The Triumph of Citizenship
The Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941-67
Description
Patricia E. Roy is the winner of the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award, Canadian Historical Association.
Patricia E. Roy examines the climax of antipathy to Asians in Canada: the removal of all Japanese Canadians from the BC coast in 1942. Canada ignored the rights of Japanese Canadians and placed strict limits on Chinese immigration. In response, Japanese Canadians and their supporters in the human rights movement managed to halt “repatriation” to Japan, and Chinese Canadians successfully lobbied for the same rights as other Canadians to sponsor immigrants. The final triumph of citizenship came in 1967, when immigration regulations were overhauled and the last remnants of discrimination removed.
Reviews
Patricia E. Roy’s two previous books on Anglo-Canadian treatment of the Japanese and Chinese in British Columbia, […] have established her reputation as a leading authority on the subject. The present study extends her inquiry into the tumultuous years of the Pacific War and up to 1967. […] no one has marshalled as much evidence from the political arena and the media to capture the cacophony of the expressed views and to discern the evolving direction as Roy has in this book. Her research in public archives and newspaper collections yields a most comprehensive assemblage of the voices of government leaders and politicians, and also of local reactions not only across the country but also community by community across British Columbia.
- Wing Chung Ng, University of Texas at San Antonio