George Takei is perhaps most well-known for his portrayal of Hikaru Sulu in the original “Star Trek” series (1966-1969) and subsequent reprisals across the franchise, but his experience and breadth spans well beyond the pioneering sci-fi behemoth. His most contemporary role is that of social activist and author, with two memoirs and hundreds of public talks to his name. His third memoir, “It Rhymes with Takei,” following his life as a closeted gay man before coming out at age 68, is set to release in June of this calendar year. For the Bucknell Forum’s “World in Transition” theme, Takei took to the Weis Center stage this past week to deliver a talk focused on his time in Japanese internment camps during WWII.
Once the applause died down, Takei opened his speech with his trademark deadpan delivery. “I’ve been called many things,” he said. “Icon, legend, idol.” But his tone took a somber tone as he continued, “[I’ve also been called] Jap, enemy. It seems I’ve lived through Bucknell Forum’s theme of transitions” as the world shifted from tolerant to intolerant to apologetic towards Japanese Americans in the years following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. But the “terror” of the attack on Pearl Harbor “froze everything,” and when the chips began to fall, Takei’s whole life changed.
Then-President FDR declared war on Japan, and the FBI “swooped down on Japanese Americans.” Americans like Takei and his family, consisting of himself (age five), his parents and two younger siblings, aged four and one respectively, “had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor but looked like the people who did, so we were to blame.” Takei distinctly remembers his parents being unable to walk down the street without people yelling slurs as they drove by in their cars.
One day, soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets came to the door of Takei’s home and took him and his family to a “temporary camp” in suburban Los Angeles. “That morning is seared into my memory,” Takei said solemnly. His family was assigned a horse stall, uncleaned, to sleep in. Despite promises of the stall being short-term “housing” while the official internment camps were constructed around the country, Takei and his family were kept there for three months.
When finally Takei, his family and the others in the Los Angeles complex were moved, Takei’s father told him and his siblings that they were “going on a long vacation in the country, by train.” The young Takei was excited—he’d never been on a train before! But three days and two nights later, when their journey concluded in southeastern Arkansas, Takei’s excitement had been replaced by boredom. Soldiers announced the name of the camp they had arrived at—Rohwer—but Takei had thought they were roaring, like lions, and took pride in counting himself unafraid.
Within Rohwer concentration camp, surrounded by a barbed wire fence and armed soldiers, Takei and the other children attended “school,” led by a Japanese-American teacher who, too, had been “relocated” to the camp. This was Takei’s first schooling experience, and on the first day, the teacher taught them how to say the American Pledge of Allegiance. They recited it every day.
“I was too young at the time,” Takei recalled, “to understand the irony [of saying] the words ‘for liberty and justice for all’” in a classroom with a tarp roof, contained within an internment camp. “They had categorized us as ‘enemy aliens,’ but neither [word] was true. We were Americans.”
Takei and his family were eventually moved to Tule Lake, a different and more highly militarized camp in northern California with a population of about 18,000 (compared to the 8,000 of Rohwer). It was “a series of stupidit[ies]” that led to Tule Lake becoming one of the most violent camps, as young Japanese Americans, who had tried to enlist for the U.S. military after Pearl Harbor and had instead been “treated as the enemy” and incarcerated with no cause or due process, became radicalized by their continued hostile reception. Riots were routine; radicals were often doubly-imprisoned in a separate jail space within the camp. Takei’s father was “well-behaved” and contributed to order where he could, going so far as to take on the leadership position of “block manager” to attempt to maintain peace. As a result, he and his family were given a choice when the war ended: stay in America or go back to Japan. Radicals were not given the option of remaining on American soil.
“The war was over, but hostility was still intense,” so Takei’s father left Tule Lake before Takei’s mother and the three children did, choosing to go back to L.A. to “test the temperature” and find a job and place to live before the family rejoined him. Takei, his mother and his two siblings stayed in the camp an additional 10 weeks before meeting his father in L.A.
The worst part of leaving Tule Lake, for Takei and his younger brother, was leaving behind Blackie, the stray dog they had “adopted” while at the camp. The worst part for Takei’s mother was “being let out.” They were returning to an L.A. that did not accept them—they had to live on Skid Row, and the only job Takei’s father could find was as a dishwasher in Chinatown—and they had “lost [all] community” they’d had before the war.
As Takei grew older, he “wanted to know more,” but “most parents wouldn’t talk about it.” Part of Takei’s goal in publishing his memoir “They Called Us Enemy,” covering his time in the camps and going on public speaking circuits is to educate not just the general public but the younger Japanese American generations who are missing their own history. “It’s interesting,” Takei reflected, “how victims take on the shame that really belongs to the government. […] This is an American story. It’s the failure of America. But it’s important for young Japanese Americans.” By “young,” Takei means “any generation younger than he is,” at age 87. “Because it’s a blank in their history. [A history that] we’re repeating […] again. […] The same kind of injustice.”
“‘Of the people, by the people, for the people’ are noble words. They’re what make America great.” But, Takei pointed out, they are “also the downfall, because people are fallible [and] they make mistakes. Even great presidents [like FDR] make mistakes.” Crucially, though, Takei encourages hope and continual effort: “In a democracy, you never give up.”
Takei’s father was the one to encourage him to get involved with politics. As part of a restitution campaign for Japanese Americans who had been incarcerated during WWII, Takei testified at a congressional hearing in 1981—he read a portion of his testimony, and as he took out a pair of reading glasses, he slipped in a Star Trek joke to break some of the lingering tension in the room: “I was the helmsman of the Enterprise, but now I need these to read.”
Ultimately, the internment of Japanese Americans was found to be based on “war hysteria, racial prejudice and the failure of political leadership” by a congressional committee in 1984, and in 1988, the Civil Liberties Act granted restitution to “the survivors” of the United States concentration camps. Takei was “very moved” by the law, but he was, at the same time, saddened.
“My father bore [the pain of the incarceration] more than most” because of his duties as a caregiver and block manager, but he passed away in 1979. “He didn’t hear the apology” or get the restitution sum. But, Takei said, his mother comforted him, reminding him that “[his dad] always knew the day [of restitution] would come […] because [he] loved [and believed in] America.”
The next and final speaker for this year’s “World in Transition” Bucknell Forum will be Kevin O’Leary of “Shark Tank” on February 18th at 7:30pm at the Weis Center.