'Horrifying': George Takei, 85, recalls his family being sent to concentration camp when he was 5
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM: Actor George Takei spent ages five to almost nine imprisoned by America in 1943 during World War II. Now 85, the Star Trek royalty, who often reiterated his experience while being imprisoned,recalled the ‘horrifying and terrifying’ experiences on Monday.
Takei appeared on Good Morning Britain where he detailed his family’s experience of being sent to an American concentration camp. The reason he and his family were taken into the camps was that they were deemed "untrustworthy" after the events of Pearl Harbor.
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The American government never accused the five-year-old Takei, his younger siblings, or even his parents of espionage or any other crime, nor did they name them as suspects. As a result of their Japanese ancestry, the Takei family and roughly 120,000 other Japanese Americans were placed in the camps.
"The Attorney General of the State of California said we have no reports of spying or sabotage. But he said, "The Japanese are inscrutable, we can’t tell what they are thinking. So it would be prudent to lock them up before they do anything". "For this top attorney of California, the absence of evidence was evidence."
George said he was five years old and would still remember the morning they were taken to the concentration camp. "I was five years old, but I will never be able to forget that morning when my Father came into the bedroom that I shared with my brother… and told us to wait in the living room while my parents did some last-minute packing," Daily Mail reported.
Get your family out of this house
"Henry and I were at the front window just gazing out and suddenly we saw two soldiers marching up our driveway, carrying rifles and they started banging on the door. "Henry and I were petrified. My father came out and answered the door and they pointed the bayonet at him and they said, "Get your family out of this house." Our home."' George added, "I will never be able to forget that horrifying, terrifying morning."
Takei has also detailed their experiences in the graphic novel he authored 'They Called Us Enemy'. "It should rest on the perpetrators, but they don't carry it the way the victims do," he wrote. The story begins as five-year-old George Takei hears soldiers bang on the front door of his house and order his family to leave as per Forbes.
George's father, Norman Takei, was an immigrant. Although he was born in Japan, he immigrated to the United States when he was a teenager and attended school in California. Fumiko Emily Takei, George's mother, was born in California but went to school in Japan. Norman and Fumiko, George's parents, ran a successful dry cleaning shop in Los Angeles, California, before it was taken away when they were put in the camps. George later mentioned that his family was released from the concentration camp in 1946 after the war had finished.