Star Trek’s George Takei on his life’s mission: to tell his Japanese-American story as often as he can

‘I consider it my mission in life to educate Americans,’ says the Star Trek actor on the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II in camps
He has a new picture book for children out about the years he spent interned as a child and the unfairness of being ‘seen as different from other Americans’

Books and literature

Associated Press

Published: 4:15pm, 31 May 2024

Why you can trust SCMP

The incarceration of 120,000 Japanese-Americans, including children, labelled enemies during World War II is an historical experience that has traumatised, and galvanised, the Japanese-American community over the decades.

For George Takei, who portrayed Hikaru Sulu aboard the USS Enterprise in Star Trek, it is a story he is determined to keep telling every opportunity he has.

“I consider it my mission in life to educate Americans on this chapter of American history,” he says.

He fears the lesson about the failure of US democracy has not really been learned, even today, including among Japanese-Americans.

American troops supervise the movement of Japanese-Americans from their homes to camps during World War II. Photo: Getty Images

“The shame of internment is the government’s. They’re the ones that did something unjust, cruel and inhuman. But so often the victims of the government actions take on the shame themselves,” he says.

Takei, 87, has a new picture book out for children ages six to nine and their parents, called My Lost Freedom. It is illustrated in soft watercolours by Michelle Lee.

Takei was four years old when US President Franklin D Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, two months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour in Honolulu, Hawaii, declaring anyone of Japanese descent an enemy of the United States and forcibly removing them from their homes on the US western seaboard.

Takei spent the next three years behind barbed wire, guarded by soldiers with guns, in three camps.

“We were seen as different from other Americans. This was unfair. We were Americans, who had nothing to do with Pearl Harbour. Yet we were imprisoned behind barbed wires,” Takei writes in the book.

Japanese-American girls parade with a Liberty Bell float while being held in an internment camp. Photo: Getty Images

David Inoue, executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, believes the message of Takei’s book remains relevant.

He says discrimination persists today, as seen in the anti-Asian attacks that flared with the Covid-19 pandemic. Inoue says his son has been taunted in school in the same way he was growing up.

“One of the important things about having books like this is that it humanises us. It tells stories about us that show we’re just like any other family. We like to play baseball. We have pets,” Inoue says.

Japanese–American citizens being checked into an internment camp. Photo: Getty Images

After Japan surrendered, Takei and his family, like all Japanese-Americans freed from the camps, were each given US$25 and a one-way ticket to anywhere in the US. Takei’s family chose to start all over again in Los Angeles.

In 1988, the Civil Liberties Act – after years of effort and testimonies by Japanese-Americans, including Takei – granted redress of US$20,000 and a formal presidential apology to every surviving US citizen or legal resident immigrant of Japanese ancestry incarcerated during the second world war.

Takei’s voice becomes choked when he recalls how his father did not live to see it.

He notes with pride the diversity depicted in Star Trek, a television series that started in the mid-1960s and developed a devout following.

The Star Trek cast during a news conference in Los Angeles in 1988. Photo: AP

Star Trek writer, creator and producer Gene Roddenberry wanted to portray the turbulent times and the civil rights movement on a television show but had to do it metaphorically to make it acceptable, Takei says.

“Different people, different ideas, different taste, different food. He wanted to make that statement. Each of the characters was supposed to represent a part of this planet,” the actor says.

Takei recalls that his father taught him how the government “of the people, by the people and for the people”, as Abraham Lincoln, the 16th US president, put it in a speech delivered during the American civil war, could also prove a weakness.

“All people are fallible, even a great president like Roosevelt. He got stampeded by the hysteria of the time, the racism of the time. And he signed Executive Order 9066,” Takei says.