Issuance of Licenses to Japanese

From this file, LOI has digitized one textual record or image.

Correspondence in this file center on the issuance of fishing licences to Japanese Canadians after the War. In the first letter, Provincial Fisheries Commissioner L.H. Eyres requests that no licences be issued to “persons of Japanese racial origin.” Eyres claimed that after the dispossession, “whites” replaced the Japanese Canadian fishermen and as a result the industry became “over-crowded.” He felt that allowing the Japanese Canadian fishermen back would “only aggravate this condition.”

The bulk of the correspondence relates to a request by the Salmon Arm & District Chamber of Commerce to allow C. Nakamura, an experienced coastal fisher, to obtain a commercial licence to fish ling and carp out of Shuswap Lake. They argued that due to food shortages as well as the need for the by-products, and based on Nakamura’s experience, it would be beneficial for the region to have him remove the “coarse” fish from the lake. Unfortunately, the government cited the War Measures Act, 1942, and the National Emergency Transitional Powers Act, 1945, as reasons for not allowing the licence.

The Provincial Government of British Columbia created this archive.

The digital copies of the records were acquired by the Landscapes of Injustice Research Collective between 2014 and 2018.

This record was digitized in full.