George Takei's Trek To The Past
The voice on the phone was unmistakable: mellifluous, deliberate, deep, wry and warm. It was the “Oh, my” voice of actor-author and activist George Takei — and he had a lot to say from his home in Los Angeles.
The 82-year-old Takei has parlayed his fame as the character of helmsman Hikaru Sulu in the original ‘60s “Star Trek” television series and some of its spin-off feature films into that of a widely recognized and respected public figure who speaks out on a wide range of issues ranging from LGBTQ rights and marriage equality to the imprisonment of immigrant families at the U.S. Southern border. He is also a tireless personal reminder of a shameful time in America’s past when more than 120,000 American citizens of Japanese heritage were imprisoned in camps during World War II.
On Feb. 18 New Haven’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas will present Takei with its annual Visionary Leadership Award at the Omni New Haven Hotel. The award is presented “to a leader whose trailblazing work is impacting the world.”
The following is an edited version of our conversation.
FR: You’ve written about your family’s imprisonment during WWII and its ramifications afterwards in your memoir; you’ve acted in the 10-part AMC mini-series “The Terror: Infamy,” about the American internment camps; spoken at countless schools and colleges; and even wrote and produced a Broadway musical (“Allegiance”). Now you’ve chosen to tell your story as a graphic novel, “They Called Us Enemy.” Why that particular format?
GT: It’s been my mission in life to tell that story, and the graphic memoir version is for a targeted audience. That’s because to this day when I share my story about my childhood in these concentration camps with someone who I consider a well-read and an informed person, they’re astounded that such a thing happened in the United States. And the post internment years were as horrifying, harrowing and traumatic as the internment itself.
So I want to educate young people, and when I was a preteen and teen, comic books were my popular form of literature. At that age you’re absorbing every piece of information you get. Only as we grow older do our focal points become much more segmented and more critical so we don’t absorb as voraciously as young people do. They’re going to be the voters of tomorrow and some may run for public office, so hopefully they’ll be aware of the mistakes we’ve made in the past.