TEDxKyoto
George Takei: Why I love a country that once betrayed me
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When he was a child, George Takei and his family were forced into an internment camp for Japanese-Americans, as a "security" measure during World War II. 70 years later, Takei looks back at how the camp shaped his surprising, personal definition of patriotism and democracy.
George Takei - Actor and activist
The beloved Mr. Sulu from the original Star Trek, George Takei is an activist for human rights (and a master of Facebook memes). Full bio
The beloved Mr. Sulu from the original Star Trek, George Takei is an activist for human rights (and a master of Facebook memes). Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
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I'm a veteran of the starship Enterprise.
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I soared through the galaxy
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driving a huge starship
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with a crew made up of people
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from all over this world,
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many different races, many different cultures,
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many different heritages,
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all working together,
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and our mission was to explore strange new worlds,
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to seek out new life and new civilizations,
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to boldly go where no one has gone before.
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Well —
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(Applause) —
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I am the grandson of immigrants from Japan
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who went to America,
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boldly going to a strange new world,
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seeking new opportunities.
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My mother was born in Sacramento, California.
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My father was a San Franciscan.
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They met and married in Los Angeles,
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and I was born there.
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I was four years old
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when Pearl Harbor was bombed
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on December 7, 1941 by Japan,
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and overnight, the world was plunged
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into a world war.
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America suddenly was swept up
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by hysteria.
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Japanese-Americans,
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American citizens of Japanese ancestry,
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were looked on
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with suspicion and fear
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and with outright hatred
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simply because we happened to look like
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the people that bombed Pearl Harbor.
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And the hysteria grew and grew
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until in February 1942,
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the president of the United States,
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
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ordered all Japanese-Americans
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on the West Coast of America
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to be summarily rounded up
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with no charges, with no trial,
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with no due process.
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Due process, this is a core pillar
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of our justice system.
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That all disappeared.
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We were to be rounded up
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and imprisoned in 10 barbed-wire prison camps
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in some of the most desolate places in America:
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the blistering hot desert of Arizona,
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the sultry swamps of Arkansas,
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the wastelands of Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado,
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and two of the most desolate places in California.
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On April 20th, I celebrated my fifth birthday,
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and just a few weeks after my birthday,
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my parents got my younger brother,
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my baby sister and me
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up very early one morning,
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and they dressed us hurriedly.
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My brother and I were in the living room
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looking out the front window,
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and we saw two soldiers marching up our driveway.
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They carried bayonets on their rifles.
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They stomped up the front porch
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and banged on the door.
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My father answered it,
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and the soldiers ordered us out of our home.
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My father gave my brother and me
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small luggages to carry,
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and we walked out and stood on the driveway
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waiting for our mother to come out,
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and when my mother finally came out,
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she had our baby sister in one arm,
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a huge duffel bag in the other,
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and tears were streaming down both her cheeks.
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I will never be able to forget that scene.
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It is burned into my memory.
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We were taken from our home
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and loaded on to train cars
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with other Japanese-American families.
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There were guards stationed
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at both ends of each car,
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as if we were criminals.
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We were taken two thirds of
the way across the country,
the way across the country,
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rocking on that train for four days and three nights,
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to the swamps of Arkansas.
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I still remember the barbed wire fence
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that confined me.
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I remember the tall sentry tower
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with the machine guns pointed at us.
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I remember the searchlight that followed me
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when I made the night runs
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from my barrack to the latrine.
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But to five-year-old me,
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I thought it was kind of nice that they'd lit the way
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for me to pee.
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I was a child,
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too young to understand the circumstances
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of my being there.
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Children are amazingly adaptable.
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What would be grotesquely abnormal
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became my normality
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in the prisoner of war camps.
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It became routine for me to line up three times a day
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to eat lousy food in a noisy mess hall.
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It became normal for me to go with my father
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to bathe in a mass shower.
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Being in a prison, a barbed-wire prison camp,
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became my normality.
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When the war ended,
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we were released,
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and given a one-way ticket
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to anywhere in the United States.
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My parents decided to go back home
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to Los Angeles,
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but Los Angeles was not a welcoming place.
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We were penniless.
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Everything had been taken from us,
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and the hostility was intense.
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Our first home was on Skid Row
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in the lowest part of our city,
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living with derelicts, drunkards
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and crazy people,
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the stench of urine all over,
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on the street, in the alley,
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in the hallway.
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It was a horrible experience,
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and for us kids, it was terrorizing.
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I remember once
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a drunkard came staggering down,
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fell down right in front of us,
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and threw up.
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My baby sister said, "Mama, let's go back home,"
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because behind barbed wires
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was for us
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home.
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My parents worked hard
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to get back on their feet.
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We had lost everything.
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They were at the middle of their lives
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and starting all over.
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They worked their fingers to the bone,
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and ultimately they were able
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to get the capital together to buy
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a three-bedroom home in a nice neighborhood.
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And I was a teenager,
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and I became very curious
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about my childhood imprisonment.
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I had read civics books that told me about
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the ideals of American democracy.
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All men are created equal,
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we have an inalienable right
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to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
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and I couldn't quite make that fit
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with what I knew to be my childhood imprisonment.
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I read history books,
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and I couldn't find anything about it.
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And so I engaged my father after dinner
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in long, sometimes heated conversations.
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We had many, many conversations like that,
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and what I got from them
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was my father's wisdom.
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He was the one that suffered the most
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under those conditions of imprisonment,
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and yet he understood American democracy.
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He told me that our democracy
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is a people's democracy,
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and it can be as great as the people can be,
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but it is also as fallible as people are.
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He told me that American democracy
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is vitally dependent on good people
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who cherish the ideals of our system
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and actively engage in the process
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of making our democracy work.
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And he took me to a campaign headquarters —
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the governor of Illinois was
running for the presidency —
running for the presidency —
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and introduced me to American electoral politics.
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And he also told me about
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young Japanese-Americans
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during the Second World War.
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When Pearl Harbor was bombed,
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young Japanese-Americans,
like all young Americans,
like all young Americans,
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rushed to their draft board
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to volunteer to fight for our country.
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That act of patriotism
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was answered with a slap in the face.
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We were denied service,
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and categorized as enemy non-alien.
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It was outrageous to be called an enemy
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when you're volunteering to fight for your country,
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but that was compounded with the word "non-alien,"
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which is a word that means
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"citizen" in the negative.
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They even took the word "citizen" away from us,
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and imprisoned them for a whole year.
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And then the government realized
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that there's a wartime manpower shortage,
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and as suddenly as they'd rounded us up,
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they opened up the military for service
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by young Japanese-Americans.
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It was totally irrational,
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but the amazing thing,
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the astounding thing,
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is that thousands of young
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Japanese-American men and women
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again went from behind those barbed-wire fences,
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put on the same uniform as that of our guards,
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leaving their families in imprisonment,
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to fight for this country.
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They said that they were going to fight
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not only to get their families out
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from behind those barbed-wire fences,
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but because they cherished the very ideal
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of what our government stands for,
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should stand for,
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and that was being abrogated
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by what was being done.
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All men are created equal.
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And they went to fight for this country.
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They were put into a segregated
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all Japanese-American unit
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and sent to the battlefields of Europe,
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and they threw themselves into it.
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They fought with amazing,
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incredible courage and valor.
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They were sent out on the most dangerous missions
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and they sustained the highest combat casualty rate
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of any unit proportionally.
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There is one battle that illustrates that.
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It was a battle for the Gothic Line.
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The Germans were embedded
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in this mountain hillside,
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rocky hillside,
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in impregnable caves,
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and three allied battalions
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had been pounding away at it
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for six months,
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and they were stalemated.
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The 442nd was called in
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to add to the fight,
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but the men of the 442nd
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came up with a unique
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but dangerous idea:
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The backside of the mountain
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was a sheer rock cliff.
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The Germans thought an attack from the backside
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would be impossible.
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The men of the 442nd decided to do the impossible.
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On a dark, moonless night,
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they began scaling that rock wall,
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a drop of more than 1,000 feet,
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in full combat gear.
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They climbed all night long
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on that sheer cliff.
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In the darkness,
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some lost their handhold
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or their footing
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and they fell to their deaths
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in the ravine below.
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They all fell silently.
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Not a single one cried out,
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so as not to give their position away.
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The men climbed for eight hours straight,
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and those who made it to the top
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stayed there until the first break of light,
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and as soon as light broke,
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they attacked.
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The Germans were surprised,
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and they took the hill
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and broke the Gothic Line.
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A six-month stalemate
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was broken by the 442nd
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in 32 minutes.
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It was an amazing act,
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and when the war ended,
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the 442nd returned to the United States
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as the most decorated unit
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of the entire Second World War.
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They were greeted back on the White House Lawn
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by President Truman, who said to them,
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"You fought not only the enemy
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but prejudice, and you won."
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They are my heroes.
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They clung to their belief
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in the shining ideals of this country,
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and they proved that being an American
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is not just for some people,
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that race is not how we define being an American.
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They expanded what it means to be an American,
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including Japanese-Americans
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that were feared and suspected and hated.
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They were change agents,
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and they left for me
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a legacy.
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They are my heroes
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and my father is my hero,
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who understood democracy
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and guided me through it.
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They gave me a legacy,
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and with that legacy comes a responsibility,
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and I am dedicated
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to making my country
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an even better America,
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to making our government
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an even truer democracy,
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and because of the heroes that I have
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and the struggles that we've gone through,
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I can stand before you
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as a gay Japanese-American,
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but even more than that,
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I am a proud American.
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
George Takei - Actor and activistThe beloved Mr. Sulu from the original Star Trek, George Takei is an activist for human rights (and a master of Facebook memes).
Why you should listen
George Takei is known for his portrayal of Mr. Sulu in the original Star Trek TV series and films, but since serving as the helm officer on the USS Enterprise, he's become a pop culture icon here on this planet. To Be Takei, a documentary on his life and career directed by Jennifer M. Kroot that premiered at Sundance in January 2014, will be released theatrically in August 2014.
Takei is a master of Facebook virality, and has written two books about it: Oh Myyy! - There Goes The Internet and Lions and Tigers and Bears - The Internet Strikes Back (known collectively as Life, the Internet and Everything, Books 1 and 2). He's also the host of the YouTube series Takei's Take.
Along with Lea Salonga and actor-singer-songwriter Telly Leung, he stars in a new musical called Allegiance (music and lyrics by Jay Kuo, book by Jay Kuo, Lorenzo Thione and Marc Acito). The musical is an epic story of love, family and heroism during the Japanese American internment.
Takei is an important advocate for LGBT rights; in 2005, he came out of the closet, and has been an active campaigner for the right of all people to marry.
George Takei | Speaker | TED.com