Spirit Up

Canada had been at war for 27 months, the U.S. for a week. But a single week had been enough to raise Canadian war spirit to new heights. No longer was Canada 3,000 miles from the war fronts; no longer was her nearest neighbor a neutral. Instead, the threat of war action had reached to Canada's own west coast.

In the first days of the Pacific War the Canadian west coast was as jittery as California (see p. 11). Police rounded up "a fair number" of the 24,000 Japanese on the coast, while Naval authorities decommissioned 1,000 Japanese fishing boats by removing their carburetors. Vancouver had three blackouts, the first of which sent 30 traffic accident victims to the hospital. The mayor of Victoria panicked the citizens by declaring: "The Japanese are off the Aleutian Islands. We expect them here any time. The situation is very serious."

But as the week wore on, no slant-eyed invaders menaced Victoria. The one Japanese qualified to vote in the Vancouver civic elections solemnly cast his ballot unmolested. Factories which had canceled night shifts went back to work. Like most of the world, Canada's west coast was getting down to the nasty business of war.

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