Interviews
Government's permission to publish Japanese newspaper in Canada during World War II
And in fact, incidentally, Tom Shoyama, just about that time, the newspaper they had, he had was The New Canadian. And The New Canadian was immediately, in December, right after the war, soon after, was shut down. But then they came to them and they said they want some information, they want the Japanese people to know. "You have a running newspaper, can you inform Japanese people that they have to register?" So that's in January, they said they have to go and register. Well, he says, "I can't unless I, unless I have a newspaper to send out." And then he said, "Not only that, I have to have, be able to write" -- see, they didn't like the idea of him writing a newspaper that had English and Japanese in it, because Japanese was foreign to them, and they said this was code. "You could, you could tell people to do things without knowledge of, of the authorities." "Well," he says, "I can't write a, unless you give me information, I can't write a, just a blanket statement saying you have to register, you have to give 'em a reason why this was being done." It's a part of the, part of the, as a matter of fact, they were using the War Measures Act to do this. Anyhow, they said, "Okay, we'll give you, we'll give you the, the permission to go back and produce your newspaper." So they allowed him to put the newspaper back out.
Date: July 25 & 26, 2006
Location: Washington, US
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.
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