Best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek series, actor George Takei has had an equally long career as a civil rights activist, advocating for marriage equality for LGBTQ+ people and bringing attention to the United States’ illegal wartime incarceration of thousands of Japanese American families, his own among them. A graphic memoir about his family’s life in the camps, They Called Us Enemy (written with Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott, illustrated by Harmony Becker, Top Shelf, 2019), won an Eisner Award. Now he’s written My Lost Freedom, a picture book autobiography about his family’s detention. PW spoke with Takei about crafting his story to reach new readers, meeting an old friend backstage, and the bond that kept his family together.
You’ve written an autobiography for adults and a graphic novel about your family’s internment. Was there a single moment, something specific, that made you think, “We need a book for younger readers!”
The internment is one of the shames of America, but it’s often the victims that take on the shame. Many Japanese Americans who were imprisoned don’t talk about it. Their children know very little about it and their own grandchildren know even less. But on a larger scale, it’s an American story. It’s a failure of American democracy, and Americans need to know this chapter of American history.
I’m always finding new and different ways to tell the story. I wrote an autobiography in 1994 [To the Stars], targeting the Star Trek audience. My intent was to tell the story of my childhood imprisonment, although the cover had me in a Star Fleet uniform. I was also involved in the development of a Broadway musical about it (Allegiance, 2015).
Then I decided to tell the story for teens, who are the future of America. I loved comic books as a teenager, so I did it as a graphic memoir titled They Called Us Enemy. It’s a bestseller, and many teenagers know about it now. When I talk on college campuses, they tell me that they’ve read the book.
However, the real future of America is in the upcoming generation. I want someone who’s growing up to understand the story. When I was actually in prison, I was too young to really understand it. I remember the fear, the chaos, the confusion, but as a teenager, I wanted to know the details. I had many conversations with my father. So I said, I need to reach that generation [with They Called Us Enemy]. And with this book, maybe I can reach two generations. Little children will grow up knowing about this from a young age. And when the parents read it, their imaginations might be piqued, and they might do further reading.
Do you remember a specific reaction to one of those earlier works that let you know what an impact it had made?
I get many reactions. There are young Japanese Americans who tell me, “My parents (or my grandparents) were encamped within the community”—that’s the term we use—“and I want to know more about it.” And I ask, “Which camp were they in?” Their faces are a complete blank. And so I help them. “Was it in Arkansas? Idaho? Wyoming? Arizona?” And they have no idea.
The generation that went through it felt shamed by it and didn’t talk about it. The kids might say, “Where were you during WWII? Were you with the Army?” And [their parents] answer, “No, we were in Wyoming,” and if the kids say, “What were you doing?” they say, “I’d rather not talk about it.”
When I was doing Allegiance on Broadway, a middle-aged Japanese woman brought her very elderly mother with her backstage to say hello to me. And the elderly woman said, “I was your father’s secretary in Arkansas!”
My father was a block manager [at the Rohwer Japanese American Relocation Center], and he had a black tarpaper barrack as his office. I used to drop in on him there and I remember there was this young woman there who had this fascinating machine. It went Ding! Tak tak tak ding! When she was looking the other way, I sneaked up behind her. Then my father would say, “Don’t bother Florence, go play with Henry,” and he would chase me out of his office. But [meeting] Florence, again, yes! A crisscrossing of paths.
It’s clear, comparing My Lost Freedom to They Called Us Enemy, how much thought had to be given to what younger readers could take in. How did you work with your editor Phoebe Yeh to understand what would be appropriate for this book?
Phoebe told me, “This is a children’s book, so we want to plant the seed of curiosity.” So we just talked about the imprisonment itself, but in the foreword I talk about this boy who lived three houses away from us who would come over and play with me, and how he and I differed. He had soft, curly blonde hair, he was a lot of fun, his laugh was like a giggle, but after the soldiers came to take us away, I never saw him again. So on that kind of level, children would understand. “Why couldn’t he play with Donald? Why would the soldiers carry guns when they took us away from our homes?” [We wanted] to stimulate those very simple and natural questions.
Your parents emerge as the real heroes of the story. What do you think made them so resilient?
Their partnership was cemented by a strong bond. My father led through rational discussion and empathy. My mother prioritized her family’s safety and comfort above all else. She once marched past armed soldiers with a sewing machine hidden in her duffle bag, cleverly disguised as a sack brimming with candy and picture books for the children!
Blackie, the dog you found at Camp Tule Lake, appears in My Lost Freedom, but there’s no mention of a dog in They Called Us Enemy. How did that happen?
Oh! Yes, the editor of They Called Us Enemy wanted to cut Blackie out. He thought it was too schmaltzy. It might have been the right call for that book.
And how did you handle that with Phoebe?
After the other editor said it was too schmaltzy, I was a little reticent [to suggest it again], but Phoebe leaped at it. She said, “Oh, yes, that’s wonderful!” So, two opposite reactions from two editors!
There were some other difficult experiences in the book for older children that don’t appear in this one, like the teacher who treated you so badly. Was the sense that they would be inappropriate?
Phoebe wanted me to be able to have a positive approach, and not have a negative tone.
I do talk about my first teacher in Arkansas, who taught me the Pledge of Allegiance and who said, “We’ll recite that every morning,” and I remember standing there with my hand over my chest saying, “With liberty and justice for all,” but right outside I could see the barbed wire fence and the sentry tower. I was too young then to understand the irony of speaking my words in that camp. But I thought I’d let young children know that that kind of irony can exist in life.
Was it difficult to choose among Michelle Lee’s images for the cover art, or was it immediately obvious what the right one would be?
My favorite is the back cover, with the dark, ominous framing, and then you see sunlight, and then you see my mother and our baby sister, and then you see the barbed wire separating them from the swamp. I can hear her [using the Japanese word for dangerous]: “abunai, so abunai!”
But the image with Blackie was the one that was chosen—a boy and a dog is always a winning image!
My Lost Freedom: A Japanese American World War II Story. George Takei, illus. by Michelle Lee. Crown, $19.99 Apr. 16 ISBN 978-0-5935-6635-0
