The Nisei Translators, 1945-47

When Canada's wartime ban on Japanese Canadian enlistment in the military was lifted in 1945, the impetus came from other parts of the Commonwealth. British and Australian forces in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Theatre required translators fluent in Japanese, and Nisei (second-generation Japanese Canadian) recruits could meet this need.

The Department of National Defence records in this short briefing book address the 1945 “loan” of thirty-five Nisei translators to British forces. These secret arrangements were brokered by British Security Coordination, which represented British special forces, security, and intelligence agencies in the Western Hemisphere, and approved by Canada’s Minister of National Defence Andrew McNaughton and Chief of the General Staff John Carl Murchie.

These troops volunteered despite the wartime internment and disposession of Japanese Canadians. The documents trace their departures for India and Southeast Asia in the closing stages of the war. They also provide glimpses of several soldiers’ continuing service in the British Army after the Japanese surrender. Some of these Japanese Canadian soldiers continued to work as interpreters for British military courts and occupation authorities into 1946-47.