By dory cerny
The Three Pleasures Terry Watada Anvil Press
THE INTERNMENT of more than 21,000 Japanese- Canadians, most of them in B.C., during the Second World War is a known but largely under-acknowledged black mark in Canada’s history. Justified by the War Measures Act and the Japanese bombings of Pearl Harbor and Hong Kong, the mandatory evacuation of the Japanese-Canadian population from the West Coast of Canada to ghost towns and camps in the B.C. interior, farms in Alberta (where the men were subject to forced labour), and what amounted to concentration camps in Ontario is one of the most heinous examples of the abuse of power perpetrated by the government under the guise of protecting the citizenry (read: the white population) from the threat of “enemy aliens” during wartime.