Mutual Hostages: Canadians and Japanese During the Second World War

Gerald J. Stortz is an assistant professor of history at St. Jerome’s
College, University of Waterloo.

Two of this book’s authors are Japanese; two are Canadian. Together
they have forged a work that promises to excite controversy in the
Canadian historical community—for, despite the title, it is Canadians
(some of Japanese origin) with whom the book is primarily concerned.

The major reason controversy will be aroused has to do with the
sections dealing with the evacuation of the Japanese from Canada’s
West Coast in 1942. In the 1960s and 1970s, after years of silence, a
spate of books appeared—from professional historians and from those
interned—arguing that the whole exercise was both unjustified and
racially motivated. More recently the federal government has offered
both an apology and financial compensation. Mutual Hostages will give
much ammunition to those who opposed such a point of view. On the basis
of newly released documentary evidence, it would appear that—just as
some authorities claimed—there were Japanese-Canadians who sided
openly with the enemy, and there was a real threat to their safety.

One should not get the idea that this is the book’s sum and total.
The comparative accounts of the treatment of those in internment and pow
camps represent in many cases new information, as do the data on what
happened to camp inmates in Canada after the war.

Perhaps most surprising and refreshing, given the quadruple authorship,
the volume has an easy, integrated feel that makes it a true pleasure to
read.