Unseemly Spot

Slowly but purposefully, the Dominion Government has been washing its hands of its 12,000 Japanese. They were whisked off to relocation camps after Pearl Harbor; in the two years since war's end, Ottawa has pressured nearly 4,000 of them into moving back to Japan, has discreetly resettled most of the others.*By last week, the Government was down to the last damned spot--a stubborn little band of 59 in a camp just south of Moose Jaw, Sask. The spot would not come out.

The immovable 59 (most of them Canadian citizens) demanded that they be allowed to return to their prewar homes in British Columbia. But that was impossible. Early in the war, the Dominion Government confiscated and sold their homes and property, paid them only a small percentage of what the holdings were worth. Then B.C.'s provincial government got Ottawa to issue an order in council barring Japanese from a 100-mile-wide area on the West Coast. Ottawa acted in haste. It was beginning to repent.

Fortnight ago, when the 59 declared they "would rather die" than leave the camp and take the jobs Ottawa had dug up for them, the Government cut off the camp's food supply. This move did not budge the Japanese; they simply took their earnings (from camp work) and bought their meals in Moose Jaw. The next logical step seemed to be to close the camp and set the holdouts adrift. The trouble was that Canada was getting an uneasy conscience and a close-out might set off a political ruckus.

Already Moose Jaw's ambitious. and wealthy young M.P., Ross Thatcher, was capitalizing noisily on the manifest violation of civil rights. He had protested to Prime Minister Mackenzie King against the attempt to "starve the Japs out of the camp," and had followed with a ringing speech: "Let these Canadians be treated as Canadians by Canadians. Let the Government have the courage to admit a wrong and right it. ..."

Most of the summer-becalmed press joined in the protest. As the unseemly spot persisted, Saskatchewan's Government announced that the internees' fate was and would be in federal hands. That put the next move up to the Dominion.

*Still on the Government's hands: some 600 sick and indigent.

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