Talk:Japanese Canadian internment

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Contents 1 F.Y.I - a discussion on King 2 Apology? 3 Cleanup 4 New item on List of concentration and internment camps 5 Issues, issues, issues....somebody has issues 6 Questionable edit 7 Attn MQ: Your changes 8 Road projects 9 Self-supporting centres were not internment camps

[edit] F.Y.I - a discussion on King

• I added this here because of the relevancy of the discussion. Your thoughts?

I decided to be bold and removed this bit: "In 1999 King was ranked by historians to be the greatest of Canada's Prime Ministers. (Granatstein & Hillmer, Prime Ministers: Ranking Canada's Leaders.)" Yeah, whatever, Granatstein and Hillmer.Bobanny(eyes rolling) 14:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• With all due respect, Granatstein and Hillmer are pretty good historians. King would certainly be among the greatest PMs, whatever the criteria, especially if longevity was a main criteria.Moomot 05:38, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
• Indeed, Granatstein and Hillmer aren't historians whose judgement we should should scoff at. I think you need to justify the edit with more than with just an eye roll. Boubelium 07:47, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I think mylesmalley made a good point above that justifies removing that claim from the article. Granatstein and Hillmer's claim that King was the greatest PM is a value judgement and has nothing to do with their skills as historians. Besides, scoffing at Granatstein is a proud tradition of Canadian historians, and vice versa. Personally, I find that kind of gushing reverence for any Prime Minister nauseating, especially when it's cloaked as an objective fact, but don't worry, I'll keep my personal opinions out of the article. And please, don't remove the bit about Japanese Canadian being interned during WWII just because Granatstein says it never happened. Bobanny 07:09, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

• You obviously are intelligent, perhaps if you were less sarcastic and more informative you would have found less issues with your edit. Having read your argument, I agree. You are correct that the greatest PM title does not belong in this article. As for your condescending comments about the Japanese internment, ironically, I spent some time expanding the racism section of this article. Regarding the Granatstein article, he does not claim that "it never happened" but instead argues the semantics of the term 'internment'. Your paraphrasing is either quite careless or malicious; you're essentially making him sound like a Holocaust Denier, which is far from the case. I do appreciate you pointing out the article though, because we (likely) both agree that Granatstein is on dubious ground. When Granatstein argues that there was a 'unanimous call for evacuation" he is exaggerating. See my racism edits on King for evidence. Then again perhaps those that didn't actually fear the Japanese could have supported the internment out fear for their safety, especially given the long history of anti-Asian violence in Vancouver. But, whatever, I don't agree with Granatstein's general perspective here. He's still a great historian even if we don't agree with him that the word 'internment' should be replaces with 'evacuation'. This reminds me, the internment article needs a lot of work. Perhaps we should be discussing this there. Regards Moomot 18:48, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
• I see that you did read my additions to "Racism," and you improved the writing. Thank You. Moomot 19:19, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'll try and put my smarminess aside. I stand by my opinion that Granatstein's point about Japanese internment is more than semantics, because behind those words are the meaning of the event. "Evacuation" and "internment" are two different things. Yes they were evacuated, but it was quite a different circumstance than, say, an evacuation of an area during a flood or forest fire threat. In the connotation of the word "evacuation," it's purely circumstantial, or an unfortunate event, where no one is to blame but the forces of nature or history. "Forcible displacement" would be more precise to describe the actual removal of those people from their homes. "Internment" on the other hand, is an act of war, defensive or offensive, in which people are confined under threat somewhere and dispossessed of their property and belongings. If the Japanese had resisted the internment, it probably would have looked more like what Granatstein claims the word implies. The scale of the holocaust makes that comparison unfair, but the underlying principle is the same: a nationalist glossing of the past, and that's what I'm accusing Granatstein of. He's defending a view whereby the true or authentic "Canadian" identity or experience is represented by the most privileged people in society, the "great men" of history like King. Hence the unanimous call for evacuation. Japanese-Canadians were not calling for evacuation, nor were the RCMP operatives who reported that no national security threat existed from west coast Japanese. Local white entrepreneurs who scored some great deals on Japanese property and were able to take over that portion of the coastal fishing industry as a result were the voice of Canada in the national pride version. It's also worth pointing out that some Italians, who actually did have fascist sympathies and affiliations, were interned as well, but only for a short while and then in relatively swanky conditions in Ontario. The things I feel are most worthy of Canadian pride are where past mistakes are not forgotten or minimized, but are openly acknowledged and measures are taken to ensure they aren't repeated. This discussion is also relevant to the current issue of redress for the Chinese head tax, which has brought out some of that old racist sentiment here in Vancouver. But, the average Chinese or Japanese on the west coast are as prosperous, if not more, than whites, and that's a change to be proud of. I don't believe, as Granatstein does, that highlighting past injustices constitutes a chronicle of shame, as if it somehow cancels out the positive things in the past, just like King's racism doesn't cancel out his accomplishments. Similarly, again, I'm not questioning Granatstein's abilities as a historian or his notable contributions to Canadian historiography because of my opinion of him on this, just as, hopefully, your opinion that I'm condescending doesn't cancel out the one that says I'm intelligent (you could probably add "wordy" to that list :) Bobanny 20:21, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Apology?

Did the Canadian government ever apologize?

Nope. The government offered the money, but no official apology. -CLOWND

Incorrect, the government made a public apopolgy the same day that the Japanese people were offered compensation for their losses. The government payed all citizens of Japanese culture who had been affected. A rather large sum considering the property values. Although that doesn't justify the internment it shows very clearly that the government was sorry. The government was not all at fault, the government was pressured by people who were racially discriminating the Japanese. I don't side only with the government because what happened was wrong and unfair. I don't believe that giving a man $140.50 for his house is correct, but the government compensated the individuals for their extreme loss. -Kay Lee

$21,000 is not a rather large sum. As well, grants from the human rights fund is for arts only. - Stephen Kawamoto

[edit] Cleanup

This article needs to be expanded and converted to proper style. It should include information about the massive confiscation of Japanse boats and property, as well as internment of people into camps.

More pictures are available here. -- TheMightyQuill 18:43, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New item on List of concentration and internment camps

List_of_concentration_and_internment_camps#Japanese Canadian internment_and relocation centres I just added a section on this page, which previously had only had information on the Ukrainian Canadian internments in WWI. I didn't want to copy the intro overleaf so "winged it" and wrote a new one; edits welcome, as well as formatting of listed camps/centres and expansion of info on those in other provinces, which I'm not familiar with. Somewhere I've seen a map by one of the Japanese Canadian associations which I'll link once I find it again.Skookum1 00:53, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Issues, issues, issues....somebody has issues

Unlike Japanese American internment, where families were generally kept together, Canada initially sent its male evacuees to road camps in the British Columbian interior, to sugar beet projects on the Prairies, or to internment in a POW camp in Ontario, while women and children were moved to six inland British Columbia towns [citation needed]. There, the living conditions were so poor that the citizens of wartime Japan even sent supplemental food shipments through the Red Cross.[citation needed] During the period of detention, the Canadian government spent one-third the per capita amount expended by the U.S. on Japanese American evacuees.[citation needed]

• The last of those sentences I can deal with, so long as a formal statistic is provided to back up the claim.
• The sentence before it, about the Red Cross relaying food to the relocatees, I can also deal with, but aspects of the scale of such relief should be included, and also the reasons why; it is a given, for instance, that Japanese foodstuffs, particularly staples, could not be imported via regular means during the war, and such packages from the Japanese Empire's side vaulable propaganda were not just "a touch of home" for the internees, but also efforts to sway them in their exile; but also because no doubt some Japanese elders, like First Nations, elders, cannot live without their traditional foods because of lifelong adaption to a certain menu; it's not as if the Canadian government or the camp's neighbours were deliberately starving the internees, as happened in Japanese concentration camps as well as, more recently, in Bosnia; in other words this sentence is overblown in its scope and implications; and rings of brow-beating as if it were yet another instance of white injustices against non-whites; I wonder how many Red Cross packages were delivered to foreign POWs and other internees in the Japanese Empire in the same period, for instance? No doubt the packages included imperial propaganda as well as wasabi paste, and may have been viewed as skeptically by their recipients as the broadcasts of Tokyo Rose (which, granted, weren't available in the camps as if I recall radios were forbidden...not that there was anything but CBC, if that, in the valleys in the Kootenays they were interned in; at the relocation centres in the Lillooet Country radios were useless - in the '50s and until the mid-'60s you could only get fuzzy microwave and AM late at night because of the depth of the valleys, and I don't think there was a transmitter in the local metropolis of Lillooet until after the war; the only relocation centre that was a tarpaper camp was in East Lillooet, near today's airport, although coming and going to town for shopping and work outside the camp were permitted until after the war...Skookum1 04:49, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
• As for the first sentence, I don't know which mock history/pamphlet that came from, but in Canada, also families were generally kept together, at least with the Relocation Centres (not the same as internment camps); if there are exact stats and cites on the notion that families were split up - here implied to have been deliberately split up, as a form of cruelty and more proof of general white nastiness - then they should be provided. There's too much popular myth about the internment as also about other race issues in BC past, and many of these myths take things out of context, or outright invented contexts; that first sentence didn't sit well with me because the Japanese in my area (Lillooet) were relocated as families and not split up, other than the guys from McGillivary Falls who were brought back inside the 100-miles-from-the-coast line to work for Frank Devine at his mill and logging operation near D'Arcy, while their wives held down the old resort at the Falls, a few miles down the lake from D'Arcy (cite My Sixty Years in Canada, by Dr. Masajiro Miyazaki.Skookum1 04:38, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Given that these citation requests were placed on 6 September (first sentence) and 18 May (second and third sentences), it would appear no references are forthcoming. As their accuracy is either in question or disproven, I recommend the sentences be deleted. Victoriagirl 05:20, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

The reason I was waiting to see if someone might provide them is because there are echoes of academic literature and some of the popular-historical literature (Suzuki and others) in some of what was said; so I was curious to see if any papers or particular books might be the sources of this material; which as noted in my exegesis on them are more interpretations of facts, if there are facts, than the facts themselves; and only certain facts, y'see, which is my overall problem with current historiography (academic and popular-press/journalistic history). Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if the cheap-o Canadian regime spent less per capita; or you could see that as efficiency (in the case of US spending I'd guesstimate there was your typical military/civil graft going on, the equivalent of the $200 toilet seat; here it was more targeted confiscations based on old commercial rivalries and personal hostilities; a much more "small town" kind of operation, vs the huge numbers and logistics in the US, and of course the more heightened state of war-consciousness down there (as usual).Skookum1 05:40, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem with the blame-game with Japanese Canadian internment is that blame is directed entirely too much against the government. If I recall correctly, the government first resisted then finally caved to public pressure. The head of the Canadian military was totally opposed to widespread internment, as he saw it was totally unnecessary. The Japanese in Hawaii, for instance, we not rounded up in the same way they were in BC. Confiscations of Japanese businesses, fishing boats, and homes were instituted as part of the legislation, but laws encouraging confiscations of businesses and fishing boats were already on the books (or had been struck down) in BC, not due to war hysteria, but pre-existing racist hysteria. -- TheMightyQuill 05:32, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

It's not just the blame game, MQuill; it's the over-generalization of "all men were sent to the Prairies and women were sent to the six towns in the Kootenays so as to break up families" gist of the opening sentence; the implied cruelty of starvation and the need for the Red Cross to supply them with food (that's an outrageous claim, but the kind of thing that's all too common in revanchist personal histories like Suzuki's); likewise the bitch about Canada spending less on its camps (one good reason is they didn't have to build camps per se, as we had lots of empty towns - Sandon, Kaslo, New Denver, Rosebery, Minto, McGillivary Falls, Bridge River - with complete houses). As with the history of Chinese Canadians there's a lot of one-sided and quite pejorative generalizations being made that constitute a combination of white-bashing and white-guilt pandering; there's also a certain myopia as mentioned in NAJC publications, which focus on David Suzuki's and Joy Kogawa's childhood perceptions vs. the experience of Dr. Miyazaki and the very different experiences of the relocation centres around Lillooet vs the intermment camps in the Kootenays (a similar bias-of-omission operates in Chinese Canadian history re successes in the goldfields and ranching which are obscured so as to focus on railway labour issues).Skookum1 20:00, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

First, I don't see why you're drawing links between Chinese Canadian history and Japanese-Canadian internment. All history is full of biases, so I'm not sure what the connection is between these groups, aside from their perceived asian "race." Second, if there are factual errors, please feel free to correct them, but I find your suggestions of "white-bashing" and "white-guilt" pandering a little silly. The motivations behind interning (or "relocating" as you seem to favour) people whose families had lived in Canada for generations were clearly racial, not military. As far as I'm concerned, that's the core issue. Like the internment of Ukrainians during WWI, many of whom had left Europe to escape oppression under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, most of these people were not interned for legitimate reasons. In the case of Japanese-Canadians, however, the financial gains for white citizens was an important extra factor in internment/confiscation. As for the comparison of costs between Canadian and American internment, I would say your explanation may well be true, but unless you can back it up, it's just as POV as the current phrasing. It doesn't seem impossible that Americans may also have had empty towns. -- TheMightyQuill 20:52, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Not in the same number; BC has 1500 ghost towns, at the opening of WWII hundreds were still standing; despite the archetypal image of ghost towns in the US West, there were not as many, and in many cases they failed for lack of water, etc. - it's just certain ones became very famous (Deadwood, Virginia City etc). But I think the difference in spending - if it can be cited - has more to do with a combination of American military-budget squandering and graft vs. Canadian "thriftiness"; ditto that there's another side to the Red Cross packages from Japan, which here are presented, alongside the rest of this paragraph, to show the meanness of the Canadian internment/relocation, but there are clearly other issues at play (special dietary needs, the role of the Red Cross in general); it's not as if Imperial Japan were feeding BC's internees/relocatees because BC wouldn't, which is what it's made to sound like. Same with the splitting up of the families; I don't know the history of the Kootenay camps in detail, but in the case of the Lillooet relocation centres this is absolute nonsense; but again it's presented as if Canadians were so much worse than Americans. THAT's the white-bashing or white-guilt-pandering I'm talking about, and why I think this article is POV; the connection to the Chinese Canadian stuff is the similar biases and implicit white-bashing on History of Chinese immigration to Canada and on the various Chinatown and American/Canadian Chinese cuisine pages and others ("Patterns of Chinatowns in North America" is yet another article of the ethno-tub-thumping variety). Someone somewhere said, I think on the talk page of the immigration article, that I should provide cites; but everything I bring up is already in books cited, it's just ignored by the latter-day politically-correct blinkers-on mentality; and as far as current academic papers go, if you try and get a history or other degree WITHOUT agreeing with the prevailing ideology/version of history, you WON'T get a degree, or get published.Skookum1 21:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Dude, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but the majority of Americans (and I'd assume the entire American government in 1941) were white. How suggesting that "Canadians were so much worse than Americans" could be construed as "white-bashing" is beyond me. As for your perceived bias among academic historians (I assume you'd exclude Jack Granatstein?) that may be a systemic bias inherent to wikipedia, but this is hardly the place to debate that. If you make changes and include specific footnotes, I'm pretty sure there won't be major complaints. Your changes so far seem fine to me. TheMightyQuill 21:17, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

BTW since it's out of print and was only ever gestetner-published anyway, I'm going to typetransfer Dr. Miyazaki's book (booklet really) to a sandbox page for ref purposes; I'll be checking with the Lillooet Historical Society as to its copyright as, since it's out of print and maybe copyright-expired, I might just put it up as a webpage on my own site (www.cayoosh.net). Always wanted to find someone to translate it to Japanese, partly because of the Japanese bus tours that roll through there regularly....Skookum1 20:05, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Awesome. I'm not sure I've heard of it. What's it called? --TheMightyQuill 20:52, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

My Sixty Years in Canada - see Masajiro Miyazaki.Skookum1 21:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Questionable edit

I have just reversed the following addition:

"For the duration between 1946 and 1949 remaining detainees could be released if they could obtain a canadian sponsor/guarantor, a number of these were offered by opportunist types via arranged marriages to buy freedom for family members; a prison with different walls."

I find this information and the accompanying edit summary ("just something I saw on tv. women selling themselves to end the 5-6 years of imprisonment already served") suspect. I would appreciate input on this matter. Victoriagirl 01:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

the show was Canada: a people's history. a woman interviewed explained the sponsorship and her arranged marriage to a friend of the family being part and parcel for her father/brothers release. this JC internment page is pitiful I'm glad you find time to say "I've never heard that" rather than contributing something.

It was never my intention to offend. And it is, of course, perfectly fair for a user to remove an unreferenced piece of information. I encourage you to reintroduce the information with relevant reference.

In fact, I have made several contributions to this entry - all in the interests of improving and providing information on this very important episode.

I recognize that you are a new user and am sorry if my edit appeared unfair. Rest assured, it was performed in good faith. Before proceeding you may wish to read about this policy. Victoriagirl 03:49, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

-so... you recommend I edit the page and remove all content that reads "citation needed"?? that'll be fairrrrrrrrr huh why don't you find another flavour of the day "episode" to play crossing guard on and let others who want to share with us all the insults that followed the initial injury that was imprisonment post what they want. and if I'm posting secondhand from them it's sure better than nothing

[edit] Attn MQ: Your changes

Hi; I should really finish my porridge and cottage cheese and banana, but saw your changes to my tweaks to the Japanese internment article. My rebuttals:

• Military and RCMP authorities felt the public's fears were unwarranted (although soon proven otherwise), but the public opinion quickly pushed the government to act.
  • To me, since I know the history of the actual war in BC fairly well (and not just about the internments, which is all anybody else seems to know or care about these days) and the facts are that there were spies, or at least potential spies in the form of some imperia loyalists (who Dr. Miyazaki alludes to in his book, and Joy Kogawa or David Suzuki were too young to be aware of) and there were threats to the coast from the Japanese navy, in various ways; it's why the old searchlight beacon on Woodward's, which you could see from Mission and Bellingham, got shut down and the Big W put up instead; the risk of air raids wasn't "unwarranted", and it wasn't negligible; but shipping attacks by subs and potential landings by saboteurs were encountered, though granted not to any great extent; and the fire balloons were, mercifully, a dud (would have only taken half a dozen to ignite the whole province these last tinder-dry years, though, huh?). What I'm getting at is the language of that sentence needs changing as it currently has a POV tone, as if the public were irrational or, more pointedly, paranoiac; that the authorities put out statements to calm those fears is not borne out by the record of their war preparations and the encounters with Japanese vessels on the coast. It's not like there wasn't a war going on, and in any war the military never tells the public what it needs to know, only what it wants it to know. And the fears were warranted, as I know some writers about the war have talked about. Not Joy Kogawa or David Suzuki, by the way. Point is that without what I'd put in there, or some other way of pointing out that the "unwarranted" statement by the authorities wasn't actually valid, though thankfully not to a truly perilous degree (there wasn't a Battle of Tofino or a Battle of Kitsilano, thankfully). So right now what you've got remains POV, and while my adjustment didn't have the right langauge and came over POV, so does yours.
• However, four of those camps were not internment camps but "relocation centres" in the Lillooet area which housed selected middle and upper class families and others not deemed as much a threat to public safety (see Masajiro Miyazaki).
  • The four camps were East Lillooet, Bridge River (better written up at Shalalth for now; I just created Bridge River and haven't had a lot of time with it...it's one of the places I'm from), and Minto City, and McGillivray Falls, British Columbia - all, like Tashme, just outside the 100-miles-from-the-coast exclusion/quarantine zone, McGillivray just outside it. But there was no barbed wire or even a curfew or a constable/guard at any of the se camps - no access to the outside was possible except via Lillooet, and from there only wagon roads up and down the Fraser in those days still - and the guys at McGillivray got hired by Frank Devine from D'Arcy to work at his mill and logging camp two miles up the Gates River from there - well inside the exclusion zone by about 5 miles, and they worked and lived there during the week for most of the war, taking the rail line (or boat) down Anderson Lake to stay with their families at McGillivray, which was an old railway resort. Skookum1 09:42, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Bridge River was a nicely-built 1920s model village for the power project, which was defunct/dormant at the time, although some of the single men and some poorer families there were housed in workmen's barracks; but most of the houses were really nice bungalows in the company style, and there were jobs to be had in Shalalth proper, about two miles away, for the transportation company (Evans Transportation Company, which I'll do an article for as "very notable" although no one's heard of it today; Minto City was another model company town, built only recently in 1936 with well-built houses and also what few jobs there were to be had in the area; the Bridge River houses only built in 1926 or so, those at McGillivray about 1920 (not as sturdy as those at Minto or Bridge). At Shalalth, the Japanese guys unloaded trucks bringing gold concentrate from Bralorne and Pioneer - and left them out on the covered freight platforms, unguarded, as was also the case with themselves. Nowhere to run - but also, as Miyazaki allude to, to get in the relocation centres some material success or professional standing was needed, and there may have been payoffs or investments of some kind, although he doesn't explain; he makes mention of a guy at Minto that was a suspected spy/loyalist and known to be an ardent Japanese nationalist, but says he doesn't know anything about him so cannot comment (can't remmber the guys' name- began with M); but from Minto to the outside, well, that's the hardest one of all (you have to be there to understand). Skookum1 09:42, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

East Lillooet was a camp, but also un-barbed although the shacks were the usual tarpaper things; but so were a lot of other people's places in that area, when not dug into the ground or hewn out of raw logs, as was the case with Indians and a lot of non-Indians as well. The East Lillooet Japanese easily got day passes to go into town (about four miles away) and all wound up working for the Chinese and others in their stores and in trades and on the newly-reflourishing market gardening industry there, which the Chinese had started and which had flourished during the building of the PGE - and as I think I've noted in your presence before, the Chinese welcomed the Japanese despite what was known to be going on in China; and many Japanese stayed on after the war, notably Dr. Miyazaki but also the Yada and Takemoto families and others; I met a woman up there, a native elder who's also part Norwegian, part Japanese, part Chinese, part Irish and I can't remmeber what else.....intermarriage on all sides was common in Lillooet, which gets described as a "racist town" but which Dr. Miyazaki spells out clearly "you can't be a racist and stay in Lillooet for long" - not back then anyway. So this long digression is about the reality of the relocation centres; they're in Dr. Miyazaki and so that same paragraph I'm putting in with a ref to him; if you want an explanation of what they are I'm sorry I don't have his book handy (it's in the SFU stacks) but if it's good enough for the Japanese Canadian National Congress or whatever it's called, it's good enough for me - the relocation centres are marked with a different flag/logo than the internment camps on a map somewhere on this site. Skookum1 09:42, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I know you think I'm a racist POV bastard with some of my edits; but I find articles such as this which dwell on p.c. analysis aren't very objective in their langauge or their content; syntax can prejudice meaning or be used to imply meanings, such as in the preivous language, even when it's not (consciosuly) intended. But this case is different from the "unwarranted/warranted" issue - it's factual, discussed at length in one of the sources which is set in four of them (actually five, because Miyazaki also served as doctor for the Taylor Lake Camp, which was somewhere within a long day's drive of Lillooet but isn't mentioned in any of the other things I've seen/read; seems to have been down by Aspen Grove/Princeton which is one possible location from BC basemap's index for several Taylor Lakes; in the book it almost sounded like the Cariboo but the Nicola country's similar. Whatever; the relocation centres were different from the internment camps, and there as also at New Denver, Lemon Creek, Taylor Lake, Sandon and elsewhere families were not separated from their husbands; not all of them; Tashme's the ugly one, the grunt camp where the single men and the lowclass elements were put to work on Highway 3, living in pouring rain and dark in camp that can only be compared to a stalag; likewise Lemon Creek, which was also constructed. but in the other cases - New Denver, Sandon, Bridge River, Minto, McGillivray - they were moved into abandoned towns, not tarpaper shacks, and into actual houses and other buildings, albeit in Sandon's and New Denver's case the buildings tended to be a good 30 years older than those at Bridge or Minto. Not everybody lived in tarpaper shacks behind barbed war, not everybody had their daddy taken away for weeks at a time, not everybody had other kids be mean to them for being Japanese; but Kogawa and Suzuki did, and this has tainted all their writing about the war with resentment - POVness. There is a serious credibility problem with books about the internment which omit mention of the Lillooet -area relocation centres; most even don't mention Dr. Miyazaki, even though he's an Order of Canada winner; I think the reason is because his autobiog isn't politically useful; rather qutie the contrary; same problem as with the omissions and distortions of Chinese Canadian history, which also abound in negativity and rankly incorrect generalizations and misrepresentations. Sure, I'm POV about this; it's in response to having my back up against the wall.....when I know that the wall is truth, and I'm defending it.Skookum1 09:42, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Yet Kogawa and Suzuki and other ethno-POVoid axe-grinding is presented as citable as if it weren't inherently POV to start with (especially when written by people who had only been children at the time, unlike Dr. Miyazaki who was an established professional and had an adult's sense of observation, and a doctor's cool - and there's not one little touch of hatred in his book, not one.....it's not literary in any way, more like a country doctor's notebook). But then Miyazaki, like the other Japanese there, was accepted by the local community and respected by him, and spent his life improving health and social conditions there, which is why his OC. Anyway, if I can find that JCNC (acronym sp?) map I'll be back with it; but the relocation centres were distinct from the internment camps and there's no need for a further cite for that than Dr. Miyazaki's book (what do you want - a page number????); if it's not in the other sources, and no mention of these camps/centres or their conditions is made in those other histories, I'm afraid I have to adjudge them as incomplete and faulty and misrrepresentative. Oh, and POV. Isn't citing POV sources also POV?Skookum1 09:32, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, I can see that your edits were in good faith, and didn't suggest otherwise, but the fact is, suggesting that the public's fears were or were not justified by the amount of spying that may have gone on is POV or at least, original research. Currently, the article doesn't say the fears weren't justified, only that the military didn't consider them so. If the CBC article isn't good enough evidence of that, I can find more. If you want to cite specific evidence that some (possible) spies were found, that's fine, but not the way you added it. You could write "A few spies were found, therefore the internment was justified" but I could just as easily write "Only a few spies were found, therefore the widespread internment was unjustified." It's POV to judge outright. In my opinion, the facts clearly speak for themselves in this case.

I also have no problem with you describing differences between the camps, or stating (if this is truly the case) that they were given different names at the time. If this is the case of them being named differently after the fact, it's silly. I've already been through a battle to have Concentration Camp and Internment Camp merged into a single article. There is no NPOV difference between the terms, or between Internment camp and relocation camp. Barbed wire or not, people were interned there by force, and not allowed to leave. It was a camp, not a prison. They were concentrated there, so they could all be equally called concentration camps, though obviously this has acquired a new meaning since the liberation of Nazi camps, so I wouldn't suggest it. On the other hand, simply trying to soften the image of the camps by using a different term is POV. If some were more comfortable than the others, just say that. The whole section on camp conditions is uncited and needs to be re-written anyway. You might as well put in some useful information. =) - TheMightyQuill 04:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Road projects

I added the working stuff in the paragraph on the exclusion zone as there were men that were working, and also those who were inside, or just on the edge, of the exclusion zone, and lots who worked on things other than road projects or sugar beet farms. But the maps in the cites just provided also show the areas of the road projects, which helped build the Blue River-Yellowhead Pass and Allison Pass and Eagle Pass stretches of highway; not sure where they're mentioned if they are but they were important to the province's post-war economy, as things turned out (slave labour is always economical to get megaprojects done with that would cost to much money in ordinary economics for public works...). If they're there, they were a big enough part of the situation to warrant at least a section heading; I'm just not sure where as yet; enough for tonight, didn't even mean to be at this page.....Skookum1

[edit] Self-supporting centres were not internment camps

You might want to think so, because of hte judgements passed on them and the definitions applied which enable people like you to state taht something that in its time had a speific name, apposite to "internment camp", is still an internment camp. EVEN though the national association of Japanese Canadians doesn't think so, and makes a POINT of listing them separately, and defining them separately. But apparently YOU know better than they do, or Dr. Miyazaki who experienced them did )and makes a point of distsnguishing the much worse conditions at Taylor Lake, wherever that was; and the NAJC defines and maps them separately [1][2]. It's nonsense like your position or pretense that "well, if they got cooped up then it says here in my dictionary that it's an internment camp. But if someone from one those places says it's NOT an internment camp, and provdes a cite from a veteran of it saying the same thing, and from the National Association of Japanese Canadians saying the same thing.....but you nkow better, and im my experince have been policing this article to maintain a POV exclusive of non-negaitve inforamtion, or what you think is non-neative information. In this case the meaning of a definintion, "an invititation to an edit war". Well, aside from knowing that I cited what I cited properly - but not good enough for you, and given that you obviously prefer and are ready to defend the politically-coreee tone of po-mo historicism. Why until I added it did the article's intro focus only on road camps qnd beet farmrs and mot metnionign whole towns like Greenwood, Bridge River, Minto and Sandon which had actual houses; this is in response to your edit comment, which I was able to see, but for now my glasses got lost on the bus so I'm typing this blind. Self-supporting centres were NOT internment camps, even though you need to think so. The triple cite I provided I could repeat here but it's laboriously to do when you're typing near-blind.....G'nite and you've given me yet another good reason to leave Wikipedia......too bad; you shoyuld open you mind, you might learn something.Skookum1 06:44, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

If you really want to hate me over this, have a read on this Rafe Mair apologia familias' in The Tyee, i.e. my debate with the editor in the forum; there were emails in the background after the last posts; we agreed to disagree, but Charlie Campbell (the ed.) is not an authority, noly somebody working from a styleguide and set of journalistic/political prejudices (like any jounralist); opinions such as his are not facts, except as expressions of opinion/judgement, given that there are opposing evidentiary material coming from prime sources (Miyazaki and the NAJC) which are obviously more authoritative and "encyclopedically valid" than journalistic/poiltical analysis, especially origating from the heavily politicized I.e. POV envirnoment of modern academia and journalism. You want toimpose a post-modern definition on a time that did not have those definitions, nor your values, and also to impose it on people who obviously know something more than you about it, "but you know better'> Fine, you get to own this page as I'm gone from wikipedia after next weekend. have fun rewriting history - everybvody does it. Some just do it with more integrity and objectivity than others...... Skookum1 06:52, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Dude, they were interned in a camp. They were concentrated in a camp. They were resettled in a camp. Any of these terms could be used accurately. There may have been defined differently in this case, but in general the words are synonyms. I have no problem with you citing the differences between camps, and saying "these were called internment camps and these were not." Nevertheless, if I call my home an internment camp, it doesn't make it so, and if I'm in a penitentury yet claim I'm not in prison, that doesn't make it so either. Stop making some big political deal out of this. I'm glad that in Miyazaki you managed to find a source that agrees with your POV so you can keep up your rants, but it's really beside the point. If you want to leave wikipedia because you don't agree with me and other users, fine, but don't blame it on this issue, because you're making it bigger than it needs to be. You condescending tone and suggestion that I "open my mind" is not appreciated, friend. Take care, TheMightyQuill 17:59, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

the source that "supports my POV" - otherwise known as the truth - is the National Assn of Jpanese Cdn website; Dr. Miyazaki is where I became aware of the distinction. But clearly so is the National Assoiation of Japanese Canadians. Condescending tone - REALL, given your patronizing snot about "my POV" when it's the NAJC's POV, and a Japanese Canadian OC winner's POV. This is a question of definitions, of citability. YOU can go "POV, POV< POV" all you want while enforcing your own POV; I've seen it before in other cases: you're pretrending to NPOV but you're not capable o being objective about sourdces.

Dude, they were interned in a camp. They were concentrated in a camp. They were resettled in a camp.

McGillivray Falls was not a camp, Bridge River was not a camp, Minto city was not a camp. None had guards, none had barbed wire, and while for example ()f many periopd sources yo'ure cleraly too superiot to have to read, since you eveidnetly prefer to read/cite materialz filtered through modern academic and p;litical prejudices) Dr. Miyazaki says "interned" he does not say "internment camp". But to heck with Miyazaki - the NAJC should be good enough, but apparently not because of your superior wisdom as to the miniing of the word "camp". Yeah, well, enjoy owning this page. I hope someone comes along who has time to dress down your arrogance and put things to right on this page; subtle sins of omission are not subltle at all to those who know what's been omitted; you're a POV patroller, is what you are, i.e. patrolling to enforced a POV< not enforce NPOV. I have 40 Lillooet-area articles to write this week before I'm gone, and another 80 in the same area to tidy up - perhaps you'd care to remove my anti-Japanese POV from Shalalth and Bridge River, British Columbia and Minto City, British Columbia, too? If I catch you changing "relocation centre" there to "internment camp".......oh, man, is that gonna cause a RfM, and I don't really have the time or energy to deal with such sophomoric stubbornness as you have over my time arond wiki repeatedly displayed; not as bad as certain others, but your one-time comment "I'm about the only friend you've got on Wikipedia" comes to mind - in all its glorious patronizing-ness......Skookum1 18:30, 21 April 2007 (UTC) Sources whic omit any metion of self-supporting centres are incomplete sources; sources that insist that the self-supporting centres were "concentration camps" or "intermnment camps" are making opinion statements, classificiation-judgements, and not referencing the actual contemporary classification/title sysytem, but rather imposing their own views and pretending they are fact. But "The opinions of ten fools do not add up to a fact".Skookum1 18:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)