The Canadian Home Front During WWII

Women During WWII

• Actively involved in Military– 1941 formation of

• CWAC• RCAF-Women’s

Division• “Wrens” (Women’s

Navy) 100 000 women served

What Did They Do ???

• Did not serve on the front– Served as

• Cooks• Nurses• Pilots• Mechanics• Welders• Radar operators

– Ferry Command planes flew from N.A. to G.B.• 500 women died during these flights

Women In Canada

• Factories operated longer hours– Increase in women in

Canadian workforce (WWI ???)

• Over 1 million women worked in Canada during WWII

• Still paid less than men and benefits taken away after war– Jobs lost when men came

home – Right here in Surrey !!!

The Female James Bond ???

• Women served as Special Operation Executive (SOE)– Secret Agents

• Parachuted into Nazi controlled France to find out information

• Served as saboteurs, couriers and radio operators

• The Heroines of the SOE• Andree Borrel, Vera

Leigh, Diana Rowden– All captured by Nazi secret

police and sent to prison camps

The Economy

• Start of WWII = End of Depression– Economy in war time production

• Canadian factories made– Bombs, bullets, ships, aircraft (war supplies)

• Total War ???

• War Supply Board by C.D. Howe– Organize Canadian industry to supply front– How Did Canada Pay for the War ???

• Rationing (Part of Total War)– 115 g of coffee, 1kg of meat (per adult person)

• Lend Lease Act and Hyde Park– Threat and resolution to Canadian wartime economy

Canadian Propaganda

• The spread of information to promote a particular cause

• NOT TRUTHFUL !!!• Used posters to

recruit and to inform citizens to help out war effort.

Canadian Training Facilities

• British Commonwealth Air Training Plan– Pilots from

Commonwealth all trained in Canada

– 130 000 air personnel were trained in Canada

– A way for Canada to be involved without actually sending troops overseas

Camp X

• Spy Training Facility– Yes, like James Bond

• Sabotage, silent killing

– For Canadian, British and US

– Oshawa, Ontario– So secret members of

government and the military did not know it existed

– Sent 500 agents into the field

Conscription Crisis

• Start of war P.M. King said there would be no conscription– 1940-National Resource Mobilization Act

• All men to help in war effort but not overseas

– 1942-Need for troops• King held a plebiscite asking Canadians to OK

conscription– What was the vote ??? Similar to WWI French

Canadians said "NO”, Anglos “YES”

Would It Tear The Country Apart?

• King tried to convince men in NRMA to go over

• No luck, eventually King conscripted 13 000 men to go overseas– Only 2463 reached the front

• King managed to avoid a total break in Anglo-Franco relations, but tensions were heightened

Enemy Aliens

• What are they ???• Canada banned

– Pro-Nazi and Communist parties– Religious Pacifists (Don’t want to go to war)– European refugees

• Jews especially (Anti-Semitism)• “None is too many”• “We don’t want to take too many Jews”

• Forced to register with government because of fear of sabotage against Canada- 100 000 people

The Shame of Canada

• Japanese Internment…Why did it happen?

• Brief history of Japanese in Canada– B.C. infamous for racism-1907 Race riot– 1928 P.M. King limited the number of

Japanese immigrants to 150/year– Not allowed to vote

But, then this happened

Japanese Internment

• Japanese Canadians were held in Concentration Camps…What does that word mean?

• After Pearl Harbour and due to racist attitudes there was a fear that Japanese Canadians would rise up and supply Japan with information for a Japanese invasion of Canada!!!– COMPLETELY FALSE…RCMP and

Government said there was no threat but both craved to public pressure

Internment Begins

• 1942-They were stripped of their rights

• Fingerprinted, photographed and given an ID number and forced to carry ID card

– Just like criminals…except they had committed no crime

– Forced to either be deported or relocate away from coast…Housed at Hastings Park before shipped off to B.C. interior

– 22 000 Japanese Canadians sent to internment camps-14 000 were born in Canada

HASTINGS PARK

Japanese Internment

• 1943-Custodian of Aliens Act– Took all Japanese

Canadian possessions without their permission

– Sold at low prices to white people

– Money went to pay for internment

• Japanese paid for themselves

Conditions in the Camp• “They stopped [the train] at the

elevators and we were just herded out.”

• “ I was in that camp for four years. When it got cold the temperature went down to as much as 60 below. The buildings stood on flat land beside a lake. We lived in huts with no insulation. Even if we had the stove burning the inside of the windows would all be frosted up and white, really white. I had to lie in bed with everything on that I had... at one time there were 720 people there, all men, and a lot of them were old men."

Internment Camps in B.C.

What Does This Look Like ???

The Embarrassment of 1944

• In 1944 a new law passed– Said that the Japanese could be deported

from Canada even if they were born in Canada !!!!

• 3964 Japanese Canadians were deported of which 2600 were Canadian citizens

• 1946– The war was finally over and Japanese

Canadians were released from the internment camps

Compensation ???

• 1988– $21 000 was given by the Canadian

government to any detainee still living– WAS THAT ENOUGH ????

• Was there any justifiable reason to put the Japanese in concentration camps or was it a policy based on racism ???