Canada's Emergence as a Pacific Power: The Fall and Rise of Japanese-Canadian Relations, 1941-1957

Abstract

Historically, the focus of Canadian foreign relations has been the Atlantic world, looking towards Europe and the United States as its core trading partners, its main source of immigrants, and the geopolitical centre of an overarching military and diplomatic strategy linked with London and Washington. Only in the postcolonial era, the argument runs, did Ottawa pursue any serious relationship with the rest of the world. Such claims are equally applicable to Canadian interests in the Asia-Pacific region, where scholars have emphatically argued that Ottawa had no formal policy for the area before at least the 1970s. This explains, among other things, its apparent disinterest in the Pacific War against Japan when compared to the European struggle against Nazi Germany.

Building on recent scholarship, I argue in this dissertation that Canada developed a greater interest in becoming a "Pacific power" around the era of the Second World War and early Cold War than is often conceded, and that its relationship with Japan was the foundation of this emerging policy. This study is framed by a focus on three crucial individuals within the Department of External Affairs - Hugh Keenleyside, Herbert Norman, and Arthur Menzies - who all had academic credentials and practical experience with Japanese and East Asian affairs and played an outsized role in articulating Canadian interests in the region. In addition, rather than focusing solely on the actions of Ottawa officials in the drafting of Canadian policymaking, I hinge my study on the role that public opinion, the press, notable NGOs, and other non-state actors all played in building a sense that Canada had pertinent interests in developing closer ties with Japan.

My thesis concludes that Canadian interests in the Asia-Pacific, and with Japan in particular, were much greater than previous historians have given them credit. On a wide range of issues - trade, diplomacy, immigration, and national defence - Canada's budding relationship with Japan played a vital role in the broader development of Canadian foreign policy as the country gained increasing independence from the British Empire and a closer association with the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. Moreover, I argue that debates on Japan's place in the world provoked serious discussion among Canadians, first as an enemy to be defeated and than as a friend to be cultivated. In short, Canada's emergence as a Pacific power was forged largely in the crucible of Japanese-Canadian relations that arose out of the Pacific War and its immediate aftermath.