Reprieve

British Columbia had a sudden change of heart. After decades of discrimination against people of Japanese origin, the province last week began to see some good in them.

The issue came to a head when the provincial Forestry Department decided to reenforce a 46-year-old rule forbidding Japanese to work on Crown timberlands. The rule had been temporarily voided in 1943, when the Dominion government took over the forests. With provincial authority restored, the old ban was revived. The Forestry Department ordered lessees of Crown lands to fire 800 loggers of Japanese extraction.

Instantly, civil liberties champions were up in arms. Logging companies protested that it was a poor policy to rob them of 800 loyal, trained workers when there was a shortage of labor. The loggers' union stood up for its Asiatic minority. The traditionally anti-Japanese Vancouver Sun sounded a new note: "British Columbia has long since outgrown [this] kind of racism. . . ."

By week's end, the government of Premier Byron ("Boss") Johnson had heard enough. It announced that the exclusion rule would be held in abeyance. Chances were that the legislature would kill it.

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