1877
1877 – Manzo Nagano becomes the first Japanese individual known to land and settle in Canada. From 1877 to 1907 the issei men were the first generation of Japanese to immigrate and settle in Canada. Most Japanese women arrived after 1908.
1887
1887 – Fishermen with their nets in Steveston. Many Japanese Canadians settled near Steveston, the center of the BC salmon industry.
1890s
1890s – A jeweler’s shop – an example of one type of business in “Little Tokyo”. Powell Street becomes the social and economic base of the Japanese Canadian community.
1907
1907 – Anti Asian riot in Vancouver. Many businesses were vandalized and damaged.
1941
1941 – The Vancouver Asahis, the popular Japanese Canadian baseball team.
1941
1941 – In Spring 1941, before World War II broke out, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police fingerprinted and registered all Japanese Canadians over the age of 16 who were required to carry identification cards until 1949.
1941, Dec. 7th
1941, Dec. 7th – Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
1941
1941 – The Royal Canadian Navy impounded these fishing boats at Annieville Dyke on the Fraser River in 1941. During the next two months, about 1,200 Japanese Canadian owned boats were taken and sold.
1942
1942 – On Feb 24th, the Order In Council PC 1486 authorized the removal of all “persons of Japanese racial origin” and gave the RCMP the power to search without warrant, enforce a dusk-to-dawn curfew and to confiscate cars, radios, firearms and cameras. Confiscated cars, rounded up at Hastings Park were later sold off at bargain prices by the Custodian of Enemy Alien Property.
1942, March
1942, March – Many Japanese Canadians were held in Vancouver’s Hastings Park. The Pacific National Exhibition buildings were used as a “clearing site” for people before they were shipped to various destinations . Men and women were segregated; families were separated. Some people were forced to live in the former Livestock Buildings, some for months.
1942
1942 – Men were confined to row upon row of bunk beds at Hastings Park.
1942
1942 – Women were housed in the Livestock Building. Blankets and sheets were draped around the former horse stalls to establish some measure of privacy but they could not block out the stench of the former occupants.
1942
1942 – Typical camp life. Women trying to grow crops. Some of the camps were located in Lemon Creek, Tashme, Greenwood, Slocan, New Denver, Sandon and Kaslo.
1942
1942 – During the first year at Slocan where housing had not yet been set up, the internees were forced to live out the harsh winter in tents.
1942
1942 – Those “lucky enough” to have a 14 x 28 foot shack, had no insulation, and each customarily housed two families.
1942
1942 – In Lemon Creek, BC, an interned family has a meal in their shack.
1942
1942 – Japanese Canadians arrive by train at an internment camp.
1942
1942 – Censored post card – Mail was censored by the government.
1942
1942 – Japanese Canadian men working in a “Road Camp” in the B.C. interior. Road camp projects built roads between Hope and Princeton, Revelstoke and Sicamous, and Blue River and Yellowhead.
1942
1942 – Churches step in to organize high schools for Japanese Canadian children. The BC Security Commission would not accept responsibility for secondary education in the internment camps.
1945
1945 – The atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1945
1945 – Japanese Canadians, many of whom had never set foot in Japan, being exiled to Japan.
1986
1986 – The Toronto Ad Hoc Committee for Japanese Canadian Redress placed an ad in The Globe and Mail on March 6, 1986 in support for the redress movement. The main headlines read, “In 1942 Canada Sent A Lot Of Kids To Camp…Right The Wrong. Support Japanese Canadian Redress.”
1988, April 14
1988, April 14 – The Ottawa Rally by supporters of Japanese Canadian Redress.
1988, Sept. 22
1988, Sept. 22 – Prime Minister Mulroney and Art Miki, President of the National Association of Japanese Canadians sign the Redress Agreement. Survivors of wartime events receive a settlement and acknowledgement that “The forced removal and internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II and their deportation and expulsion following the war, was unjust.”