When Hugh L. Keenleyside - first secretary at the Canadian legation in Japan from 1929 to 1936 - toured Japanese-controlled areas of Manchuria in May 1930, his first reaction was one of hope. In Japan’s colonial rule, he saw “a stabilizing and regulating force” and visions of economic potential for Canada.1 In a few years, any admiration for Japan he had held would be gone, as Tokyo invaded Manchuria and the rest of China in 1931 and 1937 respectively. And though he would remain a loyal civil servant, he also found his patience with Ottawa - in the wake of its completely ineffective responses against Japanese aggression - wearing thin.
This essay will argue that Canadian actions in the leadup to the Second World War in East Asia constituted a ‘forgotten appeasement’, the importance of which has been overlooked in the generally Eurocentric scholarship on interwar Canadian foreign policy.2 The curious case of Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s 1937 visit to Hitler is well-known;3 comparatively little, however, is given to his diary entry from 30 August of that same year, in which he wrote that war in Asia was “not worth the lives of white men for ‘Business Interests’.”4 To King’s white surprise, war would come whether he wished it to or not, as the appeasement of Japan led to the same results as that of Germany. King, of course, was not the only Canadian at fault; his government’s response to Japan’s aggression after 1937 displayed remarkable continuity with that of Prime Minister R.B. Bennett after 1931. Both governments were pulled in different directions by a web of contradictions, which translated into policies of inaction. Canada’s aims of asserting autonomy by refusing foreign entanglements clashed with their desire to follow rather than lead, mostly to maintain Anglo-American harmony; similarly, rhetoric of conciliation and neutrality contrasted sharply with growing exports of war materials to Japan. Similar contradictions existed in Canadian opinions on Japanese expansion: some defended Japanese imperialism even as its atrocities in China became well-known, while others opposed Japan in racist terms that minimized Chinese suffering and invoked spectres of a ‘yellow peril’ in Canada. In the end, these differing opinions came together to justify inaction abroad and racist policies at home. Principled anti-Japan voices, while they did exist, were far and few between.
The East Asian context is thus helpful to contest popular Canadian and Western images of the Second World War as a righteous struggle. Western powers set the precedents for Japan’s imperialism, condoning and supporting it when it benefited them, only fighting it when it directly threatened their own interests and after much blood had already been shed. While Canada’s role in this was relatively minor compared to larger powers like the US and UK, it was nonetheless still complicit in Japanese imperialism.5 It is to this complicity that this essay will now turn.
On 19 September 1931, rogue officers of the Kwantung Army, Japan’s garrison force for its existing holdings in Manchuria, initiated a false-flag attack as a pretext to attack Chinese forces in the area and conquer territory. With Tokyo accepting this fait accompli, Kwantung troops quickly overran Manchuria.6 Chinese leader Jiang Jieshi,7 who had advocated a policy of nonresistance and hoped for the intervention of the League of Nations, was soon disappointed.8 The Manchurian Incident, as it was dubbed, was a pivotal moment for the Second World War, inaugurating Japan’s “new military imperialism”9 and sowing the seeds for war in both Asia and Europe. Indeed, as John D. Meehan notes in his comprehensive study on interwar Canada-Japan relations, Manchuria was “the first major challenge to internationalism since Versailles”;10 the initial step towards the eventual collapse of the League and collective security.
Initial Canadian responses were slow and muted. Herbert Marler, Canadian minister to Japan, was aboard a ship in the middle of the Pacific and recovering from surgery. His opinion, sent to Ottawa three months after the fact, was ostensibly a “fair analysis” and “not intended to be a defence of Japan”. The contents of the 41-page dispatch, however, disproved that claim, painting Japan’s actions as justified to protect its extensive Manchurian investments and prevent anarchy. China, on the other hand, was depicted as a rogue, failed state which had repudiated its treaties with Japan and “had ‘really no right’ to be a member of the League.”11,12 Keenleyside, chargé d’affaires in his place, had a much more critical opinion of Japan, which he did not hesitate to communicate.13 His words meant little; Ottawa’s first response to the Incident was a reply from O.D. Skelton, Undersecretary of State for External Affairs, to Marler’s note (a month after it had been sent) saying in so many words that he was mostly correct but had perhaps given Japan “too clean a bill of health.”14 In 1932, a shift in the target of Japanese aggression to Shanghai - directly threatening Canadian interests15 and white lives - caused a slight change in Ottawa’s attitudes; Marler described the situation as “extremely serious” in a telegram to Bennett and opined that “Japanese action has been taken too far.” However, he still urged “caution”, arguing that it “would be unwise for Canada to adopt too decided [a] stand.”16 Bennett agreed: “we do not consider any action necessary at the present time”.17
Thus, at League deliberations on the issue in Geneva, Ottawa adopted a “wait-and-see”18 policy, preferring to defer first steps to the UK and US in keeping with the Canadian goal to maintain Anglo-American harmony. Britain, with public opinion leaning towards Japan - and the British ambassador in Tokyo even thinking that the Incident might help British interests in Asia - was reluctant to condemn Japan, instead favouring a policy of conciliation.19 The US, however, followed a slightly different stance, having communicated its refusal on 7 January to recognize Japan’s territorial gains.20 Reconciling these contrasting sentiments was the goal of George Perley, head of the Canadian delegation to the League. Accordingly, his speech to the assembled delegates on 8 March attempted to carve out a middle ground by disavowing military force and calling for a ceasefire while acknowledging Japan’s ‘legitimate rights’ in Manchuria.21 Similar caution informed Bennett’s words in a parliamentary debate on 25 May, in which he reiterated Perley’s points and acknowledged the positions of both the UK and US; in vague, nebulous language, he acknowledged Japan’s “national rights” while expressing support for the idea of non-recognition of territorial gains won by force. In the end, Bennett too avoided taking a decided stance separate from the UK and US: “I am not prepared to express an opinion”, he said, deferring instead “to the thoughtful statesmen of the world who have had wide experience, where I have had none.”22 When in 1933, the two nations were once again divided - this time, in their interpretations of the Lytton report on Manchuria that had been commissioned by the League a year earlier - Ottawa gave the instructions “to avoid comment until the great powers had revealed their positions.”23 Canada’s goal to maintain Anglo-American harmony thus became a fetter around its proverbial neck, constraining its policy such that the path of least resistance became to have no policy at all; and indeed, a path of no resistance to Japan’s aggression. There were dissenting voices, to be sure; one was an exasperated Keenleyside, who told the Winnipeg Free Press in October that “nothing [could] be done with the Government.”24 Perhaps the most prescient of these voices was socialist politician J.S. Woodsworth, who strongly condemned Ottawa’s policy in the aforementioned 25 May debate: “through our inactivity we are laying the foundation for a war in the future.”25 These words would, in a few years, prove fatally true.
But inaction was far from the worst example of Canadian complicity; that dubious honour might instead go to Canada-Japan trade. The two nations had long shared a strong trading relationship; in 1929, Japan became Canada’s fourth largest export market, importing $38 million of Canadian goods, and indeed, trade promotion had been a major reason for the establishment of the Tokyo legation.26 After the Incident, this trade not only continued but even increased, particularly for strategic metals used in arms manufacturing, like nickel; Canadian sales of the metal to Japan increased from $75,228 in 1931 to almost $800,000 in 1934.27 Marler was one of the most outspoken proponents of Canadian ‘neutrality’ in the name of continuing business as usual. As Japan bombarded Shanghai, for instance, he conceded that the situation justified the potential application of sanctions by the League and felt “reluctantly obliged to say that the action of Japan at Shanghai should be censured.” However, he continued, “If Canada takes part in vote of censure [...] there is no doubt that our trade with Japan will suffer.” To this end, he called for the “speeches of our [League] delegates [to] be of the most moderate character.”28,29 Of course, trade required the complicity of more than Marler alone, and the ongoing Depression provided a strong impulse for many to look past Japan’s aggression.30
Canada’s international response to the Incident reveals a damning record. Domestically, the situation was more complex; internationalist anti-war voices did exist. A notable example was the League of Nations Society of Canada; in the wake of the Incident, they circulated a petition for world disarmament that had garnered almost 500,000 signatures by the time it was presented to Ottawa, on the eve of the fighting in Shanghai.31 Yet much of the Canadian opposition to Japan took the form of anti-Asian racism, concerned not with the actual plight of Chinese civilians across the Pacific but with the bogeyman of the ‘yellow peril’ inside Canada itself. Apathy towards foreign policy thus coexisted with domestic fears that ran the gamut from reasonable to hysterical. The former consisted of plans to defend Canada’s Pacific coast from a Canadian military supportive of Japan until very recently.32 Although the Incident and Japan’s subsequent incursion into China’s Rehe province had spurred this quick turnaround of their views,33 Canadian planners and citizens alike had felt an “undercurrent of apprehension” against Japan since the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905, making such preparations for war not totally unprecedented.34 These preparations, however, failed to deliver, not significantly improving Canada’s lackluster Pacific defence35 and of course did not address the root of potential Pacific threats - Japan’s aggression in China. But this myopic attitude paled in comparison to the alarmist racism peddled by many. From British Columbia newspapers who warned that “a well-trained determined Japan, leading hordes of Chinese” could soon be “at Vancouver’s very doorstep”,36 to Alberta Premier William Aberhart, who “cited biblical authority to suggest that ‘the movement of Japan and the yellow race was not in an easterly direction but in a westerly direction’”,37 many Canadians saw the Sino-Japanese conflict not in terms of aggressor and victim but as a stepping stone to a future race war. Indeed, opposition to Japan followed this line even in government; in a 13 February 1936 parliamentary debate, one P.J. Rowe ended an otherwise principled anti-war speech by saying “There is nothing to prevent Japan from training an army of fifty million in China and knocking at the gates of Europe within the next twenty years, fighting under the slogan of ‘The white man out of Asia.’”38
But anti-Japanese voices, whether internationalist or racist, were only one side of Canadian public opinion; already by 1931 there had been a long history of Canadian apologia for Japanese imperialism. Much of this came from media outlets like the magazine Saturday Night, whose pages “gave more extensive coverage to the Far Eastern troubles than any other Canadian publication” but took a strongly pro-Japan stance, arguing that Japanese colonial rule would bring “order and good government” and paternalistically dismissing Chinese nationalism as “a state of mind.”39 Newspaper coverage of the Incident was often divided along partisan lines; conservative papers like the Montreal Gazette and Globe and Mail justified Japan’s actions, while the liberal Toronto Star and Vancouver Sun were more critical and called for international action.40 The escalation of the conflict to Shanghai further polarized these views, with the condemnations of liberal papers becoming more forceful in language while conservative papers stubbornly continued their apologia to varying degrees. Echoing the sympathies of “the entire English-speaking world” that prioritized white lives and property, the Globe attempted to compartmentalize Shanghai and Manchuria, reluctantly condemning the former while continuing to justify the latter; Saturday Night, on the other hand, continued its old line, blaming China for the escalation of the conflict and even painting Shanghai’s Zhabei district as a “nest of criminals” to argue that Japanese bombings of the crowded residential suburb were a good thing.41
Canadian missionaries were often the staunchest defenders of Japanese imperialism, particularly in Manchuria, where many showed support for Japan’s stated goals of bringing order to the region and blocking Soviet influence.42 Indeed, missionaries often spoke of the region in colonialist terms. One Allan Reoch wrote in 1927 that Manchuria was a “vast stretch of territory which will be the battle ground of our Church in the struggle against the darkness of heathen unbelief and sin [...] We must possess the land before it is too late.”43 In the wake of the Incident, D.A. MacDonald in Japanese-occupied Korea opined that “there is much to be said for the Japanese point of view”, while E.J. Fraser in Manchuria wrote that “Japan is suppressing the bandits all right, and Manchuria will be the better for it.”44 Christian figures in Canada also showed support for Japan; Frank Cassilis-Kennedy, “a former missionary now overseeing Anglican missions to Japanese-Canadians,” favourably (and tellingly) compared Japanese imperialism to British colonialism and the American Monroe Doctrine.45 Some missionaries did speak out against Japan, like one A.F. Robb who commented after the Incident that “Conditions [in Manchuria] are worse than ever before.”46 But voices like his were an outlier.
Canadian officials also conducted their fair share of apologia. For them, justifying Japanese imperialism justified their own inaction in East Asia, something evident in perhaps the most famous example of Canadian apologia for Japan: the Cahan incident. Addressing the League Assembly in December, C.H. Cahan, Canada’s Secretary of State, had given a speech in which he outlined a both-sides perspective on the Sino-Japanese conflict. In so many words, he argued that China, plagued with internal turmoil, had been unable to fulfill its League and treaty obligations and so shared some blame for the bloodshed. Unsurprisingly, Cahan’s speech was described as “highly pro-Japanese” by W.A. Riddell, Canada’s Advisory Officer to the League.47 It was praised by the Japanese delegation,48 and, characteristically, Marler,49 while triggering backlash from several Canadian officials, China, and the US. After the speech, Skelton noted that Iyemasa Tokugawa, Japanese minister to Canada, had “warmly” offered his thanks, which he accepted “thinking we had better keep at least one friend for the time being”.50 Even more telling of Canadian attitudes than the speech itself, however, were Cahan’s explanations. At Geneva, he allegedly said that “Not a single delegate [...] was prepared to ‘give a man or a gun or a ship’ to defend League principles in the Far East”,51 including, of course, the Canadian delegation. Regardless of whether Cahan said this, he made the same point in a 16 May 1933 parliamentary debate, stating his belief that Ottawa would not spend “a single dollar toward maintaining a single company of troops in the far east”.52 He was right. Even with collective security having failed to stop Japan, and the League’s teetering foundations beginning to crumble, Canadians in 1931 still believed - in the words of Raoul Dandurand - that they lived in a “fireproof house”.53 This sentiment penetrated across party lines, as Meehan notes: one of the witnesses to Cahan’s statement was King, who “nodded with approval from the front row of the opposition.”54
King and Bennett were to trade places for the next outburst of Japanese aggression in 1937, when hostilities erupted near Beijing in what is called the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.55 Parallels to the Manchurian Incident six years prior were already being drawn in the first report on the situation on 14 July, in which E.D. McGreer, the new chargé d’affaires in Tokyo, noted significant circumstantial evidence pointing to a Japanese-orchestrated plot.56 And while the Prime Ministership had indeed changed since then, Ottawa’s East Asia policy had not.
Unlike 1931, hostilities began to threaten Westerners in Shanghai far sooner, with Tokyo using the deaths of two Japanese marines outside the city to send “considerable naval and land reinforcements.”57 Certainly, as shall be seen, imperial apologia did not cease, but Marler’s earlier sentiment that Shanghai was a bridge too far was echoed by many, including King: “re Manchuria”, he had written in his diary in 1932, “there is much to be said of Chinese being unable to keep law and order, & of need of Japan not being at mercy of Russia.”58 Now, on the other hand, “treacherous and cruel”59 Japan was “clearly the aggressor”.60 In spite of this shift, Ottawa under King’s direction still refused to take strong measures - such as sanctions, which King expressly disavowed in a telegram to Malcolm MacDonald, Dominions Secretary in Britain, saying in so many words that he was unwilling to materially commit Canada to them for fear of being drawn into war.61 Even a request for Canada to chair a League committee on the Sino-Japanese conflict was immediately shot down by King,62,63clearly signalling that Ottawa was unwilling to take a leading role against Japanese aggression. A November 1937 conference in Brussels, called to mediate64 what had developed into a full-scale Sino-Japanese conflict, unfolded in a similar vein. Even before it began, Canada’s outlined aim (to “fall in with what appears to be the general view, particularly that of the United Kingdom and United States”65) and Ottawa’s view that it “would not be desirable”66 for a Canadian to chair the conference boded ill for any prospect of action against Japan. Things did not improve as the conference progressed. The initial aim of mediation quickly fell through, as Japan did not attend. The absurdity of this was not lost on Hume Wrong, Riddell’s replacement; he wrote to Skelton on 17 November that the conference without Japan was like “Othello without Iago.”67 With mediation a forlorn hope, Ottawa continued its line of opposing any stronger action, arguing against formally denouncing Japan by questioning the “practical usefulness”68 of a condemnation. Having stated thus, Ottawa chose the even more useless option of deferring any action to Anglo-American diplomatic channels69 and shirking even the appearance of responsibility: “initiatives must be left to [the leading powers] and we are concerned that it should be made to appear clearly that any initiatives are their own.”70 On 29 November, after the conference had adjourned, Wrong told Skelton that “The results at Brussels were virtually nil”, and that “All one can hope for is that the situation will change”.71 The situation did not change, at least not for the better. When reports indicated to Loring Christie, King’s close advisor, that the Brussels committee might reconvene at a League meeting in Geneva, he wrote a memorandum on 10 December heavily critical of the body. In it, he called for the Canadian delegation to take on even less of a role than before, “to act in effect simply as an observer and to abstain from taking any part whatever in the proceedings”.72 The fruits of this continued inaction were revealed just days later. On 12 December, Japanese forces began to carry out one of the most well-known atrocities of the 20th century, the Nanjing Massacre; tens of thousands of women were raped and up to hundreds of thousands of civilians were slaughtered.73 Canadians were certainly aware, but were more concerned with nearby Japanese attacks on the American USS Panay and British HMS Ladybird.74 At External Affairs, Skelton received a firsthand account of the atrocities in February 1938, but there is no record of any response. As Meehan notes, the massacre passed “virtually unnoticed in Ottawa.”75
Despite Nanjing and other Japanese atrocities - such as the use of poison gas, which Ottawa was well aware of76 - some Canadian voices continued to defend Japanese imperialism. R.R. Bruce, who had replaced Marler in 1936, cabled to King on 15 December 1937 justifying the formation of a Japanese puppet regime in North China as representing the “underlying aim of Japan [...] for the furtherance of peace and order”.77 In a January 1938 parliamentary debate, he was quoted (ironically, by Bennett) telling the Toronto Star that the Japanese invasion was “simply an attempt to put her neighbor country into decent shape, as she has already done in Manchuria”, and that “Japan’s improvement of Manchuria is causing many Chinese from other parts to flock there for protection.”78,79 Newspapers also kept up their imperial apologia, even the ‘liberal’ ones which had issued harsh condemnations of Japan in 1931. The Vancouver Sun and Montreal Gazette blamed China after hostilities began in Shanghai, while the Globe acknowledged Japanese provocations but still maintained Chinese responsibility.80 Such apologia would continue even after Nanjing; the Star, for instance, argued that Tokyo could not be held accountable for its troops’ brutality there. Similarly, the Sun softened its reporting on a “killing contest”81 between two Japanese soldiers by noting that the Japanese government had ordered Tokyoites to salute the US flag as an apology for the sinking of the Panay.82 Similarly, Canadian missionaries characteristically continued to ignore Japanese crimes with startling levels of blindness; some found it “hard to accept”83 that Japan was an aggressor, while others blamed Chinese resistance for the ongoing hostilities.84 Even as missionaries received firsthand reports of Japan’s atrocities in Nanjing, some were unwilling to believe them, with one E.C. Hennigar saying: “I could not bring myself to believe that these nice Japanese boys that we know so well could do the things told of them.”85
Likewise, Canada-Japan trade also stayed the course it had plotted after 1931, its scale only intensifying. As Japan’s aggression expanded, Japanese-backed companies bought up Canadian mines;86 strategic metals in particular soon became Canada’s leading exports to Japan, surpassing even Canadian staples such as wheat.87 From 1936 to 1938, for instance, aluminium exports increased by 142.91%, nickel by 760.6%, and copper by a staggering 5,556.52%.88 The clearly opportunistic slant of Canadian ‘neutrality’, which Marler had promoted, had by then been picked up by other Canadian politicians in a distinctly less positive light. In a House of Commons debate on 13 May 1938, one C.E. Johnston exploded: “Think of the tremendous amount of war material which we have shipped to these warring countries, and yet we are endeavouring to be neutral!”89 King responded on 24 May, justifying continued Canadian exports by noting that strategic metals were not “used only for armament purposes”,90 that there was “no system of administrative control which we could devise in peace time [...] to prevent Canadian [metals] from reaching Japan”, that in the event of an embargo Japan would simply turn elsewhere, and that no other country had embargoed Japan - except, he admitted, New Zealand, who had instituted a ban on exporting scrap iron.91 Despite New Zealand’s relative unimportance, it had provided an example that Canada might have followed; Canada never did, preferring instead the precedent set in 1931. The same arguments continued to be used: Christie, in a 29 March 1939 memorandum arguing against a Canadian metals embargo, justified his point by arguing that the great powers should be the ones to initiate action - even as he acknowledged that the past year had seen increased copper and aluminium exports to both Germany and Japan.92 As Japan tightened its import restrictions later that year, Canadian exports of strategic metals still “increased dramatically.”93 This sordid trade would continue even after the outbreak of war in Europe, with Ottawa finally restricting nickel exports to Japan in April 1940.94
Compared to after 1931, however, divergences between public opinion and Ottawa’s policy had become much more pronounced; by February 1938, up to 10,000 people and numerous community associations “had sent messages to Ottawa demanding an embargo on war materials to Japan.”95 Public backlash was such that King even censored reporting on a shipment of wheat to Japan.96 Numerous boycotts also targeted Japanese imports, which were effective enough to decrease demand for Japanese oranges by 40% from 1936 to 1937 and cause a “virtual standstill” of trade by the time Ottawa banned most Japanese imports in September 1941.97 At the same time, Canadian support for China also increased to a degree.98 Clearly, Canadian internationalist and anti-war sentiment had grown since 1931; unfortunately, however, anti-Asian racism had grown with it, with its target mostly narrowed down to Japan. Some voices attempted to curb this, like the Vernon News, who clarified that “Condemnation of Japan at war with China is one thing. Our attitude to the Japanese in Canada is another.”99 Similarly, the B.C. Lumber Worker cautioned against “local fascist elements” who might “divert a boycott of ‘Made in Japan’ products into anti-Oriental agitation”.100 Anti-racists found their efforts fruitless, as concerns over Canada’s still-inadequate Pacific defences reached a fever pitch.101 Sensationalism abounded; in 1937, for instance, the Toronto Star prominently featured the “good authority” of Archdeacon F.G. Scott, who targeted the “40,000 Japanese residents in Vancouver” as a perceived threat, warning “that Japan knew every inch of the coast, that its naval officers inhabited fishing villages, and that it owned ‘enormous timber limits.’”102 And although the ‘yellow peril’ had by now transformed into a ‘Japanese peril’, the old habits of Canadian racists seemingly died hard as they continued to dehumanize all Asians; British Columbia politician MacGregor MacIntosh, for instance, condemned what he saw as King “sacrificing” BC (not China) “on the altar of Japanese appeasement”,103 thus erasing Chinese suffering while instrumentalizing it towards his goal of exclusion.
Thus it was that Canada’s response to Japanese aggression in 1937, both domestically and internationally, failed to solve any of 1931’s problems; if anything, most (if not all) of them had become exacerbated. With the same response came similar consequences - a deeply complicit Canada unprepared for war, only this time with more blood on its proverbial hands.
In a diary entry for 31 December 1932, Keenleyside recorded a conversation between him and Marler. The latter, ever the imperialist, argued that in ten years, Japan would “be paramount in North China and all of Manchuria”. The former disagreed: “Ten years from now Japanese power in North China and Manchuria will be less than it is today.” Looking back at this entry decades later, the former first secretary only noted that he should have said thirteen years instead of ten.104
Japan would, as Keenleyside predicted, lose eventually, but not before millions more would be killed. And by the time those thirteen years came to pass, Canada had built up a dismal record in East Asia. Its inaction - based on the Canadian desire for Anglo-American harmony and Ottawa’s own reluctance to commit itself to collective security - only resulted in further Japanese aggression, while cynical war profiteering and imperial apologia continued almost until the very outbreak of war in the Pacific. Despite the many who did speak out against Japan, Canadian policy from Bennett to King was not to be swayed. When Canadian concerns over Japan’s expansion finally arose, many of them focused not on its actual Chinese victims but on a future race war and an attack on Canada’s Pacific coast. These latter predictions, of course, never came to pass, but that did not stop Ottawa from carrying out the wartime internment of Japanese Canadians, which remains one of Canada’s more shameful historical moments.105 As this essay has argued, however, perhaps just as shameful were the moments that led up to it.
For more on the Manchurian Incident, see Young (1998, particularly pp. 55-180)
Bennett to Marler, 4 February 1932. DCER, vol. 5, no. 301. (p. 305)
Debates, 17th Parliament, 3rd Session, vol. 3, 25 May 1932. (p. 3437)
Marler to King, 1 March 1932. DCER, vol. 5, no. 304. (pp. 307-308)
Debates, 18th Parliament, 1st Session, vol. 1, 13 February 1936. (p. 166)
Riddell to Skelton, 13 December 1932. DCER, vol. 5, no. 327. (p. 322)
Marler to Bennett, 19 December 1932. DCER, vol. 5, no. 328. (p. 323)
Debates, 17th Parliament, 4th Session, vol. 5, 16 May 1933. (p. 5066)
McGreer to King, 14 July 1937. DCER, vol. 6, no. 810. (pp. 1009-1011)
MacDonald to King, 14 August 1937. DCER, vol. 6, no. 812. (p. 1014)
King to MacDonald, 27 October 1937. DCER, vol. 6, no. 839 (pp. 1030-1032)
Wrong to King, 19 September 1937. DCER, vol. 6, no. 818 (p. 1018)
King to Wrong, 19 September 1937. DCER, vol. 6, no. 819. (p. 1018)
Memorandum for King, 20 October 1937. DCER, vol. 6, no. 835 (pp. 1026-1027)
King to Roy, 1 November 1937. DCER, vol. 6, no. 843. (p. 1034)
Christie to King, Memorandum, 29 October 1937. DCER, vol. 6, no. 841. (p. 1032)
Wrong to Skelton, 17 November 1937. DCER, vol. 6, no. 848. (p. 1037)
King to Dandurand, 18 November 1937. DCER, vol. 6, no. 849. (p. 1041)
Dandurand to King, 15 November 1937. DCER, vol. 6, no. 847. (p. 1036)
Emphasis added. King to Dandurand, 18 November 1937. (p. 1042)
Wrong to Skelton, 29 November 1937. DCER, vol. 6, no. 855. (pp. 1047-1048)
Christie, Memorandum, 10 December 1937. DCER, vol. 6, no. 856. (pp. 1048-1049)
Renaud to King, 22 August 1938. DCER, vol. 6, no. 859. (p. 1054)
Bruce to King, 15 December 1937. DCER, vol. 6, no. 858. (p. 1052)
Debates, 18th Parliament, 3rd Session, vol. 3, 13 May 1938. (p. 2880)
Debates, 18th Parliament, 3rd Session, vol. 3, 24 May 1938. (pp. 3188-3189)
Christie, Memorandum, 29 March 1939. DCER, vol. 6, no. 939. (pp. 1147-1150)
For an overview of the internment of Japanese Canadians, see Roy (2007, particularly pp. 16-147)