Sergeant Masumi Mitsui and The Japanese Canadian War Memorial

Sergeant Masumi Mitsui and the Japanese Canadian War
Memorial
Lyle Dick
The Canadian Historical Review, Volume 91, Number 3, September 2010,

pp. 435-463 (Article)
Published by University of Toronto Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/can.2010.0013
For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/393959
[ Access provided at 9 Oct 2020 00:26 GMT from Goteborgs universitet ]

LYLE DICK
Sergeant Masumi Mitsui and the

Japanese Canadian War Memorial
Abstract: For much of the twentieth century, military commemoration operated

in a context of pan-Canadian remembrance. This emphasis overlooked the groups
outside the mainstream that pursued their own goals through military service and
commemoration, which sometimes differed from and challenged the hegemony
of national collective memory. A case in point is the Japanese Canadian War
Memorial in Vancouver and its intersections with the military service of Masumi
Mitsui and other Japanese-Canadian soldiers of the First World War. After the
war, the Japanese-Canadian veterans fought for the right to vote in provincial
elections, which they eventually secured in 1931, thereby becoming the first Asian
Canadians to attain the franchise in British Columbia. The veterans’ wartime
service could not prevent anti-Japanese-Canadian sentiment before and during
the Second World War, leading to the seizure of their properties and their forced
removal from the coast. The article foregrounds Mitsui’s return to Vancouver in
1985 as the honoured guest in a ceremony to relight the lantern at the Japanese
Canadian War Memorial. Drawing on insights of the philosopher of history Walter
Benjamin, this history is approached in light of Benjamin’s account of storytelling
traditions and the ‘now-time’ of historical agency.
Keywords: commemoration, collective memory, Japanese Canadians, First
World War, civil liberties
Résumé : Durant une grande partie du vingtième siècle, les cérémonies commémora-
tives militaires partout au Canada s’inscrivent dans un contexte de remémoration
pancanadienne. Or, ces cérémonies excluaient les groupes qui n’appartenaient pas à
la culture dominante. Ces derniers poursuivaient des objectifs qui leur étaient propres
tant durant leur service militaire qu’au moment des manifestations commémoratives.
D’ailleurs, leurs objectifs pouvaient parfois se distinguer et voir même remettre en ques-
tion l’hégémonie la mémoire collective pan-canadienne. Un bel exemple de cela est
le Monument aux morts des canadiens d’origine japonaise de Vancouver et ce qu’il a
signifié pour Masumi Mitsui et d’autres soldats japonais-canadiens de la Première
Guerre mondiale. Après la guerre, les anciens combattants canadiens d’origine japonaise
ont livré bataille pour obtenir le droit de vote aux élections provinciales – un droit qu’ils
The Canadian Historical Review 91, 3, September 2010

6 University of Toronto Press Incorporated
doi: 10.3138/chr.91.3.435
436 The Canadian Historical Review
ont éventuellement obtenu en 1931. Ils sont ainsi devenus les premiers Canadiens
d’origine asiatique à obtenir le droit de vote en Colombie-Britannique. Le service mili-
taire en temps de guerre des anciens combattants n’a pas pu empêcher le développement
d’un sentiment anti-japonais-canadien avant et pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale et
qui a donné lieu à la saisie de leurs biens et à leur déportation de la côte. L’article met au
premier plan le retour de Mitsui à Vancouver en 1985 à titre d’invité d’honneur à une
cérémonie où on allait rallumer la lanterne du Monument aux morts. Inspirés des
réflexions de l’historien philosophe Walter Benjamin, cette étude établit le rapport entre
les traditions des conteurs et ce qu’il appelle le ‘now time of historical agency’.
Mots clés : commémoration, mémoire collective, japonais-canadiens, Première
Guerre mondiale, libertés civiles
On 2 August 1985, Sergeant Masumi Mitsui, aged ninety-eight and

one of the last surviving Japanese-Canadian veterans of the First
World War, rose from his wheelchair to place a wreath at the Japanese
Canadian War Memorial in Vancouver’s Stanley Park.1 He was there
as the honoured guest in a ceremony to relight the memorial’s lantern
that had been extinguished when Japanese Canadians were forcibly
removed from the coast in 1942. His gestures, documented in a series
of photographs by Tamio Wakayama, suggested a depth of personal
history embodied in this single act of commemoration. In one image,
taken immediately after laying the wreath, the old soldier stood strik-
ingly erect in a full military salute, while other photographs showed
him with a subdued expression or wiping away tears with a handker-
chief (fig. 1). Few of those present could have imagined what he had
witnessed, from the brutality of combat in the First World War, to the
pride of military honours, to the frustration and elation of human
rights struggles between the wars, to the crushing rejection by his
country during the Second World War. Now, nearly seventy years after
leading his troops into battle, Mitsui was leading a solemn renewal
of Japanese-Canadian remembrance. To a significant degree, his life
reflected the trajectory of Japanese-Canadian experience in the twen-
tieth century. His role as a soldier and veteran, culminating in this
last act of honouring fallen soldiers in 1985, serves as an example of
the power of collective memory and the commemorative process in
Canada.
The Japanese-Canadian soldiers’ participation in the First World
War, their political activism in the interwar period, and the comme-
moration of their military service are remarkable yet largely forgotten
1 Tamio Wakayama, ‘W.W.I. Memorial Shines Again,’ Greater Vancouver Japanese

Canadian Citizens Association Bulletin 27, no. 9 (Sept. 1985): 20–6.
Intersections of National, Cultural, and Personal Memory 437
figure 1 Sergeant Masumi Mitsui saluting at the relighting ceremony at

the Japanese Canadian War Memorial, assisted by Frank Kamiya, chair of
the War Memorial Restoration Committee, Japanese Canadian Citizens
Association, Vancouver, 2 August 1985.
Photograph courtesy Tamio Wakayama, Vancouver.
stories.2 These narratives, particularly those of commemoration, can

be interpreted through the scholarship of Maurice Halbwachs, the
sociologist who first coined the term collective memory in the early
twentieth century and who emphasized the social construction of
memory.3 However, the Halbwachs school leaves little space for
individuals in the study of social memory.4 The case of Sergeant
Mitsui demonstrates the importance of considering both ‘collective
memory’ – public discourses about the past as a unified entity – and
‘collected memory’ – the aggregation of individual memories.5 As
elaborated by the philosopher of dialogism Mikhail Bakhtin, memory
2 The only published account dealing substantially with this story is Roy Ito, We
Went to War: The Story of the Japanese Canadians Who Served during the First and
Second World Wars (Stittsville, on: Canada’s Wings, 1984).
3 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. Francis J. Ditter Jr and Vida
Yazdi Ditter (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1980).
4 Wulf Kansteiner, ‘Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of
Collective Memory Studies,’ History and Theory 41, no. 2 (2002): 181.
5 See Jeffrey K. Olick, ‘Collective Memory: The Two Cultures,’ Sociological Theory
17, no. 3 (1999): 338–41, 345.
is filtered through a distinctive set of voices and experiences compris-

ing the consciousness of each individual. While collective in that it
is formed in dialogical interaction with other utterances or memory
traces, the dialogical character of memory also imbues it with an
indispensable ingredient of agency.6 My approach also has affinities
to the work of Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, who prefer the term
collective remembrance to acknowledge the agency of social groups that
come together to remember.7
Another methodological issue is that the term collective memory has
been applied to the shared memory of widely diverging social group-
ings of varying size and complexity, from small, largely integrated
communities to diverse nation-states. Historian Peter Novick has
suggested that the concept works best when applied to organic,
homogenous communities in which consciousness changes slowly,
as opposed to large modern societies characterized by fragmentation
and rapid change.8 This formulation echoes distinctions drawn by
the German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin between the long-
standing traditions of storytellers and information-processing practices
of the modern era. Benjamin contrasted oral narrative performance
incorporating audience participation in the production of meaning
with modern textual transmission, such as historical writing, a largely
isolated activity unconnected to a group or traditions of remem-
brance.9 In seeking to explain the past, history has removed itself
from experience, while storytelling invites its audiences to draw on
their experiences in generating their own understandings of the past
and its significance.10
6 For elaborations of dialogical concepts of identity and agency, see Mikhail M.

Bakhtin, ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes toward a
Historical Poetics,’ in The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, 254–58
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981); and Michael Holquist, Dialogism:
Bakhtin and His World, rev. ed. (London: Routledge, 2005), 158–70. On
memory, see also M.M. Bakhtin, ‘Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity,’ in
Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays, ed. Michael Holquist and
Vadim Liapunov, 106-12 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).
7 Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, eds., ‘Setting the Framework,’ in War and
Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, 6–39 (Cambridge, uk: Cambridge
University Press, 1999).
8 Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999),
267–8.
9 Walter Benjamin, ‘The Storyteller,’ in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans.
Harry Zohn, 83–110 (New York: Schocken, 1969); John Joseph McCole, Walter
Benjamin and the Antinomies of Tradition (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press,
1993), 275–7.
10 Ryohei Kaguera, ‘Collective Memory and the Redemption of the Individual
Experience in Walter Benjamin,’ InterCulture 5, no. 3 (Oct. 2008): 171–80.
In Canadian historiography, the major study of collective memory

of the First World War is Jonathon Vance’s Death So Noble, which
examined currents in war remembrance cutting across ethocultural,
class, gender, and regional lines, expressing the ‘unifying influence
of the myth of the war.’11 Acknowledging that ‘Nordic’ or ‘Anglo-
Saxon’ elites appropriated this myth, Vance argued that it resonated
with other communities ‘because it answered a need, explained the
past, or offered the promise of a better future.’12 His account effec-
tively treated the commonalities of the dominant culture’s remem-
brance of the war, although, apart from First Nations issues, it did
not extensively address commemorative practices whose form and
content diverged from the unifying myth. In this regard, the American
historian John Bodnar has drawn an important distinction between
the unofficial or vernacular memory of local groups and official
memory as sanctioned by the state.13 Rather than seek local expres-
sions of an official or hegemonic remembrance of the First World
War, this article explores vernacular commemoration by an ethno-
cultural community that contributed to Canada’s war effort for reasons
beyond pan-Canadian patriotism and Anglo-imperial solidarity.
In keeping with the myth, historians have largely treated the
Canadian Expeditionary Force (cef) as a pan-Canadian – and by
default, Euro-Canadian – army.14 The omission of reference to the
Japanese-Canadian soldiers’ role was acutely felt by the historian Roy
Ito, who wrote of his experiences of Remembrance Day while a pupil
in a Vancouver school in the interwar period. He recalled, ‘We were
not a part of Canadian history; we were intruders in a white man’s
province. It seemed we had contributed nothing to Canada.’15 While
the contexts of social and political exclusion have certainly changed
dramatically since that era, the contributions of visible minorities are
11 Jonathan Vance, Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War
(Vancouver: ubc Press, 1997), 11.
12 Ibid., 266–7.
13 John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism
in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 1992).
14 See, for example, Ted Barris, Victory at Vimy: Canada Comes of Age, April
9–12, 1917 (Toronto: Allen, 2007); Geoffrey Hayes, Andrew Iarocci, and Mike
Bechthold, eds., Vimy Ridge: A Canadian Reassessment (Waterloo, on: Wilfrid
Laurier University Press, 2007). Tim Cook’s creditable recent book on the cef is
apparently the first academic military history to mention the Japanese-Canadian
soldiers, albeit briefly. Tim Cook, Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great
War, 1917–1918 (Toronto: Penguin, 2008), 2:608.
15 Roy Ito, Stories of My People: A Japanese Canadian Journal (Hamilton, on: S-20
and Nisei Veterans Association, 1994), 91.
still under-represented in Canada’s military historiography.16 Japanese

Canadians have also not figured prominently in Canada’s commemo-
rative sites such as war memorials and cenotaphs, or in the paintings
and other visual art representations produced by Canadian artists
during and after the war.17 Admitting that the majority of Canada’s
soldiers were of northern European ethnicity, the virtual omission of
other contributing cultures has produced a distorted picture of the
people who actually served Canada in the First World War, contributing
to a commemorative imbalance up to the present.
The decision to commemorate is a profoundly political act, and this
is certainly the case with war memorials. Decisions to erect monu-
ments, where to place them, what imagery to include or leave out,
the kinds of ceremonies organized for these places and the determina-
tion of who should participate – all speak to the political objectives of
the groups sponsoring these memorials or staging these events.18
Acknowledging that there is a larger context of wartime service and
commemoration, my preference here is to focus on the Japanese-
Canadian soldiers’ military, political, and commemorative activities
as revealed in their own words, expressing their aspirations and
memorializing their struggles. This smaller scale of study is in keep-
ing with some recent studies of local experience of the First World
War in Canada, showing the distinctive responses of communities
and minorities that sometimes intersected with but also diverged
from the goals of the historically dominant cultures and official
voices.19
Three levels of memory shaped Japanese Canadians’ experience
and remembrance of the First World War: national memory organized
in relation to the nation-state, the cultural memory of the much
smaller community of Japanese Canadians, and the personal memories
of veterans such as Masumi Mitsui. In keeping with Benjamin’s
16 Several solid works on the military service of visible minority soldiers are
seldom referenced in general works: Fred Gaffen, Forgotten Soldiers (Penticton,
bc: Theytus Books, 1985); Roy Ito, We Went to War; Calvin W. Ruck, The Black
Battalion, 1916–1920: Canada’s Best Kept Military Secret (Halifax: Nimbus, 1987).
17 Dean Oliver and Laura Brandon, Canvas of War: Painting the Canadian
Experience, 1914 to 1945 (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre / Canadian War
Museum, 2000).
18 See Alex King, Memorials of the Great War in Britain: The Symbolism and Politics
of Remembrance (Oxford: Berg, 1998).
19 Ian Miller, Our Glory and Our Grief: Torontonians and the Great War (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2002); Robert Rutherdale, Hometown Horizons:
Local Responses to Canada’s Great War (Vancouver: University of British
Columbia Press, 2004).
concept of storytelling, I will narrate the soldiers’ experiences sequen-

tially as they unfolded, using their own words and stories, so that
readers might be better positioned to understand what these events
meant to them and their community at various historical junctures. To
draw out the intersections between the different currents of memory, I
also propose to rely on Benjamin’s philosophy of history as it relates to
historical time. In contrast to the ‘homogeneous empty time’ of his-
toricism, predicated on an arbitrary separation of the present from
the past, Benjamin argued that historical enquiry must be rooted in
the ‘now.’20 Taking his cue from the medium of film, he proposed
arresting the flow of narrative to make visible the operative social and
political relations in the moment, thereby rescuing the past from his-
torical amnesia. Here I will attempt to freeze-frame the narrative at
key junctures to fuse the past with the present, inviting readers to
stop periodically to contemplate these events in the historical ‘now.’21
racial exclusions and recruitment
For Japanese Canadians, a significant thread of collective memory was

their shared experience of racial exclusion from full participation in
British Columbia society from the arrival of Manzo Nagano, the first
documented Japanese immigrant to Canada, in 1877, to the removal
of the last racial restrictions on their civil liberties in 1949.22 At
an early date Japanese Canadians were barred from participation
in various professions and vocations, and when they focused their
energies on a few industries, such as fishing, farming, and timber
extraction, their successes met with backlashes from Euro-Canadian
competitors in the same sectors, prompting the provincial govern-
ment to enact a succession of restrictions to further limit their involve-
ment in the economy.23 The economic barriers were accompanied by
20 Philippe Simay, ‘Tradition as Injunction: Benjamin and the Critique of the

Historicisms,’ in Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin, 137–55
(London: Continuum, 2005).
21 Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History,’ in Illuminations,
253–64; Werner Hammacher, ‘ ‘‘Now’’: Walter Benjamin on Historical Time,’
in Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin, 38–68; Kia Lindroos,
Now-Time / Image-Space: Temporalization in Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy of
History and Art (Jyvaskyla, Finland: SoPhi, University of Jyvaskyla, 1998).
22 Ito, Stories of My People, 9.
23 The ordinances and orders-in-council of the British Columbia government
restricting economic activity by Japanese residents are summarized in file 1413,
vol. 1386, series G-1, RG25, External Affairs Records, Library and Archives
Canada (lac), Ottawa.
political obstacles to citizenship, especially racial exclusions in the

province’s Provincial Elections Act denying them the right to vote.24
Anti-Asian sentiment culminated in the 1907 riots, when Japanese
and Chinese individuals and businesses in Vancouver were attacked
by a large mob of angry Euro-Canadians. At least sixty Japanese-
Canadian businesses were ransacked in the riots, the subject of a royal
commission headed by W.L. Mackenzie King.25
For leaders of the Japanese-Canadian community, the 1907 riots
were symptomatic of problems that would continue to plague their
community so long as they were denied political rights. Notwithstand-
ing Tomekichi Homma’s lack of success in challenging the racial
restrictions in the Provincial Elections Act around 1900,26 the outbreak
of the First World War presented Japanese Canadians with another
chance to win citizenship rights, this time through military service.
Efforts to enlist began spontaneously, as several Japanese Canadians
quickly sought out recruitment centres set up in British Columbia,
only to be rejected by the militia authorities. Learning of their rejec-
tion, Yasushi Yamazaki, editor of Tairiku Nippo, a Japanese-language
newspaper, and president of the Canadian Japanese Association (cja),
placed an advertisement on 15 August 1914 to seek potential volunteer
soldiers.27 The cja wired Prime Minister Robert Borden to offer the
services of these volunteers but the reply was not very encouraging
and so the committee decided to defer the matter.28 Yamazaki and
his colleagues revived the idea in late 1915 and arranged for military
training of 171 Japanese volunteers between January and May 1916
(fig. 2). Their offer of a Japanese battalion was ultimately rejected
by the federal Cabinet, which expressed similar ambivalence towards
24 J.A. Laponce, ‘Ethnicity and Citizenship as Generators of Each Other: The

Canadian Case,’ in Ethnicity and Citizenship: The Canadian Case, ed. J.A.
Laponce and William Safran (London: Cass, 1996), 10, 18–20; Mitsuo Yesaki,
Sutebusuton: A Japanese Village on the British Columbia Coast (Richmond, bc:
Peninsula, 2003), 35–6.
25 On the Vancouver riot, see W.L. Mackenzie King, Report by W.L. Mackenzie
King . . . Commissioner Appointed to Investigate into the Losses Sustained by the
Japanese Population of Vancouver, B.C. on the Occasion of the Riots in That City
in September 1907 (Ottawa: Dawson, 1908); Howard Hiroshi Sugimoto, Japanese
Immigration, the Vancouver Riots, and Canadian Diplomacy (New York: Arno,
1978).
26 Andrea Geiger, ‘Pioneer Issei: Tomekichi Homma’s Fight for the Franchise,’
Nikkei Images 8, no. 1 (2003): 1–6.
27 Miyoko Kudo, Kiiroi Heishi Tachi (Yellow Soldiers), trans. Stan Fukawa (Tokyo:
Kobunsha, 1983).
28 ‘Canada’s Volunteer Soldiers,’ Kanada Doho Hatten Shi (1917), trans. Stan
Fukawa (Bankuba: Tairiku Nippo Sha, 1909–24), 2:86–7; Ito, We Went to War,
9–15.
figure 2 The Canadian Japanese Volunteer Corps on the date it was

disbanded, 11 May 1916, Vancouver. Masumi Mitsui is in the second row,
fifth from the left.
94/70.008, Ken and Rose Kutsukake Collection, Japanese Canadian
National Museum, Burnaby, bc.
prospective recruits of other visible minorities, including African-

Canadian and First Nations volunteers.29 The subsequent story of the
Japanese Canadians’ enlistment followed a series of twists and turns.
Partly as a result of the resourcefulness of Yamazaki and the recruits,
and also other factors, including a less racialized context in Alberta,
many were eventually able to enlist in the cef in battalions based
in that province, and that opened the door to recruitment in other
provinces.30
Yamazaki’s objectives were avowedly to promote military service
to earn citizenship rights, but why did the young Japanese-Canadian
29 James W. St G. Walker, ‘Race and Recruitment in World War I: Enlistment of

Visible Minorities in the Canadian Expeditionary Force,’ Canadian Historical
Review 52, no. 1 (1989): 1–26.
30 See the correspondence in file 99-4-57, vol. 4642, and file 448-14-262,
vol. 4740 (1), RG24, National Defence Records (ndr), lac.
recruits volunteer? We cannot know all the motivations at play,

although financial necessity was an obvious factor. As members of
an excluded minority, many were confined to low-paying work in
the natural resource or service sectors and others were unemployed.
However, if we refer to the reported words of the recruits, it is clear
that gainful employment was not their only motivation. At public
meetings in Vancouver and New Westminster in December 1915 and
at Steveston in January 1916 the organizers Sakamoto, Matsuede, and
Yoshie, and recruits Kumagawa and Ishihara asserted that while
the strengthening of Canada’s war efforts was the ‘primary aim,’
they hoped that prospective military service would gain them recog-
nition as Canadians and ‘help lessen discrimination against future
Japanese.’31
At another recruitment gathering, Iku Kumagawa stated, ‘Chivalry
is an essential virtue of us Japanese. We come to the aid of the weak
and are fearless before the powerful. Now we have an excellent oppor-
tunity to show that in both spirit and actions we are not inferior to
white people. Until now, Japanese Canadians have not been treated
well here. But this [volunteering] will put future provincial govern-
ments in a position where they cannot deny Japanese their rights.
As we look to the future as Japanese are establishing their place in
Canada, we have no choice but to rise and meet the challenge.’32
When the intended Japanese battalion was disbanded on 11 May
1916 following its formal rejection by the Borden government, the
volunteers persisted under the banner of the Canadian Japanese
Volunteers Unit (Canada Nihonjin Giyuudan) (fig. 2). Their enun-
ciated principles were ‘voluntary service’ and ‘respecting the spirit
of chivalry.’ They drafted a constitution, which asserted, ‘The 200
men go not only as soldiers to fight in the Canadian war. They go to
sacrifice themselves in the battle to achieve rights here at home . . .
The question of franchise in British Columbia is still not settled. The
sacrifice of these men is to break this barrier.’33
31 ‘Giyuhei excerpts and English translations,’ ‘1915’ (summary narrative by Roy

Ito), 1, Roy Ito Collection, series 2, Material Related to Japanese Canadian
History, 2001/04.02.010, Japanese Canadian National Museum Archives
(jcnm), Burnaby, bc.
32 Kaye Kishibe, ‘Japanese-Canadian Volunteers of the First World War,’ trans.
Kaye Kishibe, unpublished, 2007, 11–12.
33 Translated extract in The Japanese Canadians: A Dream of Riches, 1877–1977
(Toronto: Japanese Canadian Centennial Project, 1978), 40; Kishibe, ‘Japanese-
Canadian Volunteers,’ 23.
Virtually all of the recruits were first-generation immigrants who

had attended school in Japan following the issuance of the Imperial
Rescript on Education in 1890, an oath of allegiance that Japanese stu-
dents were obliged to recite ritually. Among other principles, students
pledged to ‘advance public good and promote common interests’ and
‘should emergency arise, offer yourselves courageously to the State.’34
Many volunteers also came from samurai families, a core component
of the Imperial Japanese Army. In Canada the same issei (first genera-
tion) volunteers who had pledged this oath while still pupils in Japan
framed their prospective enlistment in the cef in terms of fulfilling
an obligation to both Canada and Japan, which was at the time allied
to Britain, and hence, Canada. Asked much later why he enlisted,
Masumi Mitsui replied, ‘I went because I believed that it would
be for the benefit of Canada and for the benefit of Japan.’35 In
their expressed devotion to both countries, the Japanese Canadians
differed from both their former compatriots in Japan, for whom
Shinto became inseparable from the expansionist Japanese state, and
the Anglo-Canadian soldiers in the cef, who closely identified with
Britain and Anglo-Canadian nationalism.36
The recruits knew the risks involved in military service in the ‘Great
War.’ On 22 June 1916, just before their departure for Europe, Iku
Kumagawa, Noburu Murukami, and Teikichi Shichi sent a telegram
to Yamazaki: ‘To our beloved Japanese Canadian friends – we are
leaving to cross the seas to the battle front. Farewell. We will do our
best for Canada and for the Japanese people. We are leaving knowing
full well that many of us will not be returning.’37 Their words were
prescient: of these three men, Shichi was an early casualty, killed on
the battlefield in October 1916, while Kumagawa died in action in
January 1917. Their words signified their preparedness to give their
lives to help advance the rights of their ethnocultural community.
the japanese canadians’ service on the western front

Ultimately 222 Japanese Canadian recruits enlisted and served with
the cef on the Western Front of the war; the eventual breakdown
34 ‘The Imperial Rescript on Education in Japan’ (Kyoiku ni kansuru Chokugo),
trans. and qtd in Helen Hardacre, Shinto# and the State, 1868–1988 (Princeton,
nj: Princeton University Press, 1991), 121–2.
35 Kudo, Kiiroi Heishi Tachi.
36 Meirion and Susie Harries, Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial
Japanese Army (New York: Random House, 1991); Mark Howard Moss,
Manliness and Militarism: Educating Young Boys in Ontario for War (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2001), 2–3.
37 Telegram, 22 June 1916, handwritten trans., ‘Giyuhei excerpts,’ jcnm.
by province of enlistment was: Alberta, 169; British Columbia, 28;

Ontario, 12; Saskatchewan, 10; Quebec, 2; and Manitoba, 1. Of these,
the great majority were recruits from bc who nevertheless enlisted in
the cef in Alberta because of the racial barriers on the coast. Among
the recruits, the cja trained 171 men, all of whom were sent to Europe
by December 1916. Once there, they were redistributed into units that
included the 9th, 10th, 50th, and 52nd battalions.38
On arrival at the Western Front, they soon confronted other
obstacles – the anti-Asian prejudices of other soldiers, and their
commanders’ preconceptions that they were unfit for battle. Masumi
Mitsui, who arrived in France on 29 January 1917 with six other
Japanese-Canadian recruits, later recalled that at first white soldiers
abused him for being Asian but ‘at the front, there was no time for
such behaviour.’39 When, on 19 March 1917, an additional twenty-two
Japanese-Canadian recruits were added to the eleven already serving
with the 10th Battalion, its commander Lieutenant-Colonel D.M.
Ormond was vexed. He protested, ‘From three months experience
with 11 japanese, I do not consider them to be satisfactory rein-
forcements and ask for them to be transferred.’ Two weeks later he
reiterated his concerns, asserting that the Japanese Canadians were
too small in stature, unable to carry loads comparable to Anglo-Saxon
troops, and lacking an adequate understanding of English.40 On
7 April, only two days before the commencement of the major battle
at Vimy, he again wrote, ‘It is my intention to have them returned to
the base or england at the earliest possible moment. Fill cee [sic] up
with canadians to replace all japs.’41
Ormond’s request fell on deaf ears. All available troops were needed
to fight in this critical engagement of the Canadian Expeditionary
Force, and the Japanese-Canadian soldiers fought in the Battle of
Vimy Ridge and most other battles on the Western Front in 1917 and
1918. Ormond was mistaken in his initial negative judgment of their
combat readiness, but his consternation over their English-language
capacities reflected a legitimate concern. His eventual solution was to
38 Ito, We Went to War, 41; Yasushi Yamazaki, Tairiku Nippo, Vancouver, to Col
Duff-Stuart, Victoria, bc, 2 Dec. 1916, file 99-4-57, vol. 4642, RG24, ndr, lac.
39 Kudo, Kiiroi Heishi Tachi, 179–201: Naruse Ranizo, letter, 6 Mar. [1917],
‘Giyuhei excerpts,’ jcnm.
40 Memoranda of D.M. Ormond, O.C., 10th Canadian Battalion to hq, 2nd
Canadian Infantry Brigade, 21 Mar. 1917 and 2 Apr. 1917, Army Book no. 41,
folder 4, vol. 4071, series iii, C3, Militia and Defence Records (mdr), RG9, lac.
41 Ormond to Maj. A.J. Thorson, 7 Apr. 1917, Army Book no. 41, folder 4,
vol. 4071, series iii, C3, mdr, RG9, lac.
place all the Japanese recruits in the 10th Battalion under a single
commander in the field who was fluent in English – Private Masumi
Mitsui. Mitsui was in many respects representative of Japanese
recruits in the cef. Born in 1887 into a military family in Kokura,
Japan (present-day Kitakyushu on Kyu#shu# Island), he emigrated
to Canada in 1908 and became a head waiter at Victoria’s Union
Club. Beyond fluency in English, he also displayed strong leader-
ship skills.42 These stood him in good stead when he led thirty-five
Japanese Canadians of the 10th Battalion into the bloody Battle of
Hill 70, after which he was awarded the Military Medal for leadership,
bravery in battle, and assistance to the wounded on the battlefield43
(figure 3).
In separate accounts Sachimaro Morooka and Victor Wheeler, a
signaller with the 50th Battalion, explained why infantry commanders
held the Japanese-Canadian soldiers in such high regard – they
considered them fearless in combat.44 At Vimy, several Japanese
Canadians assumed leadership within their companies. In a letter
dated 10 April, the second day of the Vimy operation, Eiji Nagai of
the 52nd Battalion reported, ‘The observation group was always led
by a Japanese because of their excellent reputation. Shoji was head of
a machine gun group with 6 Japanese, Murakami head of a group
with 11 Japanese which led [the] charge group, 4 Japanese in [the]
grenade group.’ Writing of their advance on 10 April 1917, Yasukichi
Saito reported that his unit had captured the high point of the ridge:
‘The company commander congratulated us, saying, ‘‘The Japanese
have fought well.’’ The battalion commander told us he was very
pleased with the battalion. No one is calling us Japs anymore.’45
42 ‘Masumi Mitsui,’ 192nd Battalion, Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force,

attestation paper no. 898559; box 6268-49, accession 1992–93/166, cef
Personnel Files, RG150, lac; interview with Roy Kawamoto by Lyle Dick,
Kelowna, bc, 10–11 Oct. 2006; and interview with Emiko Kuwabara, George
Mitsui, and David Mitsui by Lyle Dick, Hamilton, on, 20 Nov. 2006, Parks
Canada, Western and Northern Service Centre, Vancouver.
43 Lt-Col D.M. Ormond, Commanding, 10th Battalion, to Headquarters, 2nd
Canadian Infantry Brigade, ‘Operations Vicinity of Hill 70, 14/18 August 1917,’
5; appendix 28, ‘Appendix ‘‘B’’ to Operations of 15th to 17th August 1917,’ sheet
2; and ‘No. 898559. Private Masumi Mitsui’ (citation), pt 1, file 376, appendix
29, vol. 4920, 10th Canadian Infantry Battalion War Diary, Aug. 1917, series
III-D-3, RG9, mdr, lac.
44 Ito, We Went to War, 55; Victor Wheeler, The 50th Battalion in No Man’s Land
(Calgary: Alberta Historical Resources Foundation, 1980), 122.
45 Letter from Shinkichi Hara to his brother, 24 May [1917], and letter from Nagai
Eiji, 10 Apr. [1917], ‘Giyuhei excerpts,’ jcnm; Ito, We Went to War, 57.
figure 3 Japanese-Canadian soldiers of the 10th Canadian Infantry

Battalion, France, ca. 1917. Masumi Mitsui, section commander,
but still a private at this point, far left.
Photograph courtesy Lieutenant-Colonel Roy Kawamoto, Kelowna, bc.
The soldiers’ correspondence documented the heavy price they paid

while proving themselves on the battlefield. Katsuji Nakashima of the
52nd Battalion reported on the action at Vimy: ‘We saw the dead – the
enemy and ours. As we passed by the shattered bodies of our men,
although we knew it was for the defence of our country, we felt
sorry.’46 Also in the 52nd Battalion, Sainosuke Kubota wrote of the
devastating losses of Japanese Canadians at Vimy, ‘It was very trying.
The Corps had been reduced by half. There were many Japanese
Canadian casualties.’47 In the 10th Battalion, in late 1917 Masumi
Mitsui reported that within his 11th Platoon, sixteen Japanese
Canadians had been killed, seventeen had been wounded or invalided
and returned to Canada, five or six were in hospital in England, and
only seven soldiers remained. His close friend Kumakichi Oura had
46 Ito, We Went to War, 47.
47 ‘Sainosuke Kubota’ (trans. of Kubota’s reminiscences), folder 3A, box 7,
Japanese Canadian Research Collection, XXVI.B.1, National Japanese Canadian
Citizens Association Collection, Special Collections, University of British
Columbia Library, Vancouver.
recently succumbed to a machine gun wound. He wrote, ‘Since his

death I have been very depressed.’48 In these and other accounts
written at the Front, the Japanese-Canadian soldiers expressed the
trauma of their battlefield experience, which individuals like Mitsui
never again discussed after the war. According to his family, it hurt
too much.49
the japanese canadian war memorial and

commemoration of the soldiers
Following the war’s end, Mitsui led the remnants of his platoon across
the Rhine River at Cologne, Germany, in December 1918. He wrote to
members of their community to express the soldiers’ gratitude for
their support and asked them to pray for world peace, remember
the fallen, and care for their families.50 Within months, the Japanese-
Canadian community embarked on a fund-raising drive to support
the building of a war memorial in Vancouver. The campaign was
spearheaded by Koichiro Sanmiya, president of the cja, who sold
bonds within the community to raise $15,500. In July 1919, the cja
approached the Vancouver Board of Park Commissioners to request
that a site in Stanley Park be dedicated for the war memorial, which
was approved, subject to certain conditions. Designed by architect
James Benzies, the finished war memorial was a distinctive blend of
Japanese and Western design traditions reminiscent of the forms of
the ancient Kasuga lanterns at the shrine of Kyoto, albeit on a larger
scale. Western design influences were represented in the central
classical column, while Japanese culture was represented in the twelve
‘polygons’ of the stone pedestal, suggesting radiating chrysanthemum
petals, emblematic of the Japanese imperial family and a symbol of
lamentation or grief. At the top of the column was placed a Shinto
pagoda form containing a lantern. Two bronze plaques commemorat-
ing the soldiers were affixed on opposite sides of the central column –
one bearing the names of the fifty-four fallen soldiers and the other
inscribed with the names of the surviving veterans.51
48 Qtd in Ito, We Went to War, 67.
49 Interview with Emiko Kuwabara, George Mitsui, and David Mitsui by Lyle Dick,
20 Nov. 2006.
50 Ito, We Went to War, 68.
51 Minutes of the Vancouver Board of Park Commissioners, 26 May and 24 Sept.
1919, City of Vancouver Archives (cva). The figure of fifty-four war dead was
compiled recently by Roy Kawamoto from military records at lac. Approxi-
mately one-fourth of the Japanese Canadian soldiers were killed – about 2.5
times the mortality rate for the overall cef.
figure 4 Official dedication of the Japanese Canadian War Memorial in

Stanley Park, Vancouver, 9 April 1920.
Stuart Thomson, photographer. CVA 99-2420, City of Vancouver Archives.
A large crowd drawn from the Japanese-Canadian community,

other veterans’ groups, and civic leaders dedicated the new memorial
in a ceremony in Stanley Park on 9 April 1920, the third anniversary
of the beginning of the Battle of Vimy Ridge (fig. 4). As Alderman J.J.
McRae, acting for Mayor Gale, drew the curtain to unveil the monu-
ment, the Japanese lantern at the top of the memorial was lit with
‘the Torch of Humanity.’ A band struck up, and the crowd gave three
cheers for the King and Banzai Sansho (three cheers) for the Japanese
emperor, followed by the singing of God Save the King.52 In saluting
the British and Japanese monarchs, the veterans honoured the tradi-
tions of both the nation-state and its ally Japan, their country of birth.
Two of the surviving photographs of the ceremony show a Japanese-
Canadian boy of about three years, in full Scottish Highland regalia,
52 ‘Unveil Shaft to Japanese Soldiers,’ Daily Province (Vancouver), 9 Apr. 1920;

Kishibe, ‘Japanese-Canadian Volunteers,’ 54.
standing on the memorial’s pedestal.53 His costume seemed to

express his community’s desire, not to stand apart, but to integrate
into the society of British Columbia. At a luncheon following the cere-
mony, returned veteran Sergeant Yasuzo Shoji (incorrectly identified
as ‘Ishoti’ by the Vancouver Daily World), spoke of the soldiers’ ideals
and their role at Vimy Ridge, and added, ‘We don’t forget what we owe
to Canada and we were proud to fight when Britain declared war on
the common enemy.’54 The dedication of the war memorial estab-
lished this place as a locus, not only of Canadian war remembrance,
but of a protracted struggle for the citizenship rights of Japanese
Canadians.
battle for the franchise, 1920–1931
Even as they gathered at the war memorial’s inauguration in 1920, the

Japanese-Canadian veterans were planning their long campaign to
win the franchise. Notwithstanding their wartime service, the pro-
vincial racial restrictions on voting remained in force, compounded
by the federal disfranchisement of any groups denied the vote at the
provincial level.55 For the veterans in particular the denial of voting
rights was a source of humiliation. After fighting hard for Canada,
they returned to find themselves occupying a subordinate position
relative to other veterans.
Their 1920 campaign commenced with a letter and petition sent by
their legal representative to Premier John Oliver on 31 January.56 They
were strongly supported by the Comrades of the Great War, Provincial
Grand Chapter No. 1 (Vancouver). Thirteen other chapters of the
gwva sent messages of support to the premier: Cloverdale, Revelstoke,
53 Photograph nos. cva 99-924 and cva 99-925, both entitled ‘Japanese child
dressed in Scottish costume at war memorial,’ cva.
54 ‘Says Japanese of Canada Would Be Fine Citizens,’ Vancouver Daily World,
10 April 1920; Jinshiro Nakayama, comp., Kanada Doho Hatten Taikan: Zen,
trans. Stan Fukawa (Tokyo: Nakayama Jinshiro, 1921), 1192–3; and ‘Japanese
Canadian Timeline,’ Canadian Nikkei, http://www.canadiannikkei.ca/blog/
japanese-canadan-timeline.
55 Canada, ‘Dominion Elections Act,’ Revised Statutes of Canada (Ottawa: King’s
Printer, 1900), chap. 12; Chief electoral officer, A History of the Vote in Canada
(Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services Canada, 1997), 80.
56 Arthur M. Whiteside, Vancouver, to Premier Oliver, Victoria, 31 Jan. 1920,
file 4, ‘Miscellaneous I-S 1920,’ box 212, GR 441, Premier’s Papers, British
Columbia Archives (pp, bca), Victoria.
Nakusp, Mission City, Ladner, Ioco/Port Moody, Vernon, Chilliwack,

Abbotsford, Milner, Merville, Slocan, and Langley.57 The New West-
minster Branch passed a unanimous resolution endorsing the legis-
lation.58 However, other veterans’ chapters, including the Kaslo,
Richmond, and Kelowna branches, were opposed.59 Other opponents
included the eight members of the legislative assembly who were
returned veterans – all Conservatives; Anglo-Canadian women’s asso-
ciations; and several labour unions, including the Vancouver Trades
and Labour Council and the Victoria West Brotherhood.60
The legislative debate over the measure to extend the franchise was
characterized by partisan rancour. Exploiting anti-Asian sentiment,
Opposition Leader and former premier W.J. Bowser alleged that the
Liberals were cynically seeking to enfranchise Japanese voters in an
attempt ‘to get the Jap vote,’ and predicted that Oliver would go down
in history as ‘the Oriental premier.’ Opponents of extending the
franchise could draw upon widespread popular antagonism to extend-
ing such rights, especially from Euro-Canadians engaged in the same
economic sectors as the Japanese Canadians. While Oliver initially
supported the legislation, when confronted with significant opposi-
tion from the Opposition and the public, he withdrew the franchise
amendment.61
In 1925, Canadian veterans founded the Canadian Legion and the
Japanese Canadian veterans quickly responded by applying to form
their own branch, which was admitted as British Columbia Branch
57 S.J. Gothard, president, and T.B. Rigby, secretary, Comrades of the Great War,
Provincial Grand Chapter No. 1, Vancouver, to Premier John Oliver, Victoria,
16 Mar. 1920; telegrams from president, gwva, Vancouver to Oliver, Victoria,
15 Mar. 1920; and Walker for president gwva, Vancouver to Oliver, 17 Mar.
1920, pp, bca.
58 ‘Jap Veterans Should Vote,’ British Columbian, 24 Mar 1920.
59 Minutes for 9 June 1920, minutes of the Richmond Branch of the gwva,
Steveston, bc, 1919–1923, file 1, box 8331, Richmond Branch No. 5 Fonds, Royal
Canadian Legion, City of Richmond Archives, Richmond, bc. See also ‘Opposes
Votes for Japanese: Richmond Branch of gwva Includes Veterans in the Ban,’
Vancouver Sun, 12 Aug. 1920.
60 Helena Gutteridge-Fearn, secretary, Vancouver Trades and Labour Council,
to Premier Oliver, 23 Mar. 1920; M. Monteith to Oliver, 12 Apr. 1920; file 4,
‘Miscellaneous I-S 1920,’ box 212, GR 441, pp, bca; ‘Japanese and Enfranchise-
ment: Why Many Women Are Opposed,’ Colonist (Victoria), 4 Apr. 1920.
61 ‘If Japs, Why Not Hindus Too,’ British Columbian (New Westminster, bc),
10 Mar. 1920; ‘Japanese Not to Vote: Clause Eliminated Following Representa-
tions from the gwva,’ Daily Province, 14 Apr. 1920.
No. 9 in 1926.62 This new chapter was soon engaged in campaigns

to secure broadly based support from other Legion branches to resist
imposition of limits on licences obtainable by Japanese-Canadian
fishermen. In the late 1920s bc Branch No. 9 sent representatives to
three successive provincial Legion conventions to enlist support for
a revived bid to win the provincial franchise. Their coalition building
culminated at the 1930 convention, when they secured the ‘unani-
mous’ support of their Legion comrades for their right to vote.63
Other members of Branch No. 9 then stepped in to lead in the
franchise campaign. By the time their campaign came to a head in
1931, the members of Branch No. 9 had recruited Masumi Mitsui to
be president; Sainosuke Kubota, another non-commissioned officer,
who was made secretary; and Saburo Shinobu, a businessman, who
continued as advisor. Following the tabling of an amendment to
the Provincial Elections Act, Mitsui, Kubota, Shinobu, and Noburo
Murakami travelled to Victoria to promote their cause, aided by the
Legion’s provincial secretary, Robert Macnicol.64 Mitsui later recalled
that he met with every single member of the legislative assembly to
press their case. It was a difficult and unpredictable campaign, and
an initial standing vote on the bill resulted in a division of eighteen
in favour and eighteen opposed, with the Speaker casting the deciding
vote against.65 One vote short, the veterans desperately arranged meet-
ings to try to win over another supporter. In the end, the difference
between victory and defeat hinged on the vote of Alexander Manson,
a Liberal mla who had abstained in the earlier vote but in the final
division on third reading on 2 April stood to vote for the amend-
ment. In that division, eleven Liberals, seven Conservatives, and one
62 Charter Form, Canadian Legion of the British Empire Service League (besl),
Japanese (British Columbia No. 9) Branch, 23 Dec. 1926, file: ‘British
Columbia Branch No. 9, Vancouver, Japanese Branch, 1926–1942,’ vol. 63,
I-298, Royal Canadian Legion Fonds (rclf), MG28, lac.
63 ‘12 Years of Hard Work until the Obtaining of the Provincial Franchise,’ trans.
excerpts from Japanese-language newspaper clippings, commissioned and
donated with letter of Mrs Sada Shinobu, Deep River, on, 23 Oct. 1959,
file 18-31, vol. 18, V7, Japanese Canadian Citizens’ Association Fonds (ss, jccaf),
MG28, lac; and Tairiku Nippo, 2 Apr. 1933, trans. Stan Fukawa, 2008.
64 ‘Eighty Japanese Heroes Honored for War Services to Adopted Country,’
Vancouver Sunday Province, 12 Apr. 1931.
65 ‘Vote for Japanese War Veterans Asked: Representatives of Canadian Legion
Appeal to Legislature,’ Province (Vancouver), 23 Mar. 1931; and ‘12 Years of
Hard Work.’
Independent Labour Party member voted to extend the franchise, with

seventeen Conservatives and one Liberal voting against. The assembly
thereby passed the motion by a vote of nineteen to eighteen, a razor-
thin margin but a momentous political victory and constitutional
breakthrough.
It was an emotional occasion for the veterans in attendance. After
so many years of struggle, with little sleep or food for days, and on
edge throughout their intensive campaign to convince the legislators
to support them, Mitsui and his colleagues reportedly wept when
they received the news.66 Their tears expressed more powerfully than
words the difficulty of the fight, the burden of responsibility to their
community, their obligation to their fallen comrades, and the cathartic
release attending long-delayed success. Perhaps we can best grasp the
significance of their victory by envisioning what it meant to these men
at that instant – a historic moment of civic pride and democratic
freedom overcoming their experience of racial marginalization and
wartime trauma.
memorialization of the franchise victory in 1931
Welcomed back to Vancouver, in Mitsui’s words, ‘like the victorious

Shogun’s Return,’67 the veterans nevertheless first marked their
victory in a solemn remembrance of their fallen comrades. Greeted at
the dock by other veterans, their families, and officers of the cja, they
reportedly rejected a planned celebration and insisted on first paying
tribute to the war dead. They formed a procession of seventeen cars
and drove directly to the Japanese Canadian War Memorial, where
Mitsui formally announced their attainment of the franchise. He
expressed their gratitude to Yamazaki and Shinobu, and read out the
names of the fifty-four soldiers killed in action, whose names are
inscribed on the memorial. The mood of the group was reportedly
not celebratory but rather tinged with sadness. While they had
succeeded in attaining the vote for the veterans, a sobering fact was
that the franchise was still denied to other Japanese Canadians. The
audience bowed their heads in a silent tribute to the fallen, as Kubota
read two poems in Japanese, which, translated, mean:
66 See the translated reports in file 18-31, vol. 18, V7, jccaf, MG28, lac; and ‘Vote
for Japanese War Veterans Asked.’
67 Kudo, Kiiroi Heishi Tachi, 179–201.
Although you are gone, you are not dead,

Surely the setting sun will rise again for you.
Your heroic spirit will live in our hearts,
We take the torch from your hand to fight and carry on.68
With this reverent tribute, the veterans credited their victory to the
sacrifice of their fallen comrades.
The importance of the group’s cultural memory was underscored
in speeches at a subsequent meeting at the Japanese Hall organized
by bc Branch No. 9 to mark the veterans’ attainment. At this gather-
ing Vice-President Tosaburo Okutsu summarized the history of their
struggle, recounting Yamazaki’s leadership in organizing and promot-
ing the volunteers, their military service overseas, their sacrifice and
triumphal return. He recounted the franchise struggle of 1920 and the
subsequent formation of the War Comrades’ Association allied with
the Great War Veterans, adding, ‘This Legion’s ceaseless enthusiastic
support and agitation resulted finally in the significant development
of our present success.’69
Masumi Mitsui, president of Branch No. 9, then spoke and gave
his own assessment of the reasons for their success, including the
support of their community; the veterans’ patience; Shinobu’s hard
work; the cooperation and support of the Euro-Canadian veterans,
and ‘the grace of God (winning by a difference of one vote only).’ He
elaborated, ‘Naturally, there is no doubt that these five are the main
reasons for our victory, but the biggest cause, needless to say, was
No. 4 – the cooperation between the Canadian and Japanese War
Veterans, and if it were not for the Canadian War Veterans’ complete
assistance, this problem would not have been solved for a long time
yet. The reason for success lies in this fact, and we must not overlook
it, indeed, for it teaches us a great lesson in respect to our people’s
progress in Canada.’70
Mitsui implied that continued coalition building with the majority
culture would be needed to overcome the remaining barriers to full
citizenship. He and Okutsu set their remarks within a framework
of solidarity with Euro-Canadian veterans, acknowledging the collec-
tive memory of the nation while honouring their Japanese-Canadian
68 Trans. and qtd in Ito, We Went to War, 75.

69 ‘Report on the Progress of Securing the Provincial Voting Right,’ and ‘12 Years
of Hard Work,’ ss, jccaf, lac.
70 ‘Report on the Progress of Securing the Provincial Voting Right.’
comrades. Neither they nor their audience could have imagined that
within ten years the veterans’ hard-fought rights would be swept
away by a tidal wave of ill-feeling towards Japanese Canadians follow-
ing the outbreak of the Second World War.
‘what are the good of my medals?’
Memories are short when fear and prejudice sweep them from
consciousness. As relations between the United States and Japan
deteriorated in the 1930s, anti-Japanese sentiment was again on the
rise in bc. The sequence of political events and heightened intolerance
toward Japanese Canadians has been well covered by Ken Adachi and
Patricia Roy in their books on this period.71 Not all British Colum-
bians embraced the anti-Japanese fervour but, by this time, gestures
of support were seldom reported and were overwhelmed by the sheer
weight of xenophobic discourse in the province.72
For the members of Branch No. 9, perhaps the unkindest cut was
the demand by their erstwhile Euro-Canadian Legion colleagues for
their removal following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December
1941. Only two years earlier the Japanese-Canadian veterans assem-
bled in Vancouver to help welcome the visiting King George vi
and Queen Elizabeth (fig. 5), and just weeks before Pearl Harbor,
they publicly reaffirmed their loyalty to Canada.73 Yet in February
1942 David McKee, secretary of the Legion’s Provincial Command,
announced that ‘within a week’ the prime minister would receive
letters from about 120 Canadian Legion posts, ‘all endorsing the Jap
removal resolution formulated by the United Veterans’ and Citizens
Committee.’74 On 19 March 1942, McKee wrote that he had received
a letter from the president of the Japanese Branch – presumably
Mitsui – indicating that its members had decided to surrender their
charter for the duration of the war, which the provincial council
71 Ken Adachi, The Enemy That Never Was: A History of the Japanese Canadians
(Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976); Patricia E. Roy, The Triumph of
Citizenship: The Japanese and Chinese in Canada, 1941–67 (Vancouver: ubc
Press, 2007).
72 See, for example, ‘Will Vancouver Tolerate Another ‘‘Japanese Invasion’’ after
the War Is Over?’ Vancouver Sun, 17 Feb. 1942; and ‘Saying Goodbye, Not Au
Revoir,’ Vancouver Sun, 26 Feb. 1942.
73 ‘War Veterans Reaffirm Loyalty Here,’ Tairiku Nippo (Vancouver), 14 Nov. 1941.
74 ‘Committee Asks Shift of All bc Aliens,’ Vancouver Sun, 26 Feb. 1942.
figure 5 Japanese-Canadian veterans of bc Branch No. 9, Canadian Legion,

Japanese Canadian War Memorial, Stanley Park, Vancouver, 1939.
Masumi Mitsui, still president, seated centre, second row.
Photograph courtesy Lieutenant-Colonel Roy Kawamoto, Kelowna, bc.
readily accepted.75 Mitsui’s reported recollection was that the Legion

suspended their charter without consultation.76 Whatever the circum-
stances, it was a far cry from 1931, when McKee’s predecessor Robert
Macnicol worked to extend the franchise to the Japanese-Canadian
veterans. Meanwhile, the light in the lantern at the Japanese Canadian
War Memorial was extinguished – at whose instigation it is not clear.
In response to the developing clamour, and influenced by Vancouver
Centre mp and Cabinet minister Ian MacKenzie, the federal gov-
ernment of Prime Minister Mackenzie King enacted a series of
orders-in-council stripping Japanese Canadians of their property, civil
liberties, and human rights.77 Even veterans such as Mitsui were not
immune. According to his family, Mitsui, still president of Branch
75 David McKee, secretary, bc Provincial Command, Canadian Legion, besl,
Vancouver, to Dominion Command, Canadian Legion, Ottawa, 19 Mar. 1942,
file: ‘British Columbia Branch No. 9, Vancouver, Japanese Branch, 1926–1942,’
vol. 63, I-298, rclf, MG28, lac.
76 Interview with Roy Kawamoto by Lyle Dick, Kelowna, bc, 10–11 Oct. 2006.
77 Adachi, The Enemy That Never Was, 199–224. Ironically, as president of the gwva
of Vancouver, Mackenzie had been an advocate of granting the franchise to the
Japanese-Canadian veterans in 1920. See Patricia Roy, The Oriental Question:
Consolidating a White Man’s Province (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003), 41, 189–230.
No. 9 at the outset of the war with Japan, wrote the Canadian govern-
ment to offer to serve in the military.78 His offer fell on deaf ears.
Much later, he recalled, ‘I thought I was safe. I did not feel the govern-
ment was going to treat me the way they did. I had complete con-
fidence in the government that they wouldn’t be doing anything to
me because of being a veteran.’79
In 1942, Mitsui, accompanied by his daughter Lucy, was escorted
by the rcmp to the Hastings Park pooling centre to be registered as
an ‘enemy alien.’ She later vividly recalled that on this occasion Mitsui
brought his military medals, and it may also be inferred that he wore
his military uniform, as he was identified by one of the internment
officials as a sergeant. According to his daughter, in response to
the official’s glib question ‘What can I do for you Sarge?’ Mitsui
exclaimed, ‘There’s nothing you can do for me now. What are you
doing to me? I served my country. You’ve taken everything away from
me. Told us we have to leave with only 150 pounds of luggage. What
are the good of my medals?’ At this point, Mitsui reportedly reached
into his pocket, pulled out his war medals and threw them on the
table, the medals scattering on the floor.80 While his medals were
returned to him, he thereafter refrained from wearing them in public.
Like other Japanese Canadians from coastal communities, the
Mitsui family was detained at Hastings Park pending forced relocation
to Greenwood, bc, where he was placed in charge of local security.
The Mitsui family’s seventeen-acre poultry farm at Port Coquitlam,
including a newly built house, agricultural buildings, land, and equip-
ment, was seized and subsequently sold off by the custodian of enemy
property for $2,625.40, while their household furniture was sold for
$53.00. For several months, the custodian collected rent of $10 per
month from an occupant to whom they rented the property. After
deducting expenses, including $338.92 charged by the Veterans Land
Administration for legal fees, the family was compensated the negligi-
ble amount of $2,291.47 for the entire expropriated property, compris-
ing their home and means of livelihood.81 In her claim submitted to
78 Walter Stefaniuk, ‘Masumi Mitsui, 99, Vimy Ridge Hero Was Later Interned,’
Toronto Star, 27 Apr. 1987.
79 ‘Scars of War Remain for Mitsui Family,’ Toronto Star, 7 Dec. 1983.
80 ‘Japanese Canadians Felt Grief, Rage and Confusion at ’42 Lockup,’ Spectator
(Hamilton, on), 11 Feb. 1985.
81 ‘Sugi Mitsui,’ Port Coquitlam, bc, file 11490, vol. 72, RG117, Office of the
Custodian of Enemy Property Records, lac. See also ‘Scars of War Remain for
Mitsui Family,’ Toronto Star, 7 Dec. 1983. Only one Japanese-Canadian veteran
of the First World War succeeded in reclaiming his property. Peter Neary,
‘Zennosuke Inouye’s Land: A Canadian Veterans Affairs Dilemma,’ Canadian
Historical Review 85, no. 3 (Sept. 2004): 423–50.
the Bird Royal Commission in 1947, Mitsui’s spouse Sugi estimated

that her family had suffered a loss of $4,240.34. If so, they were com-
pensated little more than one third of the value of their property.82
In 1946 the thirty-four surviving Japanese-Canadian veterans of
the First World War petitioned the federal government for restora-
tion of their citizenship rights, including all privileges, grants, and
pensions; immediate appraisal and indemnification of material and
occupational losses arising from their forced relocation; the right
to permanent settlement anywhere in Canada; material and financial
aid in re-establishment; and permission for families of veterans to
reunite.83 Their pleas were disregarded, as in late 1945 the federal
government passed the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act
to maintain and increase restrictions on the civil liberties of the
relocated Japanese Canadians even after the Second World War.84
Federal authorities presented the uprooted Japanese Canadians
with a stark choice: ‘repatriation’ to Japan, a country many Canadian-
born persons of Japanese ancestry had never seen, or permanent
relocation east of the Rocky Mountains.85 Like many other Japanese-
Canadian families, the now-impoverished Mitsui family decided to
relocate to southern Ontario, where Mitsui’s son George found work
as a chauffeur-gardener. Initially, the family stayed with nine other
families in a Toronto hostel, and then moved to a peach farm near
St Catharines, ‘because we had no money.’86 They eventually settled
in Hamilton. The dispossession of the Mitsui family was representa-
tive of the unjust treatment of Japanese-Canadian families from across
the coastal zone, with far-reaching negative economic impacts on this
82 ‘Sugi Mitsui,’ Port Coquitlam, bc, ‘In the Matter of a Commission to Investigate
Claims of Japanese Canadians for Property Losses,’ signed by Sugi Mitsui,
25 Nov. 1947, file 11490, vol. 72, RG117, lac.
83 ‘World War 1 Veterans Seek Restoration of Civil Rights,’ New Canadian 9,
no. 28, 13 July 1946.
84 Adachi, The Enemy That Never Was, 305.
85 For differing accounts of the various actors’ motivations in this tragic event,
see Adachi, The Enemy That Never Was; Ann Gomer Sunahara, The Politics
of Racism: The Uprooting of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War
(Toronto: Lorimer, 1981); Forrest E. La Violette, The Canadian Japanese and
World War ii (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1948); and Patricia E.
Roy, J.L. Granatstein, Masako Iino, and Hiroko Takamura, Mutual Hostages:
Canadians and Japanese during the Second World War (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1990).
86 ‘Canada Features: ‘‘Medals Lose Meaning for Interned War Hero,’’ ’ Advocate
(Red Deer, ab), 13 Feb. 1985.
group, beyond the social and psychological trauma engendered by

this event.87
If read in the ‘empty homogeneous time’ of traditional history, this
narrative of victimization quickly recedes into the undifferentiated
continuum of events. But if we instead choose to arrest this progres-
sion and freeze-frame the moment of Mitsui’s appearance at Hastings
Park, forgetting can be transformed into remembering. Writing of the
‘fight for the oppressed past,’ Benjamin asserted the need to ‘blast a
specific life out of the era or a specific work out of the lifework.’88
The scene at Hastings Park can be recovered and inscribed in remem-
brance by focusing on the protagonist’s defiance as a defining
moment of resistance to memory erasure. In this tableau Mitsui
appears at the pooling centre as a decorated First World War veteran
about to be stripped of citizenship rights in the Second World War
as an ‘enemy alien.’ He resists by displaying his sergeant’s stripes
and hurling his military medals – authentic signifiers of patriotism –
toward the functionaries charged not only with divesting him of
his rights but effectively with rewriting collective memory. As leader
of the Japanese-Canadian veterans, and mindful of his integrity, Mitsui
refuses to acquiesce in this exercise of enforced forgetting. His
defiance constitutes agency in the face of injustice – crystallizing
individual and ethnocultural memory of the First World War while
challenging the hegemony of pan-Canadian collective memory and
amnesia.89
conclusions
What does this case study contribute to collective memory studies?

It reveals the importance of personal and ethnocultural memory to
understanding differences in Canadians’ remembrance of the First
World War. While often treated as a monolithic construct, collective
memory is always filtered through the perspectives of individuals,
87 Kimiaki Nakashima, ‘Economic Aspects of Japanese Evacuation from

the Canadian Pacific Coast’ (ma thesis, McGill University, 1946); Price,
Waterhouse, Vancouver, Inc., Economic Losses of Japanese Canadians after
1941 (Winnipeg: National Association of Japanese Canadians, 1985).
88 Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History, xvii,’ in Illuminations,
262–3.
89 On Benjamin’s ‘tradition of the oppressed,’ see Shoshana Felman, The Juridical
Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, ma:
Harvard University Press and the University of Chicago Press, 2002), 10–53.
informed by the unique experience and consciousness of each person

and the shared memory of smaller groups. As a marginalized ethno-
cultural community in the early twentieth century, Japanese Canadians
did not view their enlistment and service in the war solely in patriotic
terms but also as an opportunity to win the citizenship rights that had
been systematically denied to them. For the soldiers and veterans,
struggling to win the right to enlist, overcoming the prejudices of
other soldiers, and proving their mettle on the battlefield contributed
to a distinctive group memory of the war. It instilled pride in their
accomplishments, confidence that they were as worthy as any other
soldiers, and a belief that they too had earned citizenship rights along-
side other Canadians. These experiences and shared memories helped
sustain them through many obstacles over more than a decade, in
their extraordinary campaign to win the franchise.
Yet the collective memory of one group can be the amnesia of
another. For many Euro-Canadian groups in bc before the late 1940s,
military commemoration of the ‘myth of the war’ represented the
enshrining and inculcation of group privilege. As depicted by oppo-
nents of extending the franchise, granting the vote to Japanese
Canadians risked ‘the jeopardizing of our racial traditions, and the
ideals which are an integral part of them.’90 As a result of the sheer
weight of racialist Anglo-Canadian discourse among bc’s media,
elected politicians, and even Legion groups, the Japanese-Canadian
veterans found the battle over social memory to be an uphill struggle,
more difficult to overcome than their assault on Vimy or Hill 70, or
their protracted fight to win the franchise.
The Japanese-Canadian soldiers were not fighting for abstractions
such as the ‘nation,’ ‘racial traditions,’ or ‘Anglo-Saxon civilization’;
these were the very reifications of national collective memory applied
against their claims to citizenship. Rather, they were fighting for their
political rights, the well-being of their comrades, and the future of
their ethnocultural community. They were keenly aware of the impor-
tance of their service and sacrifice to the Japanese Canadians’ realizing
their aspirations. The soldiers’ words at the time of recruitment, in
the volunteers’ constitution, and in letters and journals written at
the Front clearly reveal their personal sense of duty and obligation
to their community through wartime service. Above all, they fought
90 Maria Grant, Woman’s Independent Political Association, to Premier Oliver,

20 Mar. 1920; Flora Hamilton Burns, Local Council of Women of Victoria and
Vancouver Island, to the premier, received 16 Mar. 1920, file 4, ‘Miscellaneous
I-S 1920,’ box 212, GR441, pp, bca.
for their comrades, who shared their experience of danger, struggle,

and sacrifice.91
The soldiers’ individual experiences added a further layer of social
memory for Japanese Canadians during and after the First World
War. Masumi Mitsui provides a particularly useful example in that we
have his words from several critical junctures, including his letter to
the Japanese-Canadian community in 1918, his speech following the
franchise victory of 1931, his defiant words when forced to register at
Hastings Park in 1942, and his solemn act of commemoration in
1985. His role at the 1985 relighting ceremony was a vivid demon-
stration of the power of collective memory as mediated by individ-
uals. While returning to this place might well have called up myriad
memories from Mitsui’s eventful life, both triumphant and traumatic,
Roy Kawamoto, who knew him well, believes he was entirely focused
on paying tribute to his fallen compatriots, several personal friends.92
Mitsui’s own reported words seemed to confirm this interpretation.
Approached by the press after the event, he commented with charac-
teristic brevity, ‘I’ve done my last duty to my comrades. They are
gone but not forgotten.’93
If Mitsui was choosing not to revisit some of the many layers of
history embedded in his career and this place, tracing such inter-
sections is unavoidable for historians. While small in comparison
to the national monuments, the Japanese Canadian War Memorial
represents a chapter in Canada’s involvement in the First World War
as indispensable to our understanding of that history as the great
memorial at Vimy. As Jay Winter has observed, ‘The smaller the
monument, the more likely it is that the monument will faithfully
represent the cares and sentiments of those who wish to remember.’94
This war memorial moves us for many reasons, not least its multi-
layered intersections of personal, cultural, and national memory. It
recalls, simultaneously, the sacrifice of Canada’s fallen soldiers, the
memory of comrades, the struggles of an ethnocultural minority for
political rights, and the aspirations of Japanese Canadians to find a
secure place in Canada. What enabled this story to survive was the
veterans’ enduring commitment over more than six decades to the
91 On the importance of comradeship in explaining why soldiers fight, see James

McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
92 Interview with Roy Kawamoto by Lyle Dick, 10–11 Oct. 2006.
93 Wakayama, ‘W.W.I. Memorial Shines Again,’ 22.
94 Jay Winter, ‘Remembrance and Redemption: A Social Interpretation of War
Memorials,’ Harvard Design Magazine 9 (Fall 1999): 6.
remembrance of their fallen compatriots. As in 1918 and 1931,

Mitsui’s focus in 1985 was on remembering the Japanese-Canadian
soldiers. More generally, it teaches us of the diversity of those who
have honoured Canada in wartime, and the obligation of surviving
generations to remember.
The author would like to acknowledge the special assistance of Ron Frohwerk,
David Mitsui, the late Emiko and Tak Kuwabara, George and Nancy Mitsui, Roy
and Nikki Kawamoto, Frank Kamiya, Reiko Tagami, Linda Reid, Lynne Waller,
Jean Barman, Veronica Strong-Boag, Pat Roy, chr editors Cecilia Morgan and
Sarah Carter, and three anonymous assessors. Also appreciated were the
comments of Nicole Neatby, commentator at the 2007 Canadian Historical
Association conference. I am especially grateful to Stan Fukawa for his careful
translations of Japanese-language sources.

Sergeant Masumi Mitsui and The Japanese Canadian War Memorial

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Sergeant Masumi Mitsui and the Japanese Canadian War

The Canadian Historical Review, Volume 91, Number 3, September 2010,

Published by University of Toronto Press

For additional information about this article

[ Access provided at 9 Oct 2020 00:26 GMT from Goteborgs universitet ]

Sergeant Masumi Mitsui and the

Abstract: For much of the twentieth century, military commemoration operated

The Canadian Historical Review 91, 3, September 2010

On 2 August 1985, Sergeant Masumi Mitsui, aged ninety-eight and

1 Tamio Wakayama, ‘W.W.I. Memorial Shines Again,’ Greater Vancouver Japanese

ﬁgure 1 Sergeant Masumi Mitsui saluting at the relighting ceremony at

stories.2 These narratives, particularly those of commemoration, can

is ﬁltered through a distinctive set of voices and experiences compris-

6 For elaborations of dialogical concepts of identity and agency, see Mikhail M.

In Canadian historiography, the major study of collective memory

still under-represented in Canada’s military historiography.16 Japanese

concept of storytelling, I will narrate the soldiers’ experiences sequen-

racial exclusions and recruitment

For Japanese Canadians, a signiﬁcant thread of collective memory was

20 Philippe Simay, ‘Tradition as Injunction: Benjamin and the Critique of the

political obstacles to citizenship, especially racial exclusions in the

24 J.A. Laponce, ‘Ethnicity and Citizenship as Generators of Each Other: The

ﬁgure 2 The Canadian Japanese Volunteer Corps on the date it was

prospective recruits of other visible minorities, including African-

29 James W. St G. Walker, ‘Race and Recruitment in World War I: Enlistment of

recruits volunteer? We cannot know all the motivations at play,

31 ‘Giyuhei excerpts and English translations,’ ‘1915’ (summary narrative by Roy

Virtually all of the recruits were ﬁrst-generation immigrants who

the japanese canadians’ service on the western front

by province of enlistment was: Alberta, 169; British Columbia, 28;

42 ‘Masumi Mitsui,’ 192nd Battalion, Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force,

ﬁgure 3 Japanese-Canadian soldiers of the 10th Canadian Infantry

The soldiers’ correspondence documented the heavy price they paid

recently succumbed to a machine gun wound. He wrote, ‘Since his

the japanese canadian war memorial and

ﬁgure 4 Ofﬁcial dedication of the Japanese Canadian War Memorial in

A large crowd drawn from the Japanese-Canadian community,

52 ‘Unveil Shaft to Japanese Soldiers,’ Daily Province (Vancouver), 9 Apr. 1920;

standing on the memorial’s pedestal.53 His costume seemed to

battle for the franchise, 1920–1931

Even as they gathered at the war memorial’s inauguration in 1920, the

Nakusp, Mission City, Ladner, Ioco/Port Moody, Vernon, Chilliwack,

No. 9 in 1926.62 This new chapter was soon engaged in campaigns

Independent Labour Party member voted to extend the franchise, with

memorialization of the franchise victory in 1931

Welcomed back to Vancouver, in Mitsui’s words, ‘like the victorious

Although you are gone, you are not dead,

68 Trans. and qtd in Ito, We Went to War, 75.

‘what are the good of my medals?’

ﬁgure 5 Japanese-Canadian veterans of bc Branch No. 9, Canadian Legion,

readily accepted.75 Mitsui’s reported recollection was that the Legion

the Bird Royal Commission in 1947, Mitsui’s spouse Sugi estimated

group, beyond the social and psychological trauma engendered by

What does this case study contribute to collective memory studies?

87 Kimiaki Nakashima, ‘Economic Aspects of Japanese Evacuation from

informed by the unique experience and consciousness of each person

90 Maria Grant, Woman’s Independent Political Association, to Premier Oliver,

for their comrades, who shared their experience of danger, struggle,

91 On the importance of comradeship in explaining why soldiers ﬁght, see James

remembrance of their fallen compatriots. As in 1918 and 1931,

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