Takei’s internment

last updated 8 January 2015

George Takei was 5 years old when the U.S. government locked him up, said Nicole Pasulka in Mother Jones. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, in 1941, the Takeis were among tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans forcibly moved into internment camps. “Two soldiers came to our front door, and we were ordered out of our [Los Angeles] home,” says the actor, who became famous as the character Sulu in Star Trek. The Takeis were taken to the Santa Anita Race Track outside L.A. and housed in a horse stable. “My mother said that was the most degrading experience—the whole family forced at gunpoint, literally, to live in a stall that still had the stench of manure.” His family spent nearly four years in internment. “The irony I remember is that when we started school, they taught us the Pledge of Allegiance. I could see barbed wire fences as I recited the words ‘liberty and justice for all.’” As a teenager, he often wondered why his parents’ generation hadn’t done more to protest internment. “One night, I said, ‘Daddy, you led us like sheep to slaughter when we went into the camp.’ He said, ‘Maybe you’re right’ and went into his bedroom. I realized I hurt him. I felt like I should apologize, but didn’t. It’s one of those regrets I’ll always have.”