Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement

Nobuaki Suyama is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the
University of Alberta.

This pictorial book tells us all the important elements regarding the
redress question. It is indeed horrific to know that a democratic
country like Canada, which was on the side of defeating dictatorial
regimes in World War II, did such an injustice to landed immigrants and
even Canadian citizens of a particular ancestry. Japanese-Canadians were
interned, dispossessed, dispersed, or repatriated for a questionable
national security purpose—in fact for no reason other than to soothe
white racists’ fears. To know something about what happened in the
1940s, and how an official apology and financial compensations were won
as the result of strenuous negotiations between the government and
Japanese Canadians in the 1980s, should lead us to better thinking about
other important human-rights issues, such as aboriginal rights. We have
much to learn from the experience of Japanese-Canadians.