Celebrity
‘Star Trek’ Actor George Takei Is Determined To Keep Telling His Japanese American Story
TOKYO — The internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans, including children, as adversaries during World War II is a historical event that has shocked and galvanized the Japanese American community over the years.
George Takei, who portrayed Hikaru Sulu aboard the USS Enterprise in the Star Trek franchise, is committed to recounting the story at every opportunity.
“I consider it my life’s mission to educate Americans about this chapter of American history,” he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
He thinks that the lesson about the failure of American democracy has not been fully learned, especially among Japanese Americans.
George Takei | AP News Image
‘Star Trek’ Actor George Takei Is Determined To Keep Telling His Japanese American Story
“The government bears the shame of detention. They are the ones who committed an act of injustice, cruelty, and inhumanity. But so often, the victims of government activities bear the shame themselves,” he remarked.
Takei, 87, has released a new picture book titled “My Lost Freedom” for youngsters aged 6 to 9 and their parents. Michelle Lee illustrated it with gentle watercolors.
Takei was four years old when President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, two months after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, proclaiming anyone of Japanese heritage an enemy of the United States and forcefully removing them from their West Coast homes.
Takei spent the next three years behind barbed wire, surrounded by troops with weapons, in three camps: the Santa Anita racetrack, which smelled of dung; Camp Rohwer in a marshland; and, beginning in 1943, Tule Lake, a high-security segregation center for the “disloyal.”
“We were perceived as distinct from other Americans. This was unfair. We were Americans and had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor. Yet we were imprisoned behind barbed wires,” Takei says in his book.
Throughout it all, his parents are presented as bearing the burdens with quiet dignity. His mother sews clothes for the children. They fashioned seats from scrap lumber. They played baseball. They danced to Benny Goodman. For Christmas, they received a Santa who appeared to be Japanese.
It’s a story that has been told and retold in books such as Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s 1973 “Farewell to Manzanar,” Lawson Fusao Inada’s “Only What We Could Carry,” and Frank Abe and Floyd Cheung’s “The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration,” which was recently published.
George Takei | AP News image
‘Star Trek’ Actor George Takei Is Determined To Keep Telling His Japanese American Story
David Inoue, executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, headquartered in Washington, D.C., believes Takei’s book’s message is still relevant.
He said that discrimination continues to this day, as seen by the anti-Asian attacks that erupted during the COVID-19 outbreak. Inoue claimed that his son had been taunted at school like he was when he was younger.
“Having novels like this helps to humanize us. It shares anecdotes about us that demonstrate how similar we are to other families. We like to play baseball. “We have pets,” Inoue explained.
Takei and his family were exiled to Tule Lake in northern California after his parents responded “No” to key items on a so-called loyalty questionnaire.
Question 27 asked if they were willing to serve in the United States Armed Forces, and Question No. 28 asked if they swore allegiance to the United States and would forego allegiance to the Japanese monarch. Both were contentious issues for people who had been robbed of their fundamental civil rights and labeled enemies.
“Daddy and Mama both thought that the two questions were stupid,” Takei writes in “My Lost Freedom.”
“The only honest answers were No and No.”
Takei stated that the questions failed to describe what would happen to families with young children. He claimed that the second question was equally a no-win because his parents believed there was no need to oppose Japan.
Tule Lake, the largest of the ten camps, housed 18,000 people.
Young men who replied “Yes” joined the all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which fought in Europe while their families were imprisoned. The 442, with its famed “Go for Broke” motto, is the most decorated unit of its size and duration in US military history.
“They were determined to prove themselves and get their families out of barbed wires,” Takei stated. “They’re our heroes. I know I owe a lot to them.”
After Japan surrendered, Takei and his family, like all other Japanese Americans released from the camps, were granted $25 and a one-way ticket to anywhere in the United States. The Takei family decided to start fresh in Los Angeles.
George Takei | Pixa Bay Image
‘Star Trek’ Actor George Takei Is Determined To Keep Telling His Japanese American Story
After years of effort and testimony by Japanese Americans, including Takei, the Civil Liberties Act was passed in 1988, awarding $20,000 in restitution and a formal presidential apology to every surviving U.S. citizen or permanent resident immigrant of Japanese descent detained during WWII.
Takei’s voice cracked as he remembered how his father did not survive to witness it.
He was proud of the variety shown in “Star Trek,” a television series that premiered in the mid-1960s and quickly gained a devoted fan base. The crew that flew through the galaxies had a variety of backgrounds.
Gene Roddenberry, the writer, inventor, and producer of “Star Trek,” intended to reflect the difficult times and the civil rights movement on television but had to do so symbolically to make it acceptable, according to Takei.
“various people have various views, tastes, and foods. He intended to make that comment. “Each character was supposed to represent a portion of this planet,” Takei explained.
Takei recounted how his father taught him that the government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” as Abraham Lincoln phrased it in his Gettysburg Address, could also be a weakness.
“All humans are imperfect, including great presidents like Roosevelt. The hysteria and prejudice of the day stampeded him. “And he signed Executive Order 9066,” Takei stated.
SOURCE – (AP)
