Reply #62: this actually did happen to my parents ... [View All]

[Lisa]

(In Canada, not the US.)

They were of Japanese ancestry, and in the final months of WWII, they were told that the internment camps would be shut down, and they would not be allowed to resettle in their home communities along the coast (including Vancouver). So my family ended up getting spread out across the country -- aunts and uncles in Alberta, Ontario, and Nova Scotia. A couple of them did return to British Columbia after the ban was lifted (I forget how long after 1945), but I know that my parents did not want to come back to the province where they were born -- possibly a mixture of bad memories, fear of the government, and also fear of racist reprisals by the general population.

I really hope that none of us ever have to go through this kind of uprooting, for real. (One of the reasons why I decided to get my graduate degree in BC was to try to close that chapter in my family's history ... and getting involved in progressive politics was a way to irk the powers who ordered the expulsion.) My folks still worry that the RCMP is going to kick down the door some dark night and haul me off for being in the NDP, or something.

If I were forbidden to live in Ontario or BC -- I would be tempted to try to defy the law and live in the woods, or something, but I'm not good at foraging for food -- in either Great Lakes or coastal environments! Possibly I would go to Manitoba? I worked there a couple of summers, and liked it.

I try not to think about what would happen if I were kicked out of Canada. Emotionally, I don't know if I could cope.