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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. George Takei is with us now. George Takei. You don't have to be a Star Trek superfan to appreciate his work and his activism. He has a new book that provides a personal account of a dark chapter in American history. Takei was a four-year-old California kid when the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service struck Pearl Harbor. Just a couple of months later, his family and many thousands of other Americans of Japanese descent were forcibly sent to incarceration camps. You may be more familiar with the term internment camp, but the preferred term is incarceration camp.

Takei's new book, My Lost Freedom, a Japanese-American World War II Story, is also his debut picture book and it tells his story in a manner that is appropriate for readers ages six through nine. George Takei, welcome to WNYC today. So great to have you on with us.

George Takei: Good morning. Thank you very much. It's great to be on with you.

Brian Lehrer: The book's title, My Lost Freedom, powerful and evocative phrase, obviously. Tell us more what happened to you.

George Takei: Well, this is a children's picture book, so we tell the story with lovely pictures, really, a gifted artist, Michelle Lee, who did the drawings. On the cover, you'll see me as a five-year-old kid with a shaggy black stray dog that we found behind the mess hall in the Arkansas camp that we were in. He became-- Henry, my brother, a year younger, he was four, I was five-- our pet that made life behind barbed wire fences as livable and fun as possible.

This is the story of how my parents dealt with the challenges of imprisonment and injustice with their example, how they showed resilience and creativity, and protected the three children. Our baby sister was an infant, and we survived that terrible experience as best as we could.

Brian Lehrer: One of the most striking aspects of the book, I think, is the way it captures the emotional and psychological impact of the incarceration on you and your family. Can you share any specific memories or moments that were particularly difficult to revisit and translate into a story that is for six-year-olds to nine-year-olds?

George Takei: Well, the first experience was the most vivid. This was a morning in May, early May in 1942. My father came rushing into the bedroom that I shared with my brother, Henry, and dressed us hurriedly, and asked us to wait in the living room while our parents did some packing back in their bedroom. Our baby sister was in a cradle in their bedroom. There's nothing to do in the living room, so Henry and I were standing by the front window, just gazing out.

Suddenly, we saw two soldiers marching up our driveway, carrying rifles with shiny bayonets on them. They stomped up the porch and with their fists began banging on the door. My father came rushing out from his bedroom and answered the door, and one of the soldiers pointed his bayonet at our father. Well, Henry and I were petrified. The other soldier said, "Get your family out of this house." My father said, "Can I have 10 minutes?" They gave us that.

My father came out carrying two heavy suitcases, and we followed him out onto the driveway. We stood there waiting for our mother. The other soldier escorted my mother out. When she came out the front door, she had our baby sister in one arm, a huge duffel bag, heavy-looking duffel bag, in the other, and tears were streaming down her cheeks.

That was the way the whole internment went down on us, but that heavy duffel bag became a very special bag for us because it looked very heavy, and indeed it was. When we were put on a train and on a journey of three days and two nights across the country, across the southwestern desert to the swamps of Arkansas, she pulled out during that trip, out of that heavy bag, picture books, candy, pops, not soda pops, but lollipops, and animal cracker boxes, and all these goodies, and because it was heavy, we thought that it was really laden down with a lot of goodies for us.

When we arrived at the Arkansas camp, barbed wires, black tarpaper barracks, and there were masses of other Japanese people that were already brought there, and we were taken to our assigned unit, one of those black tarpaper barracks, and when the guards were gone, my mother said, "I will show you something," and opened up that wonderful bag, that magical bag that produced so much tasty and fun goodies out of that. She pulled out a portable sewing machine. That was contraband because all things sharp or had points on them-

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

George Takei: -were forbidden. She marched past all those armed guards, carrying that contraband, [chuckles] forbidden thing, and brought that sewing machine with her. She told our father, "The children will be needing clothes. They're going to be growing." She had a practical thought in mind, but also the guts to march past those guards carrying that contraband bag.

Brian Lehrer: What a mom. She brings the lollipops. She brings the forbidden sewing machine, [chuckling] so she could continue to make you clothing. Listeners, if you're just joining us, my guest is none other than George Takei, who is best known for his role as Mr. Sulu on Star Trek: Once Upon a Time, but has done a lot of activism in the years since, and has a new children's book called My Lost Freedom: A Japanese-American World War II Story. As you've been hearing, it is his own family story. George, already, even before I give out the phone number, there are people calling in who want to talk to you.

George Takei: [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: It's 212-433-WNYC, for those of you who don't have it on your speed dial, 212-433-9692. I'm going to go to David in Brooklyn first, George, because you were just telling this traumatic story of your family being moved from your home in California when you were four years old, five years old, to an incarceration camp for Japanese-Americans in Arkansas. David in Brooklyn says he once met you in Arkansas-

George Takei: Oh, really?

Brian Lehrer: -at a Star Trek convention. David, you're on WNYC with George Takei. Hello.

David: Yes, hello. How are you?

George Takei: Just great. [unintelligible 00:08:49] hear your voice.

David: [unintelligible 00:08:49] I don't know if there's any way that you remember me, but this was in Hot Springs in Arkansas, and you were at a Star Trek convention.

George Takei: Yes.

David: I was looking for a newspaper then, and I interviewed you. I remember I led off the story with that this was your second visit to Arkansas, because the first one was in the camp.

George Takei: Yes.

David: I don't know if you remember that or not, but I do. [chuckles] I'm wondering if you have any fears that this sort of thing could happen again in America.

George Takei: I am very fearful. The reason why I tell this story in book form, and I've talked about it on radio and television, is because there's a lesson to be learned from that chapter of American history. Because I don't think our country has learned that lesson, we are living through that kind of wild and irrational hysteria now. It is very concerning and, to me, a little frightening time that we're going through this presidential election year. That's why I have written this book, My Lost Freedom to reach the parents and for them to read to their little ones about what happened over 80, 82 years ago.

There's a lesson to be learned. I hope people rush out and parents rush out to buy My Lost Freedom so that they can inform and introduce their little ones about what happened way back then when I was a boy. I hope certainly the children will be introduced to that story, but the parents do some more reading on it to try to prevent that kind of thing from happening again.

Brian Lehrer: People can not only rush out and buy your book, but they can rush out and see you tonight in Manhattan. I'm throwing this in now to make sure I don't forget it at the end of the segment. Tonight at Symphony Space in Manhattan on the Upper West Side at eight o'clock, you're doing a live appearance tonight?

George Takei: Yes. I'll be doing another TV show, and then tonight I'm going to be in conversation with BD Wong, also an actor who played my son in an episode of Black Magic many, many decades ago. He's a grown up now, and I have grown to be his parent. We're going to reminisce about old times. I might share a little bit about my childhood with him at Symphony Space here in Manhattan.

Brian Lehrer: Kim in Los Angeles., you're on WNYC with George Takei. Hello, Kim.

Kim: Yes, hello. I'm a professor at the Loyola Marymount University out here and teaching some of the grandchildren, actually, of people who were in the incarceration camps. Now my question is that as you have published this book and tell your story, do you meet the same kind of resistance that people who are telling stories of the enslavement of African Americans are meeting, so in states where the books are banned and you can't talk about diversity and equity and inclusion? Are you meeting that same kind of resistance, or have you been hearing about that as you've been telling the stories of these camps?

George Takei: There has been some resistance, but what's more common and concerning for me, is that so many Americans don't know this chapter of American history. As George Santayana said, "Those who can't remember the past are doomed to repeat it." There's so much truth in Santayana's wisdom because it is happening again.

The most concerning thing for me is that so many younger Japanese Americans tell me that they know very little about their own family history because as they say, the victims often take on the shame of what they went through when the shame really belongs to the government. They made a terrible mistake and imprisoned innocent people who had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor in these barbaric barbed-wire prison camps.

Because the people that experienced that history didn't talk about it because they felt shame their children and their grandchildren know very little about their own family history. I feel my mission is not just my mission to inform Americans of American history, but also of my fellow Japanese Americans, many of whom don't know their own family history.

Brian Lehrer: Here's one of your fellow Japanese Americans calling in now. Kazuko in Westchester., you're on WNYC with George Takei. Hello Kazuko.

Kazuko: Hi. I want to say I am so grateful for this program. My mother's family was incarcerated. They lived in California. My grandfather had designed the irrigation system for all the farmers and the community.

George Takei: Where in California were they, your grandfather?

Kazuko: In the Los Angeles area.

George Takei: That's my hometown, Los Angeles. My father's hometown was San Francisco, and my mother was born in Sacramento.

Kazuko: They were incarcerated exactly the same way you described your family. They were taken to the deserts of Wyoming. That incarceration camp was called Heart Mountain.

George Takei: Heart Mountain, yes.

Kazuko: None of the community knew what was there. They were originally sent to Santa Ana, a horse-

George Takei: Santa Anita.

Kazuko: The horse stall.

George Takei: The horse stables were called Santa Anita. We were there too.

Kazuko: Right, Santa Anita. That's correct, yes. The family of five lived in a horse stall for a few days, and then they woke up every day--

George Takei: Actually, we were there in the horse stalls for over four months.

Brian Lehrer: In the horse stalls.

George Takei: It wasn't just a few days.

Brian Lehrer: With horses?

George Takei: No, no, but the presence of the horses were intense, the stench of the horse manure and the insects skittering around on the ground and flies buzzing in the air. I'm sure that it was more than a few days for your grandparents.

Kazuko: Oh, yes. Right.

Brian Lehrer: Kazuko, thank you for sharing your story. Thank you very much. The word for, people who are wondering, who've heard it through their lives as internment camps, but the preferred term now is incarceration camps, what's the difference? What's implied there?

George Takei: Well words have meaning. When we were first driven out of our home at gunpoint, they used terms like relocation center, or a wartime village, very fuzzy words, a euphemism that really were not descriptive of the truth of the camps. Then the term internment camp came up, and that too is not as soft, but nevertheless, it really isn't descriptive of what we were incarcerated in. The historians came up with the term concentration camp, and there was a reaction from the Jewish community who felt that that was their ancestral experience.

I tried to explain to them the dictionary definition of concentration camp is concentrating people of a common faith or history or religion or political circumstance. That's what we were. We were concentrated together behind these barbed wire fences because of politics. We had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor, but we looked exactly like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. We were American citizens, and yet that was erased by the hysteria of the time and the racism of that time. But because of the vagueness of people's understanding of concentration camp, we use incarceration camp now.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. Andrew in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with George Takei. Hello, Andrew.

Andrew: Hi. I'm a huge fan and I'm very excited to read your book with my son who's sitting with me, if he makes a little noise, when he gets a little older. There are so many episodes of Star Trek that deal with the consequences of war and its impact on civilians. I was curious if you ever spoke to writers of the various shows about your experience and if there are any episodes that particularly resonated with your personal experience as a child?

George Takei: Gene Roddenberry, the creative Star Trek was very familiar with that story. He was, I think, a visionary and a philosopher. He wanted to deal with those stories. Television is an advertising medium and if you are that specific, they wouldn't put this series on television. What Gene Roddenberry did was speak metaphorically, and tell the story set in the future.

There we were on the Starship Enterprise, which has a rounded body to it, and that's a metaphor for Starship Earth. Gene Roddenberry said that the strength of this Starship lay in its diversity coming together, people of different backgrounds, different histories, different faiths, different experiences coming together, sharing their various viewpoints and knowledge, and working together as a team. That's the strength of this Starship, but also that diversity makes life together that much more engaging and interesting.

Every episode has that message of we need to work together and recognize that our real strength comes from each other. A few episodes dealt more specifically with the racial prejudice idea. Let This Be Your Last Battlefield, I think was title of the episode where there were two alien species. One alien species was white on the right side and Black on the left side. The other aliens species was Black on the right side and white on the left side. They couldn't get along with each other.

Brian Lehrer: I remember that episode. It made its point very well. In our last minute, since the book is for six to nine-year-olds, and picking up on that last question in your last answer, do you have any advice to offer to young readers who may be grappling with any issues of identity, belonging, and the legacy of historical injustice? Can My Lost Freedom, your book, serve as a source of inspiration and empowerment in a particular way?

George Takei: I think so. The story is about that very subject, and told from the vantage point of me as a five-year-old, six-year-old, seven-year-old, eight-year-old. The cover has me with the black shaggy dog, a stray dog that we found sniffing around behind the mess hall kitchen. We had adopted that dog.

That dog made life behind barbed wire, a fun engaging one with a loyal dog that walked us to our school room in the morning, and patiently waited for us until we were dismissed from school and played with us the rest of the day.

This book talks about finding joy in harsh circumstances and creating our own happiness. That's what resilience means, and that's what our parents gave us to survive, and now to write books about it and share that experience and the lesson from that experience with all of us today.

Brian Lehrer: Beautifully said, George Takei, his new book out today is My Lost Freedom: A Japanese American World War II Story. Again, he's got a live event in Manhattan at Symphony Space, 95th and Broadway, tonight at eight o'clock. Thank you so much for making this one of your stops. It was an honor.

George Takei: Thank you very much. I enjoyed chatting with your listeners.

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