Asian Heritage Portal

Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre National Historic Site of Canada

Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre.
© Parks Canada/Catherine Cournoyer

Location: New Denver, British Columbia

Date designated: 2007

The designation:
The Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre is closely associated with a significant aspect of the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War, the history of internment camps located in the interior regions of British Columbia.

Japanese labour employed in the construction of the New Denver (B.C.) camp hospital.
© Jack Long / National Film Board of Canada / Library and Archives Canada / C-024450

The Centre is located at the heart of one of the camps constructed under the authority of the British Columbia Security Commission. It is one of the few sites that still contains resources directly associated with this tragic episode in Canadian history. The buildings associated with internment constitute an important place of memory for the Japanese Canadian community, and the ongoing existence of these structures supports the survival of the history of this event.

On February 24, 1942, a federal Order in Council under the War Measures Act authorized the internment of “enemy aliens” and Canadians of Japanese descent were moved to camps for the duration of the war. By the summer, the British Columbia Security Commission, the provincial agency charged with implementing the federal government's internment policy, had constructed a makeshift centre at New Denver, a hamlet in British Columbia's southeast interior. The first internees arrived soon after.

Relocation of Japanese-Canadians to internment camps in the interior of British Columbia, 1942
© Tak Toyota / Library and Archives Canada / C-046350

In its layout and overall character, the New Denver camp was indistinguishable from other internment facilities in the interior. It consisted of a grouping of frame shacks or living quarters, a Japanese bath, which was soon converted to a community hall, and a series of outbuildings.

While other centres were demolished after the war's end, some of the buildings still exist or have been reconstructed at New Denver. Managed by the internees through their own Kyowakai Society, the New Denver camp housed roughly 1500 persons during the war. At conflict's end, the camp was transformed into a tuberculosis centre, while healthy inmates were required to abandon the British Columbia camps and start life anew elsewhere.

The Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre offers compelling insight into the Canadian government's treatment of Japanese Canadians in the 1940s. For Japanese Canadians, the centre's creation bears witness to the Japanese renaissance of the 1970s and to the redress movement of the 1980s. With its Centennial Centre and peace gardens, the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre has become a treasured place of remembrance and community identity for today's Japanese Canadians.