Japanese Canadian Toronto

Toronto had only a small Japanese Canadian population before the Second World War, but that changed dramatically in its aftermath: the federal government had interned Japanese Canadians living on the British Columbia coast starting in 1942, seizing and selling their homes, farms and businesses, and after the war, rather than allowing internees to return to the coast, the government pushed them to disperse east of the Rockies. Toronto became one of the primary destinations for that forced resettlement, and its Japanese Canadian community grew rapidly through the late 1940s as a direct result.

Rebuilding, and a formal apology

Community members built new institutions from essentially nothing, founding organizations including the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre to preserve language, culture and community ties for a population that had been scattered and stripped of its prewar property. The federal government issued a formal apology and compensation to Japanese Canadians in 1988 for the wartime internment and dispossession, a redress campaign in which Toronto's Japanese Canadian community played a significant organizing role, decades after the forced relocation had first built the community in the city.

Sources

• The Canadian Encyclopedia — Japanese Canadians
• Wikipedia — Internment of Japanese Canadians

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