Challenging Exile

In September 1945, Canadian democracy faced a fundamental question of constitutional law: Could citizens be expelled on the basis of race? Canada proposed exiling Japanese Canadians to Japan, a country devastated by war. Thousands who had already experienced uprooting, internment, and dispossession were now at risk of banishment. Challenging Exile investigates the origins, administration, litigation, and aftermath of this attempt at gross injustice, and shares the stories of resilience of those who faced it. How did Japanese Canadians navigate the challenges arrayed against them? Eric M. Adams and Jordan Stanger-Ross detail the circumstances and personalities behind the proposed exile. They follow the lives of families facing government orders that forced them from their homes, stripped their livelihoods and possessions, and deprived them of fundamental rights. And they analyze the constitutional framework of the court case in which lawyers and judges grappled with the meaning of citizenship, race, and rights at a time of change in Canadian law and politics. Unfolding in a context of global conflict, sharpened borders, and racist suspicion, the story told in Challenging Exile has enduring relevance for our own troubled times.