Canadian recalls life as an ‘enemy alien’
Tad Oyagi remembers the Sunday morning, 74 years ago, when his life changed. “I was having a Coke with my friends,” he said. “I even remember the song they were playing on the radio, ‘The Smoke Went up the Chimney Just the Same.’” On Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese Imperial aircraft attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Canada was already at war as an ally of Great Britain against Nazi Germany. Fearing sympathy for the Japanese cause inside Canada, the federal government declared all Japanese Canadians enemy aliens. Almost 22,000 Japanese, most of them Canadian citizens, had their belongings confiscated and were forcibly removed from their homes.