With the assistance of co-authors Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott, and artist Harmony Becker, actor George Takei (Star Trek) relates his experience as a young boy in Japanese-American internment camps during World War II in the new graphic novel They Called Us Enemy. And what a harrowing experience it was.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in December 1941, frightened and bigoted Americans, egged on by ambitious political leaders, pressured President Roosevelt to round up all Japanese Americans and place them in internment camps within the US. Japanese Americans were forced to leave their homes, with some being arrested for the “crimes” of being teachers or Buddhist ministers. Takei, who was around 5 years old at the time, went with his parents, younger brother, and sister, thinking it would be a great adventure.
Young Takei was quickly proven wrong. The Japanese-American citizens are hoarded together in barracks, with little poor food & substandard lodging, and with US Army soldiers guarding them, allowed to go outside the camp only with permission. Takei’s father becomes a sort of community leader in these camps, helping to keep the peace, especially when the government, needing more soldiers to fight, agrees to let Japanese American adults enlist provided they renounce all ties to Japan. And the war’s end in 1945 and the accompanying closing of the camps doesn’t conclude the matter for Takei, despite his subsequent success as an adult in theatre, movies, and television.
Compelling and educational from beginning to end, They Called Us Enemy is powerful stuff! Be sure to check it out!
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