June 5, 1994 48 pages

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NEWS photo Mike Wakefield

SAPPER JAMES P. Nahanee reflects on the meaning of the Squamish Band’s War Veterans D-Day Commemoration to be held today at the memorial next to St.
Paul’s Indian Church. Nahanee was a corporal with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry; after the war he transferred to the Royal Canadian Engineers.

SAPPER JAMES P. Nahanee bore no
visible wounds when he returned from
Europe after the Second World War.

By Kate Zimmerman
News Reporter

But he carries the scars with him all the same.

The Squamish Band infantryman missed tak-
ing part in D-Day with his original regiment
because ness forced him to renin behind ia
Canada. By the time he reached England with the
Princess Patricta’s Canadian Light Infantry,
many of the men be tamed with had died during
the invasion of Normandy, including two
cousins.

Later in the war, Nahanee’s brother, who was
rejected by the Canadian Army because of a heart

murmur, enlisted and died fighting with the
American army.

The Nahanees were two of 6,000 native
Canadians who fought in the Second World War.
In addition to dodging enemy fire, native soldiers
had to manoeuvre around the mines of racism
lurking within their own ranks.

According to Nahance, most of them were
killed within the first month of seeing action. The
natives were made to feel they bad more to
prove.

They tended to volunteer for the toughest
Jobs, particularly the patroHing jobs, he said.
“Our people were that way.”

Nahance himself came to the war firly hate,
but after completing gruclling advanced infantry
taining in England a non-native soldier and he
Were up forthe same promotion to the rank of
corporal.

Nahanee clearly remembers how the officer in
charge offered the job to the white soldier first,
and made iCobvious it would anly be given to
Nahanee if the other man didn’t want it, He
didn’t, and Nahance became a corporal and a
amiudl-arms taining instructor.

Because he was native, soldicrs sometimes
did net accept his orders.

“Efelt discrimination,” he admits.

Even so, Nahanee remained in Europe for a
year afier the war ended, transferring to the
Royal Canadian Engineers to dismantle bridges
built by the Canadian Army, clear mines and
booby traps and dismantle barracks. When he
returned to Canada in 1946, he discavered the
opportunities offered to returning white soldiers
Werte NOL availible to aalives,

Nahanee said this problum has been decu-

See Native page 3

Index
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Noel Wright eee 6

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