Allegiance

July 12, 2016 11:50 AM

George Takei, broadcasting on Facebook Live from Heart Mountain Internment Camp, where he and his family and tens of thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry were forced to live in during World War II. Mr. Takei was recently instrumental in convincing the Rago Arts and Auction Center not to auction off artifacts and artworks created in internment camps.
posted by roomthreeseventeen (6 comments total)

Clarification, Takei and his family were sent to Santa Anita Park, Rohwer War Relocation Center for internment and Tule Lake War Relocation Center in California. I worded the post a bit murkily. The family in Takei's musical, Allegiance, was sent to Heart Mountain.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:54 AM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

George Takei is a national treasure.
posted by Mr.Me at 1:41 PM on July 12, 2016 [7 favorites]

Thanks for posting this, as I'm sure I would've missed it. I'm subscribed to his page but I'm on Facebook so sporadically.

I had a lot of classmates whose parents and grandparents were in the camps. I'm so glad that George Takei is able to give a voice to their experience, because the pain runs really deep there. I'm glad that over the years he's racked up so much badassery that being Sulu on Star Trek now has to fight for space with the thousand other badass things he's done and is doing.

I had just read an awesome quote from him in a BBC article about Star Trek Beyond:

Takei has previously said he had to keep his homosexuality secret when he originally worked on Star Trek in order to continue working in television.

"If I wanted to work as an actor I had to keep it a secret," he said last year.
"Back then I couldn't marry a white person - that was against the law here, miscegenation. But now I am married to a white dude so we have changed."

He's so on it in so many ways. He is indeed a national treasure.
posted by halonine at 3:03 PM on July 12, 2016 [6 favorites]

Takei and his family were sent to Santa Anita Park, Rohwer War Relocation Center for internment and Tule Lake War Relocation Center in California.

Huh, somehow I had never heard this before. My grandfather (also named George!) and my grandmother and their children were interned at Rohwer too; two of my uncles were born inside the concentration camp, behind the barbed wire. I’ve never been to the memorial there; the only internment site I’ve seen in person is Minidoka.

George Takei’s message to Donald Trump about the internment was posted in some of the election threads last year, but is recommended reading/watching for anyone who hasn’t seen it already. Searching for more information just now, I also found his 2013 article Why We Must Remember Rohwer.
posted by mbrubeck at 3:23 PM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Wow.
posted by ITravelMontana at 4:18 PM on July 12, 2016

I've only been to Manzanar, which is in the desert east of Mt Whitney. They have a grave marker there, backed by miles of desert and then high mountains. It is beautiful in an utterly harsh and lonely way.

George Takei was also on LatinoUSA this past weekend.
posted by Standard Orange at 12:05 AM on July 13, 2016