How are soldiers changed by war, and how do they change Canada?
When I was a boy growing up in the 1980s, I was fascinated by the Second World War. Model Spitfires and Mustangs hung from my bedroom ceiling. I transformed the backyard sandbox into the Egyptian desert of 1942, where Montgomery’s British Eighth Army faced off against German Field Marshall Rommel, the Desert Fox.
When I would occasionally ask my grandfather about the war, however, he said little. It seemed to me then that the war had made only a shallow impression on him, or at least one that didn’t last long. Members of the Seaforth Highlanders celebrate news of the end of the Second World War – and their eventual return to Canada – in May, 1945, somewhere in Europe.Canadian POWs smile at the Shamshuipo camp in Hong Kong in August, 1945, after the end of Japanese occupation.A Toronto parade in November, 1945, honours General Harry Crerar, commander of Canadian forces in the Second World War.
His perspective on a war that, for him, involved so many horrors is remarkable, but so, too, is his postwar transition. How does a 23-year-old combat veteran return to high school and then rebuild a life that has been so dramatically interrupted? Joining up might have convinced Mr. Moritsugu’s neighbours of his family’s loyalty, but he returned from overseas service to a Canada that still refused him the right to vote because of his ethnicity. Soon after, an RCMP officer knocked on his door and reminded him that because he was Japanese Canadian, he needed to carry a registration card and get permission if he wanted to travel. “I was right back to where I was before I enlisted,” Mr. Moritsugu said.
A 2021 Remembrance Day event in Vancouver’s Chinatown honours early Chinese pioneers to Canada as well as Chinese-Canadian veterans.Princess Margriet of the Netherlands visit the Canadian War Museum this past May in Ottawa, where she was born in 1943 when the royal family was in exile.Of the almost 1.1 million Canadians who served in uniform during the Second World War, only about 20,000 are still living. Recording their insights while we still can is a priority for the Canadian War Museum.
Blanche Bennett organized a reunion in 1981 for all the women who had served in Halifax during the war. About 150 veterans came, including some from England and the U.S. They were “very anxious to get back again,” she said. “It had been a long time.” Two decades later, when Ms. Bennett turned 80, eight of the women she served with during the war came to her party. “Oh, yes,” she remembered. “We stuck together like flies.
To take a more recent example, last summer, thousands of Canadian veterans of Afghanistan watched as the Taliban they had fought for years took over the country, barring girls from schools and forcing into hiding the Afghans Canadians had fought and bled beside. For some, this was expected. For most, it provoked gut-wrenching feelings and appraisal of Canada’s long war.
“I find solace in the fact that the sacrifice matters because we need people who are willing to sacrifice for Canada. And the way the world works and the instruments of statecraft and whatnot, that’s just beyond your sphere of influence. So, you take solace in the service and the sacrifice, because we need that to keep what we have.”
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