During the course of the Second World War nearly 22,000 Japanese-Canadians were uprooted and forcible interned by the government of Canada. More than half of those had been born in Canada, thousands more were naturalized British subjects. Despite no shred of evidence that the population posed any threat to the Canadian nation at war the internment continued until after the war in the Pacific had ended. In September 1945, Canada proposed exiling Japanese Canadians to Japan, a country devastated by war. Thousands who had experienced internment and dispossession were now at risk of banishment and the government sought to do all in its power to ensure as many Japanese-Canadians as possible accepted their potential new fate.

To dive into this subject today we’ve brought on two historians Eric M. Adams and Jordan Stanger-Ross. Eric is a Professor of Law at the University of Alberta, Faculty of Law. He publishes widely on Canadian constitutional law, theory, and history. Jordan is Professor of History at the University of Victoria and Director of Past Wrongs, Future Choices, a research partnership that is working to understand, from a global perspective, the uprooting of people in Japanese descent in the 1940s. The two have recently co-authored the book Challenging Exile: Japanese Canadians and the Wartime Constitution which was published in 2025 by UBC Press.

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On October 26th news broke of the passing of Canadian historian Tim Cook. Tim was a leading voice in the field of Canadian military history and the chief historian and director of research at the Canadian War museum. He is someone I personally have known for most of my academic career and he has been a mentor at times for me during a variety of ups and downs throughout my career. In August I had the pleasure of interviewing Tim about his most recent book The Good Allies, and with the news of his passing I thought it fitting to release this episode right away.

When the Second World War broke out in 1939, it set in motion a deadly struggle between the Axis powers and the Allies, but also fraught negotiations between and among the Allies. On questions of diplomacy, economic policy, industrial might, military capabilities, and even national sovereignty, thousands of lives and the fate of the free world depended on back-room deals and desperate trade-offs between soldiers, diplomats, and leaders.

In North America, Canada and the US strained to forge a new military alliance to guard their coasts and fend off German U-boats and the menace of a Japanese invasion. Wartime economies were entwined to produce a staggering contribution of weapons to keep Britain and other allies in the war. The defence of North America against enemy threats was essential before the US and Canada could send armies, navies, and air forces overseas

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The Sacred Band of Thebes was an elite military unit of 300 highly trained heavy infantry soldiers (hoplites), famously composed of 150 pairs of male lovers. Formed in the 4th century BCE the Thebans, who came from a uniquely gay-tolerant society, believed that soldiers would fight more ferociously to protect their partners and to avoid showing cowardice in front of them. They were not wrong. The Sacred Band quickly became the shock troops of the Theban army and one of the most dominant phalanx formations of the Ancient Greek world. While most people think of the Spartans when they think of Greek military excellence in the classical world most would also be surprised to know that the Sacred Band went on to not only defeat the Spartans but establish Thebes as a dominant, albeit short-term, power in Greece.

James Romm is Professor of Classics at Bard College and author of numerous books on Greek history and culture, including, Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece's Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophic Masterpiece (Norton). Most recently he has published his biography of Demosthenes as part of Yale's Ancient Lives series.

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You can purchase a copy of Punching Above Our Weight: The Canadian Military at War Since 1867 right now at the below links:

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