Jane Komori

Jane Komori, “‘It Could Not Be an Ordinary Labour Union’: Race, Class, Exclusion, and the Japanese Camp and Mill Workers Union, 1920–1941”. Labour / Le Travail 95 (May): 15-54.

Jane Komori’s history of the Japanese Camp and Mill Workers Union (JCMWU) in the decades before the mass incarceration of Japanese Canadians is creative, masterful, and timely. Through the use of Japanese-language sources as well as oral histories, Komori demonstrates that the JCMWU was more than just a union; its founders and leaders understood it to be a political education project that could both educate Japanese workers in Canada about the nature of capitalism and the importance of collective action and counter widespread anti-Asian sentiment in Canadian labour organizations. Komori’s meticulous and readable article also provides a timely analysis of the intersection of labour and race by examining how the JCMWU’s envisaged a labour-based strategy to combat both racism, imperialism, and capitalism.