is very similar to the attitude in Kogawa’s novel and the view that the Japanese-Canadians held that they were being interned by their fellow countrymen. I also found an article published in The Vancouver Sun in March of 1988, entitled, “300 Attend Rally to Demand Redress for Japanese,” that reported on a rally that had occurred in Vancouver demanding more compensation than the $12 million that had been given to the Japanese community which was roughly equal to $1.49 per week for four years for the surviving Japanese.
It wasn’t then until late September of that year that PM Mulroney and the Canadian government offered “Symbolic Redress Payment” of $21,000 to surviving individuals that had gone through internment in Canada. It is also important to note that this official statement came a month after US President Ronald Reagan made a formal apology to interned Japanese-Americans and offered them each roughly $20,000 as a form of symbolic redress payment. I think with this evidence it is fair to assume that for some reason there was a reluctance of the Canadian government to follow through with a formal apology to Japanese-Canadians. This also shows us what kind of motivation the Canadian government takes to follow through with something that seems like common sense. Did PM Mulroney truly feel the need to formally apologize and offer compensation to Japanese-Canadians, or did he only make this address to look on par with the US and their civil liberties bill? Judging by what I have researched and looked at, I would say it was a mix, but still it is scary to think that politics might have had a part to play in this basic civil rights issue.
Sources:
Apology to Japanese Canadians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxVZtQULIMQ
US Civil Liberties Act: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MooPi2Ycuxo