In the first article, "British Columbia and the Japanese Evacuation" by W. Peter Ward, the Japanese evacuation is viewed as an occurrence due to the publics terror of the potential threat from the local Japanese-Canadians on the west coast of Canada during the 1930s. Which is definitely unlike J.L. Granastein and Gregory A. Johnson's article, "The Evacuation of the Japanese Canadians, 1942: A Realist Critique of the Received Version" which deals primarily with the early to mid 1940s.
During the early and middle 1930s anti-Japanese feeling was not particularly intense in British Columbia. But in the closing months of 1937 a new source of stain bore down upon the west coast's racial cleavage. Japan attacked China once again and, in Canada reports of this aggression provoked the first strong outburst of anti-Japanese feeling in a decade. (Ward 459).
This "outburst" was just one of many to follow the enemy Japan's actions during the war. .
Following this anti-Japanese spark that was inspired by the invasion of China, there was a rumor that hundreds of Japanese-Canadians were actually illegal immigrants on the coast of British Columbia. Even though this was only a rumor with no hard evidence, this caused some to believe that Japanese spies and military officers were already present in Canada. In Ottawa, Prime Minister Mackenzie King was trying to create a solution to this anti-Japanese hysteria that was felt on the west coast and now spreading eastward. Pressured by public opinion and the possible threat of spies living in Canada, King "promised a public enquiry into rumors of illegal Japanese immigration." (Ward 461) On the 24th of March in 1938 the Board of Review, who was in charge of the immigration investigation, held its first public hearing in Vancouver. These public hearings calmed down the many protests of the terrified anti-Japanese locals so much that "when the board's findings were published early in 1939, the report scarcely attracted notice.
