Japanese-Canadian group objected to honour accorded MP who made racist remarks
Lena Sin
Province
This building at 401 Burrard in Vancouver is no longer the Howard Green Building after a group of Japanese Canadians won a fight to have it renamed. Photograph by : Gerry Kahrmann, The province
Japanese-Canadians were elated at Ottawa’s decision yesterday to rename the Howard Green Building.
Green was a former Conservative MP known for his racist remarks in the 1930s and 1940s.
“I’m elated,” said Mary Kitagawa. “It has a great impact on us because whenever we see this name it takes us back to internment and all the suffering we experienced.”
Kitagawa was among a small group who campaigned to have the office building at 401 Burrard Street renamed.
Grace Aiko Thomson, president of the Greater Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizens Association for Human Rights, said it would have been disgraceful for the government to keep the name.
When the issue was raised last October, federal Public Works Minister Michael Fortier acknowledged he didn’t know about Howard Green’s racist past.
The name was recommended to the minister by a local volunteer group, including a historian, who considered more than 350 names.
“What happened was more than 60 years ago and Parliament members, being younger today, don’t know all of our history. That’s why they appoint people to research this,” said Thomson.
“What disturbed me most was someone from Vancouver Heritage — a historian — would recommend the name.”
Fortier, the federal minister responsible for naming public buildings, said in a statement that he’s asking
for a new volunteer committee to submit a shortlist of new names.
The announcement comes after several meetings in Vancouver. After the controversy erupted, the minister asked the original naming committee to reconsider its recommendation. But the committee decided to stick with its original choice.
Fortier then ordered a second meeting, in which the naming committee was required to meet with members of the Japanese-
Canadian community as well as the Green family.
At that meeting, the family said they recognized Howard Green’s comments from 1935 to 1949 were hurtful to Japanese-Canadians, but argued he was expressing a widespread feeling at the time.
Province stories from the 1930s and 1940s document Green’s campaign to oust Japanese-Canadians from B.C., calling them a “danger” and saying that “our stand is, and always has been, that we won’t have …. in the province.”
Green was a First World War veteran, a strong advocate of nuclear disarmament and the second-longest serving MP from Vancouver. He died in 1989 at age 93.
© The Vancouver Province 2007
