“Enemy Aliens” and “Conchies”: Perceptions of the “Un-British” in the Fraser Valley, 1939-1945

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14288/bcs.vi209.193790

Keywords:

Germans, Japanese Canadian internment, newspapers, race and racism

Abstract

In the small farming communities of British Columbia’s eastern Fraser Valley the Second World War seemed a distant phenomenon.  Yet the inhabitants of Chilliwack and Abbotsford would increasingly feel the effects of the conflict in their own communities, neighbourhoods and homes in tangible ways. The war was a shared experience that brought communities together, but it was also a divisive experience; those who were seen as a threat to the cohesiveness, the safety, or economic well being of the community were demonized and often ostracized. This article addresses how Canadians’ perceptions of ethnic “others”, especially ‘enemy aliens’, were shaped within these hometown horizons during the Second World War.  Throughout the war, social anxieties coalesced around groups from enemy countries, particularly Germans and Japanese-Canadians.  Though not technically enemy aliens, Mennonites found themselves at the forefront of such conversations, less because they were ethnically German or spoke that language, than because they were conscientious objectors.   All these groups were distinguishable in the Fraser Valley, their allegiance was intensely scrutinised, and ultimately their citizenship’s legitimacy was circumscribed. The results also challenge historiographical assumptions that Anglo-Canadian identity and citizenship was exclusively ethnically defined until the 1960s.

Author Biographies

R. Scott Sheffield, History, U Fraser Valley

R. Scott Sheffield is an associate professor of History at the University of the Fraser Valley currently researching British Columbians and the Second World War. His previous research examines Indigenous military service, and he is the author of The Red Man’s on the Warpath: The Image of the ‘Indian’ and the Second World War (UBC Press, 2004), and (with Noah Riseman) Indigenous Peoples and the Second World War: The Politics, Experiences and Legacies of War in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Cambridge University Press, 2019), as well as numerous articles and book chapters.

Kelsey Siemens, Independant scholar

Kelsey Siemens, MA, is a registered clinical counsellor in Abbotsford, BC. She has published academic journal articles and book chapters on the topics of psychology, eating disorders, sexuality, and embodiment. During her undergraduate studies, Kelsey doubled majored in history and worked extensively as a research assistant in the history department. This is her first history publication.

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Published

2021-05-05

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Articles