AMERICAN’S HORROR STORY
George Takei’s extraordinary journey makes for a spirited graphic book
NEW YORK As a child, he believed the camp to be a magical oasis, where mythical dinosaurs prowled the woods at night.
A native of Los Angeles, he marvelled at the “flying exotica” of dragonflies, the treasures of rural life and, that first winter, the “pure magic” of snow.
George Takei was imprisoned by the U.S. government in Japanese American internment camps from the age of five to almost nine.
A relentless optimist, he believed the shameful legacy of incarcerating an estimated 120,000 Americans during the Second World War would never be forgotten or duplicated.
At 82, Takei came to understand that he may be mistaken on both counts.
Stories fell into the sinkhole of history, given the omission of the camps from many textbooks and the shame felt by former internees, many of whom remained silent about their experiences, even to their descendants.
Takei takes no refuge in silence.
The Star Trek actor has lived long enough to see thousands of immigrant children jailed near the U.S.-Mexico border.
On Twitter, to his 2.9 million followers, he wrote, “This nation has a long and tragic history of separating children from their parents, ever since the days of slavery.”
Sitting in his Manhattan piedà-terre near Carnegie Hall, the activist for gay rights and social justice calls his government’s actions “an endless cycle of inhumanity, cruelty and injustice repeated generation after generation” and says “it’s got to stop.” Takei was fortunate.
He and his two younger siblings were never separated from their parents, who bore the brunt of fear and degradation in the swamps of Arkansas and the high desert of northern California.
They shielded their children, creating a Life Is Beautiful experience often filled with wonder.
His father told him they were going for “a long vacation in the country.”
Their first stop, of all places, was the Santa Anita Racetrack, where the family was assigned to sleep in the stalls.
“We get to sleep where the horsies slept! Fun!” he thought.
Takei had little understanding of his family abandoning their belongings, the government questioning their patriotism and their return to Los Angeles with nothing, starting over on skid row. As a teenager, he came to understand the toll.
“The resonance of my childhood in prison is so loud,” says the actor, who still lives in L.A.
This summer, Takei is accelerating his mission to make Americans remember.
Almost three-quarters of a century after his release, he feels the crush of time: “I have to tell this story before there’s no one left to tell it.”
He has a new graphic memoir, They Called Us Enemy, intended to reach all generations but especially the young, by the publisher of the bestselling March trilogy (about the U.S. Civil War) by
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.
Takei appears in AMC’s 10-episode The Terror: Infamy, a horror saga partly set in an internment camp, which begins airing Monday. Four years ago, he starred in the Broadway musical Allegiance, inspired by his personal history.
“That experience in the camps gave me my identity,” he says in the apartment he shares with his husband, Brad. It is decorated with Japanese ink drawings and Star Trek bric-a-brac: a Starship Enterprise phone, a Sulu action figure in a Bonsai tree.
Takei frequently refers to his life as “an American story.”
It is also a singular, improbable one. Who else enjoys continued success through the curious alchemy of Star Trek, coming out at age 68 and regular appearances on The Howard Stern Show?
Friends and associates long knew Takei was gay.
He met Brad Altman, then a journalist, through a gay running club. They started dating in 1987. Brad took George’s last name in 2011.
Takei worried that coming out publicly would end his acting career.
So he waited and waited, an eternity — more than three decades.
“The government imprisoned me for four years for my race. I imprisoned myself about my sexuality for decades,” Takei said.
“You can’t imagine what kind of sentry towers you can build around your heart.”
Takei came out in 2005 as a statement, after then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in California. Quickly, he moved from the closet to the front of the pride parade.
The first time I met George and Brad, at a party in Los Angeles last year, they were bickering.
When we meet in Manhattan, they bicker again over lunch, over the smallest details.
Brad worries about almost everything. George does not. It was somewhat refreshing — a cult icon and his spouse being themselves in front of a reporter.
Takei’s openness contributes to the continuing embrace by fans five decades after Star Trek was cancelled. He presents authentically as himself, a man who extols life’s fortunes.
Why isn’t he angry with the country that imprisoned his family? “Because it would be another barbed-wire fence around my heart,” he says.
In 2012, when he appeared in The Celebrity Apprentice, he invited host Donald Trump to lunch at “any of Trump’s properties” — smart move — with the intention of discussing marriage equality. Trump accepted the offer.
Takei recalls that Trump told him “he believed in traditional marriage between a man and a woman. This from a man who has been married three times!”
Takei began life in internment camps and came out about his sexuality in his late 60s. At 82, he’s flourishing in a field that had little use for him when he started. But time can punish memory.
Takei wants to ensure we know the story of what happened to his family, in his country.
The worst day of internment was the first one, he recalls. Soldiers marched up the driveway with bayonets on their rifles, pounded on the door and took the family away to who knew where and for how long.
Says Takei, “It was a terrifying morning.”
Bayonets and a five-year-old boy. It is, as Takei says, an American story — a frightening and lamentable one. All we can do is learn.
The government imprisoned me for four years for my race. I imprisoned myself about my sexuality for decades.
You can’t imagine what kind of sentry towers you can build around your heart.
GEORGE TAKEI