text: Prime Minister King wrote in his diary daily for most of his life. These diary entries have provided historians with a sense of the thoughts and feelings King held during the war. Historian N.F. Dreisziger has written that, "though he undoubtedly considered himself a man of humanitarian outlook, he was a product of his times and shared the values of his fellow Canadians. He was—beyond doubt—an anti-Semite, and shouldered, more than any of his Cabinet colleagues, the responsibility of keeping Jewish refugees out of the country on the eve of and during the war."
  Prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, Prime Minister King was not considered a racist. He seemed concerned for humanity and was against the use of the atomic bomb and even its creation. When King learned of the estimated date of the bomb dropping, he wrote in his diary: "It makes one very sad at heart to think of the loss of life that it [the bomb] will occasion among innocent people as well as those that are guilty." On August 6, 1945, the day of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, King wrote in his diary: "It is fortunate that the use of the bomb should have been upon the Japanese rather than upon the white races of Europe.
  Japanese Canadians serving in World Wars I and II