A History of Resistance and Compliance: Japanese-Canadian Health, Healthcare, and Healthcare Providers During Internment (1942-1949)

In the early months of 1942, the Canadian government orchestrated the mass internment of the entire Japanese-Canadian community. The federal government justified this decision for reasons of national security and out of concern for Japanese-Canadian welfare. Within weeks, over 22,000 people of Japanese descent living mostly along the coast of British Columbia were uprooted and confined in inadequate living spaces in the BC interior. Despite official government statements, Japanese-Canadians’ health and wellbeing suffered. Members of the Japanese-Canadian community with healthcare skills were expected to provide care for their fellow internees. Health and healthcare shifted in the community. But Japanese Canadians brought with them decades of community knowledge about circumventing racist healthcare spaces and policies in Canada. In doing so, they changed internment healthcare spaces and rural and remote medicine in interior British Columbian towns. My research considers some of the ways internment spaces affected the general health of the community, the reality of which forced the government of Canada to make healthcare an aspect of internment policy planning. Each chapter demonstrates, through a unique and under-examined source base, that healthcare was an important aspect of Japanese-Canadian internment. From examinations of personal photographs to oral history interviews to public history displays this dissertation takes a socio-cultural approach to historical analysis and shows how healthcare considerations challenge our understandings about Japanese-Canadian internment. In doing so, this work demonstrates that Japanese-Canadian internment is an essential part of understanding the history of healthcare in Canada. I argue that internees experienced further racialization, segregation, and discrimination within healthcare spaces as both healthcare professionals and patients. But they navigated these restrictions with community and professional knowledge established before the 1940s. I also explain that while health was not initially a central concern of internment policymakers, it became a reality of internment that internees had to face. Good health of internees quickly became a campaigning tool which the government made ready use of. Further, my research demonstrates that the labour of these racialized healthcare providers, who were also internees, continued into the post-internment period and re-shaped rural healthcare in select regions of British Columbia

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