Seventy five years after the Supreme Court case Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, Star Trek’s Captain Sulu lifts the curtain on his own childhood in an internment camp.
Written by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, and Steven ScottCover by Harmony Becker
Illustrated by Harmony BeckerGeorge Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father’s—and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. In a stunning graphic memoir, Takei revisits his haunting childhood in American concentration camps, as one of over 100,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon—and America itself—in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, as the saying goes. Despite apologies throughout the years for the World War II imprisonment of Japanese Americans, and the overturning of Korematsu v. United States last year, we’re still calling people that do not look like us “enemy.” Whether it’s Hispanic migrants in border camps or Muslim immigrants from certain countries, we just, to paraphrase Justice Sonia Sotomayor, replace one ‘gravely wrong’ decision with another, and another, and another.
It begs the question: what point would another memoir of a man (albeit a very famous one) who spent his childhood in those internment camps serve, when we haven’t been listening, when we at best are reluctant to embrace equal rights and at worst outright walk hand in hand white supremacy? And it’s not the first time Takei has shared this story before. The 2015 Broadway musical Allegiance, while a fictional story, was inspired by his family’s experiences. What new perspective can this work bring?
What makes “They Called Us Enemy” a unique entry in this canon is not just in its first person perspective, but that of a child. A child who does not fully know what madness spins around him, but embraces it as an adventure. He doesn’t as much remember his parents’ fear and anger, his mother’s decision to renounce her American citizenship to save her family, the questionnaire that asks for 100 percent allegiance to a country that ripped them from their homes and lives. Instead, he remembers sights, sounds, smells: an afternoon Jeep ride with the family, Santa Claus and experiencing snow for the first time, being tricked into cursing at the camp guards by older children, the kind gentleman in their second camp in California that brought books and took care of pets. At the same time, you see the cramped, unsanitary conditions the Takei family lived in for those four years of the war, and the juxtaposition allows you to sense that horror ever so more acutely.
His childhood resiliency does come with the risk of being foggy: “Childhood memories are especially slippery . . . they can often be a misrendering of the truth.” Naturally, one can easily forgive these missteps. Takei was around four to eight years old during his time in the camps, and a growing mind even in the most ideal of circumstances does not remember things to their fullest. The slippery, foggy, youthful lens adds the vital human condition element to this story. You can read about the internment in scores of history books, but there are few – – and fewer still – – first person accounts of life in these camps. A historical timeline is provided as needed to provide context to events, and even the most devout students of this era will no doubt learn something new. Takei’s innocence in this strange and horrifying new world underscores the human condition behind such abhorrent decisions, the reminder that there are blameless Americans behind that barbed wire (back then and today), vignettes of humanity and life in an inhumane world.
Harmony Becker’s artwork is full of classic manga influences, which can read initially as a stereotypical choice for the subject matter. It actually does well to underscore the child’s worldview from Takei and his brother Henry to their situation. The children have exaggerated wide eyes and smiles as they progress on their “adventure” to Arkansas, surrounded by sparkles. It’s not all joy and awe; Becker balances the innocence with texture and shading in her adult characters to convey their changing feelings at the changing world around them. Her political figures making these life or death decisions look extra foreboding thanks to exaggerated facial shading and more angular faces, a contrast to the looser, softer, rounder lines of the Japanese-Americans. You never would think the iconic Franklin Delano Roosevelt could look even the slightest of malevolent, but in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans, he was – – and Becker’s artwork brings out that side of him that the majority of Americans never had in their minds. Like Takei’s script, Becker wants to take you right into the heart of this journey with her artwork, even when that means turning beloved American political figures into the equivalent of Lex Luthor or Thanos. Whether child or adult, American or Japanese, her linework overall remains soft, providing just enough detail to render recognition of facial features and expression, but not overly so.
Continued belowBut don’t think this book is 100 percent heartwarming moments in a dark time of American history. In the closing third, Takei provides necessary and very sobering context of his childhood experiences to our current time. Yes, the court struck down Korematsu but as a side note to a decision that actually upheld the Muslim immigration ban. Yes, we’ve seen progress and the ideas his father taught young George embraced with conviction, but in parallel with old outrages surfacing again with more ferocity and barbarity.
I know what concentration camps are. I was inside two of them, in America. And yes, we are operating such camps again.
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) June 19, 2019
Takei has always been a voice for social justice throughout his adult life, and “They Called Us Enemy” takes this to new heights. This is a call to prevent our xenophobic history from repeating itself in even more brutal ways before it is too late. Let us pray those in power are listening.
