Japanese Canadians: Canada's Stuggle with Discrimination

1.) In Safekeeping, my thought about the narrators experience in the internment camps were terrible. He does not seem all that mad about getting his things sold off. I think he was more angry that the Canadian Government told them that they were going to safekeep there belongings but instead sold them off. It seems that all he wanted was the truth.

4.) The some Canadians were racist towards the Japanese because the were different and the Canadians were scared of what would happen happen, so they Canadian Government took control of the situation right away by sending them to an internment camp.

5.) The Canadians interned the Japanese because they were different. The Japanese had different facial structure from thiose of Canadians making it easier for them to intern them. The possible reason why the Government did not intern Canadians whose ancestries were that of other countries Canada was at war with because they did not look that different looking from the Canadians.

6.) I think the Candian Government should be responsible for compensating for the actions of previous generations for selling their belongings and not even giving them the money they got from selling the things back from them. Well I think for those Japanese whose ancestors who were interned in the camps and did not recieve any compensation should, and once again apologize for doing what they did then.

Story of 1920-1930

Living during the “Roaring twenties” and the “Dirty Thirties” was something else. I had five older brothers and I was the youngest. When my dad left for the war, my mom started to work because the employers needed employees, she started in the newspaper business the money was not much but it got us through. My oldest brother Josef, 20, also started working to help out our mom. After the war was over we waited and waited for our dad to return. Days then weeks then months passed he never did come home. It tore my mom apart. She had to give back the job because all the men came back and they had the right to work before the women. We barely had any money to buy anything, my other two brothers got very sick from ammonia, and nobody wanted a sick person working for them. My mom spent night crying and Josef spent his time trying to find a job. We got into this program were we had a house provided for us and we got enough money to last us a week. For some reason after a month we had to move to the Prairies, everything was going so well, I never understood why we had to leave but mom said we had to no questions asked. So mom, my four brothers, and I moved to Alberta. We moved into an old farm house it was not very nice, it was small cramped, two rooms a bathroom that was outside, a small broken up kitchen but we all managed. It was not as nice as our old house before the war started. My older brother was sent to a work camp, he wanted to come home but could not afford to, so the government sent him to a working camp, he said the work was hard, the food was terrible and the beds were infested with bugs. In 1935, Josef was one of the thousands of men that left the work camps and was on-to-Ottawa trek. On our side the farm suffered from harsh droughts and terrible sand storms that filled the window sills with sand and all our good soil just flew away. I remembered one day we were all outside playing when all of a sudden in the distance there was a sand storm approaching fast, mamma was yelling telling us all the get into the house fast, we all ran but Johnny was still in the potty mom ran back to the outhouse. I thought she would not make it back; Johnny was not a light kid to carry. I saw her running with the dust cloud closing in behind her, mom made it just in time; she slammed the door behind her. It was dark and hard to breathe. The next morning when the sand settled, we all boomed off the porch. Mom just collapsed on the porch, she just sat there staring into the distance we all just sat round her not knowing what to do. One day we all heard about the train to Ottawa was stopped in Regina and the men on it were attacked by the police, waiting for them. Josef was one of them, he got hurt bad but he said he would be o-Kay. I wondered if life would every just be o-Kay again.

Jay gill