Uprooted Again: Japanese Canadians Move to Japan After World War II
Nikkei National Museum ShopIn 1945, before the end of World War II, the Canadian government offered to "repatriate" any ethnic Japanese to Japan after the war ended, even Canadian-born British subjects. Although signing up for the move was voluntary, many felt pressured to agree. In 1946, fully a year after the end of the war, some 4000 Japanese Canadians travelled by ship to a Japan devastated by war. This deportation, especially of the Canadian-born, violated international law at the time.
The story of those who moved to Japan after the war is told for the first time in English. Basing his work on interviews with 25 adults uprooted from Canada to Japan, most of whom were teenagers in internment camps during the war, Tatsuo Kage writes of their struggles to survive and adapt in post-war Japan.