RIKKA
Periodical profile published 1978
http://www.connexions.org/CxArchive/Rikka/Rikka-Index.htm
Year Published: 1978
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Cx Number: CX824
A magazine dealing with historical, cultural and human rights issues within and beyond the Janpanese-Canadian community.
Abstract:
This magazine deals with historical, cultural and human rights issues within the Janpanese-Canadian community. This issue focuses on the War Measures Act. The Act has particular relevance to the Japanese-Canadian community which was very much victimized by its imposition during World War II. Some articles are reprinted from the War Measures Act Conference held in Hamilton in May 1977.
Canada's treatment of Japanese-Canadians during the war included large-scale deportations and then, later, confiscation of property and establishment of "camps" for the entire Japanese-Canadian population. The behaviour of the Japanese-Canadians at the time of the evacuation included no known example of subversive activity. The policies of the United States government and their treatment of the Japanese-Americans are compared with Canada's.
Other articles deal with the failure of the educational system to point out the dangers of the War Measures Act and a comparison of security laws in India, Britain and the U.S. including some recommendations to the government of Canada.
The feature article is written by Andrew Brewin, M.P., who represented the interests of Japanese-Canadians in the courts during the mid-'40s and later became one of the N.D.P. critics of the War Measures Act in 1970. Brewin puts the act in perspective and tells something of his own struggle against it. "The Japanese-Canadian community and all others who regard fundamental rights and freedoms as the life blood of our democracy will do their best to ensure that the Canadian constitution, when completed, will clearly exclude any such sweeping powers as are in the War Measures Act. The act was used to perpetuate grave injustices on Japanese-Canadians and to take advantage of the hysteria in Quebec in 1970. We face threats of separation in Canada. It would be well to recognize that these threats cannot be met by force or coercion."
[Note: Rikka was published between 1974 and 1987. The publisher, George Yamada, died in 2005. George Yamada's archives are held by the Archives of Ontario.]
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