Some Societal Mistakes Take Decades to Understand and Acknowledge
Some Societal Mistakes Take Decades to Understand and Acknowledge
Our virtue-signaling society cares much more about apologizing for our ancestors’ mistakes than our own.
Disastrous government overreaching policies sometimes take decades to acknowledge. Today I’d like to share an excerpt from my new book in which I document tragic events in Canada’s history when our government undertook unethical policies motivated by polls and not by science.
During World War 2 nearly our entire society accepted the unfair treatment and vilification of Japanese-Canadians despite the fact that intelligence agencies stated clearly that these people were not a threat to our country just because we at war against their country of origin.
After the war was over, most people secretly knew what we had done and allowed was immoral and unjust but to accept that would have been difficult to come to terms with, so the government tried to convince most Japanese-Canadians to simply leave the country.
Only future governments and future generations 40 years later were able to acknowledge the mistake. They had to acknowledged that of the 21,000 wrongly imprisoned, not one had been found to have committed a crime. But in the 1940s, encouraged by a narrative propagated by the mainstream media and certain politicians, over 90% of Canadians supported our policies.
We will most likely see this happen once again. It is not politically convenient to acknowledge mistakes. But most importantly, our virtue-signaling society cares much more about apologizing for our ancestors’ mistakes than our own.
Just because the majority supported the segregation policies over the last year, does not mean that they were right or ethical. It certainly does not mean that they will be viewed favorably by historians.
The majority of our country agreed with residential schools 100 years ago. The majority of our country agreed with racial segregation a 100 years ago. The majority of our country agreed with imprisoning innocent legitimate Canadians for years and separating them from their families 80 years ago. All because authorities told them it was for the “greater good”.
Excerpt from Chapter 3 of Unvaccinated: How Canada Turned to Hatred and Division
Chapter 3: Historical Precedents to Irrational Hatred and Segregation
Canadian Internment Camps During WW2
Many Canadians don’t fully appreciate the devastating decisions previous government authorities made in the interest of “public safety”. Most only think of the atrocities of the Nazis in Germany during World War 2 and only think of Canada as a good actor in the battle. But one of Canada’s worst historical public policy mistakes occurred during this period.
Between 1942 and 1949, the Canadian government forcibly removed 21,000 Canadians of Japanese descent from their homes and put them in internment camps. 60% of those affected were born in Canada and all of them were legitimate Canadian residents by today’s standards. After the 1941 attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor, Canada declared war on Japan along with the United States. Canadian residents started seeing Japanese-Canadians as a threat to their safety. They assumed all were spies or saboteurs. Even though the RCMP declared that they saw no evidence of sabotage or military threat from the Japanese-Canadians, politicians knew what their populace wanted. Politicians quickly jumped on opportunities to appease to their voters. As we saw in 2021-2022, political science took the front seat in decision making.[i]
In one instance, a Vancouver Sun journalist publicly warned an advisor to Prime Minister King that “We are under extraordinary pressure from our readers to advocate a pogrom [an organized massacre] of Japs (Japanese people).” So, it began. The measures that followed, similarly to the vaccination policies of 2021-22 were dictated by public opinion. [ii]
In January 1942, under political pressure, Prime Minister Mackenzie King ordered all adult males of Japanese ancestry that lived on the West Coast of Canada to be forcibly brought to labour camps. As the Canadian Encyclopedia explains, this would not put people’s segregation desires to rest: “such official action implied that there was an actual threat from Japanese Canadians. It thus heightened the fears of White people on the West Coast; it encouraged them to press for the removal of all Japanese-Canadians”. Similarly, to the debates around the unvaccinated, when governments started imposing some rules on this group, it implied that there was a legitimate threat which turned families, communities, and neighbours against each other. It all started with arbitrary actions by government authorities.
Japanese-Canadians were not a legitimate threat to our nation. Just like we know that all Afghan-Canadians were not a threat to our country when we declared war on that regime in the early 2000s. And just like we know that all Russian-Canadians didn’t agree with Vladimir Putin’s aggressive behaviour in 2022. The RCMP intelligence agencies and our own government knew that. But it was politically convenient, the media liked that narrative, and most of the population supported the idea of segregating this group during the tumultuous years of World War 2.
By February 1942, the calls to remove the Japanese from Canada only grew stronger and it forced the Prime Minister to take more measures. He declared that all remaining Japanese-Canadians on the West Coast be forcibly removed from their homes. Men and women were divided in camps and families were separated for several years. The Canadian government confiscated most of the property of these prisoners to finance the internment camps.
Even after the war ended, the government and the Canadian population didn’t realize or acknowledge the tragic mistake they had committed. It would have been too hard to bear or accept this level of guilt. Instead, beginning in 1945, the Canadian government presented Japanese-Canadians with two options. To resettle their families somewhere other than in British Columbia (where most of them had established their homes and communities) or volunteer to be repatriated to Japan. The Canadian Encyclopedia provides the following commentary on the strategy of the time: “Ottawa’s policy was designed to pressure Japanese Canadians into giving up their British subject status and leaving the country.” The post-war government knew that they had wronged this group, but the poorly treated Japanese-Canadians were clearly a political liability. Accepting that injustice would have had devastating political costs. Our leaders in 2022 faced the same predicament. When they finally started removing their vaccine segregation policies, they refused to acknowledge it was a failed experiment. Politicians continued to try and shun, discredit and shame unvaccinated Canadians because they continued to pose a threat to their political appearance.
It took 40 years for the Canadian people and its government to accept the mistake they made. In 1988, the Mulroney government finally apologized to the Japanese-Canadians who suffered through these unjustified policies of the 1940s. The government acknowledged that not even one of these prisoners had ever been charged with a war related crime. They acknowledged that we systematically imprisoned 21,000 Canadians, forced them into labour camps, separated them from their families, all because of public opinion and political motivations. [iii]
[i] Robinson, Greg. “Internment of Japanese Canadians.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 15 Feb. 2017, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/internment-of-japanese-canadians.
[ii] “Internment of Japanese Canadians.” Muslims in Calgary, 14 Nov. 2017, https://muslimsincalgary.ca/internment-of-japanese-canadians/.
[iii] “1988: Government Apologizes to Japanese Canadians .” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 22 Sept. 1988, https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/1988-government-apologizes-to-japanese-canadians.