During the Second World War, Canada was not immune to the war coming close to its shores. The Battle of the St. Lawrence occurred from 1942 to 1944, during which time German U-boats sank 20 merchant ships and four Canadian warships. The battle left 340 dead.
On the West Coast, things were relatively quiet.
But on June 20, 1942, the Japanese may have attacked Canada…or maybe not.
Estevan Point Lighthouse was built in 1909. Made of concrete, it was 30.5 metres high and was one of the most prominent lighthouses on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It was a key radio-direction-finding station on the west coast.
According to the official story, on June 20, 1942, I-26, under the command Yokota Minoru, surfaced and shelled the lighthouse. A total of 25 to 30 rounds of 5.5 inch shells were fired at the lighthouse and radio-direction-finding station.
The shells failed to hit their targets and the lighthouse station was undamaged. A message was sent out:
“Wireless station and light at Estevan Point shelled by enemy aircraft for 40 minutes commencing at 1025 PM June 20 [1942]. No damage done except two windows cracked or broken. Station unscathed.”
A Mrs. Thomas Dick said she was at Hesquiaht Village when she saw something emerge from the water. She said,
“I saw something come up out of the water. It came up just like a whale only it didn’t make splashes. It came up near the buoy and slowly went down again. It stayed up for nearly five minutes.”
By the time Canadian Navy ships arrived, the submarine was long gone.
One of the shells was recovered by a naval shore patrol after the attack, while shell fragments were found in 1973. An inert fragment is now on display at the Maritime Museum of British Columbia.
On June 22, 1942, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King informed the House of Commons of the attack. He said,
“It was the first attack upon Canadian soil that has been made since Confederation…It only goes to bear out what has been said so often, that no one can take too seriously both the immediacy and the extent of the danger with which all parts of the world are confronted, and at this time our own part in particular.”
After the incident, the lights of outer stations on the island were turned off, which impacted coastal shipping in the area.
Yet, there is some speculation that the Japanese were never in the area and that the attack was by the Allies themselves.
In his book, Keepers of the Light, author Donald Graham speculated that the attack on the lighthouse was part of a government conspiracy.
In 1995, The Fifth Estate broadcast an episode about the incident. The program speculated that the attack was a false flag operation by Allied vessels to increase domestic support for the federal government and its wartime policies.
More recently, Japanese naval records have noted the event, and the unearthing of Japanese shells near the site of the attack lend credence to the fact that it was an attack on Canada’s western shores during the war.