ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on oral history and personal memory in an exploration of the theme of silence and the empty spaces that it has filled in narratives of the internment. It focuses on the different articulations of silence in this history, its presentation in aural and non-aural forms, and its shifting meaning in the racialized context of lived experience. Together with photographic and documentary evidence of 22,000 Canadians of Japanese origin, the memories formed not one spoken narrative but many. In some ways, the narratives are consistent and uniform; in other ways, they seem irreconcilable and contradictory. Nisei narrators told of curfews, censored mail, restricted movement, and, even prior to the war, mandatory registration with the Government. Many families purchased at bargain prices the houses, businesses, fishing boats, farm land, and household and personal goods previously owned by Japanese Canadians.
