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peter:u author george takei's most recent freedom, the japanese-american world war ii story. mr. takei, what is the significance of february 19, 1942 to japanese-americans? george: because that is the day that affected all japanese-americans on the west coast. approximately 125,000 of us, by the latest count, we were ordered into imprisonment with no charge, no trial, no due process. a fundamental core part of our

system of justice. we were imprisoned because we look exactly like the pe who bombed pearl harbor. other than that, we had absolutely nothing to do with pearl harbor. but, racial hatred and war hysteria swept the land. and all of us on the west 125,0t mentioned were rounded up by armed u.s. soldiers, ordered out of our home -- i still vividly remember that horrible morning when they came marching up our driveway, carrying riflesshiny . my brother and i, henry, four years old, me, five years old, were looking out the front

window and saw the soldiers walking up, stomp up the steps of our porch, right in front of the window we were looking out of. with their hands, did this, bang on the door. it was petrifying for us kids. my father answered the door and one of the soldiers pointed his bayonet at our father. henry and i were petrified. the other soldier said get your my family asked for 10 more minutes which he got and he went back to his bedroom where he and my mother werdoing some packing. came out with little boxes about this size, tied in twine, one for henry and one for me to carry. suitcases. holding

he said follow me and we followed him out, stood on the driveway waiting for our mother to come out. and when she finay me out escorted by the soldier tt pointed his bayonet at our father, when she came out, she had our baby sister on one arm, a huge duffel bag on the other and tears were streaming down her cheeks. that memory is seared into my brain. it is as vivid as i can membe yt the time and what were your parents doing? george: our home, two-bedroom home was in los angeles. and my father's business was a nd dry cleaning store

from the most fashionable department store in los angeles on wilshire boulevard. peter:nq■k your mother was a stay-at-home mother at the time? george: she helped out with the sewing, but yes, she took care of us kids. peter: in fact, your mother, you bout in your book that your mother snuck a sewing mache into your first internment camp. george: my mother was a very practical lady. she knew she had three children who are rapidly growing changin. so, she smuggled in something that was contraband. anything with sharp edges. anything■ú with sharp points wee forbidden. but, she knew that the children would be needing it, so she

wrapped the portable sewing machine in a baby blanket and a few sweaters. inhf the same duffel bag, she dropped it off with crackerjack boxes, animal cookie boxes, lollipops, and picture books for r father to read to us. and she that way. shesoldiers looking so stern severe. that heavy double back, she would not let anyone, even our father help her carry that. she was going to take that in and take the risk all her. she marched right past the soldiers it all the way to the swamps of were you la japanese-american neighborhood

at the time? george: no, it was a mixed neighborhood. and i remember a few houses down the street, i had a little friend, blond. had blond hair that tumbled down. he came over to play and he had a giggly laugh that i still remember. mixed neighborhood. there were mexican americans and white families as well. peter: did you ever see your blond friend again? george: i never saw him. his name was donald. i don't think i knew his last name. i never saw donald again after the soldiers took us away. peter: after the soldiers took you, where did you go? george: immediately, we were put on a truck with other

japanese-american families with their luggage and taken downtown to the buddhist temple in the little tokyo section of downtown. and we saw other japanese-american families with their luggage amassed on the sidewalk. there was a row of buses waiting for us. we were loaded onto those buses and the bus caravan took us to santa anita racetrack, unloaded, herded over to the stable area where each family was assigned a horse stall to sleep in. i still remember my mother's mumbli "so humiliating, so degrading." my father was stone silent, but he did tell us that this was

where the horseys slept. henry and i were excited. ■6we get to sleep where the horseys slept. so, two different perspectives on the same commonhared experience. peter: your parents were isse, correct? george: no, my mother was born in sacramento, california. my father was born in japan, but he lost his mother when he was veryvery young. and my widower grandfather, my father's father, decided he's going to start all over in this. and he came to -- sailed to san francisco with his two boys, my father being the younger of the two. japan, but he was raised in san francisco, educated in san francisco, went

to college in san francisco. spoke english much better than my mother, american-born but in the rural part. where she was born was called florin then. a farming area. mostly japanese immigrant farmers. my there. and that was like little japan. so, japanese was spoken there by everybody in that area. my father was educated in san francisco and he spoke fluent english and japanese. so in camp, he was elected manager at both camps we wereheh the immigrant generation as well as the american-born generation. peter: culturally, is it

important to note the difference between isse and nisse? george: i think particularly for the japanese-american community, and i think it is the only community that has that kind of labeling of the generations becausneration has a different experience. the immigrant generation obviously had a totally different immigration. immigration experience. the next generation was the generation that experienced the internment, thein their own country. their children, the generation of which i am part, have a whole different kind of generational experience. so, unlike the italian americans or the polish americans, thens a distinct generational, uniquely

generational experience. peter: george takei, prior to february 19, 1942, do you have memories of prejudice against japanese americans at all? george: i was too young to know that. peter: did your parents ever speak of it? george: later on, yes, but my friend was a blond white boy. so -- and i was too young to be aware of that. then, the confusing, scary, terrorizing experience of the internment. we were constantly being moved about or ordered by armed soldiers. so, it was a confusing, disorienting, scary experience for me as a child, from the horse stables to the swamps of arkansas. journey of three days and two

nights across two thirds of our on a train. george: on a train. through the dusty, hot, sweltering desertsouthwestern a. and then, back again, three days california.hts to ner gritty sand, no vegetation. dramatic contrast to the sultry, hot, swampy arkansas. and that became the segregation camp for disloyals. it was a grisly camp witharmame. barbed wire fences. the sentry towers, all camps had

sentry towers, but it was a century tower with an armed -- sentry tower with an armed soldier on guard. there was a machine gun installed aimed down at us. and, there were half a dozen tanks controlling the perimeter. there were three barbed fences,e other nine camps. ta are vehicle not intimidating patrling around the third- barbed wire fence. peter: in your book, "my lost freedom," it is a children's book so you don't go into much detail. you do talk about the fact that

you and your brother, henry, were excited about the train trip in a sense. george: we had never been on a train before and daddy told us we were going on a long vacation in the country. it was not just a vacation in the country. ■áour first train ride. but, that quickly turned into a boring, dreary, hot, woozy -- it was full of old people,■ú sick people coughing and hacking. it was no fun at all. peter: do you have an■y becausee long trips? george: i love train travel. york, and two weeks ago, i spoke at

dartmouth university in new hampshire and we went by train to■u boston. i love riding tins.to yes, it does bring back memories of those trips we took during the second world war. but, i am able to place it all in history and i'm not going to let that ruin a pleasurable ride in the 21st century. peter: what do you remember about arkansas? george: i was very young, from southern california. and i found the swamps oth side of the barbed wire fence absolutely fascinating. it was a science-fiction land. blackwater and the roots came in

and out, in and out like a snake going in and out of the water. later on, my father told us about water moccasins. my mother -- we played by the ditch around -- she said, oh, there could have beens like that in the water. my father said, no, not in there, but my mother insisted there might be those deadly snakes in the water there. i was fascinating by the environment that we were surrounded by. peter: at what point did your consciousness say something is wrong with this picture? it was -- i shouldn't say slow and gradual. there were many abrupt changes, but when the war was my

parents decided to go back to los angeles. many japanese-americans didn't want to go back to the west coast because of the bitter memories they had there. and the government -- we were literally naked. we have nothing. the government had frozen our bank accounts, drained the money out. we did not make mortgage payments on our home. the bank took over. the business was destroyed. we have nothing ae just becauser does not mean people who hated us suddenly love us. rumors were los angeles was still hostile and dangerous for us. there were caucasian friends who were known to have driven to visit people in the camps in

california and they were shot at by the rednecks. so, it was still the rumors of it being dangerous in los angeles. r÷ very concerning to my parents. my father left first to scout it out and get a job and find athes later. it was a time of great anxiety and suspense for us. he said come on down. so, we went down. our first home was on skid row in downtown l.a. and that was shocking and scary for us. we were walking down the sidewalk as a family. xhmy baby sister was now more tn a toddler. she was, i think, four.

we were walking down and the whole place was overwhelming. the stink of human excrement. and ugly, scary, smelly people ing around, leaning on the wall. sidewalk and there was one staggering man glaring at us and we all stopped. my father kind ofered -- my mother covered us, too, and my father'sists were formed. just as he was almost uphe coll. our baby sier yelled "mama, let's go back home." because her whole life, she went in as an infant. that was home to her, as horrible as that was.

but, coming to what our parents called home was it was scary, smell ugly. and for her, the ironybehind the was more comfortable than being back in los angeles. l.a. was a scary place when we first came back. i had a teachercalled me the "jh stung. i didn't tell my parents house being called that by the hateful teacher because by that time, i realized it was a painful experience for my parents and i did not want to let them know that the teacher was calling me that word. so, coming h■-ome was not a

dramatic change. in fact, it got worse. it got scary and it got to be unbearable, my parents persevered. i think in many ways, it was their resilience that became -- they became my role models and my heroes. i learned how to cope by watchinghem and experienced living how my parents handled all the adversity we had inflicted on us. peter: that becomes clear how you feel about your parents in "my lost freedom." did you ever go back and see the house on gardner a see what happened to it? george: many decades later. a journalist wte me to go with him to that house on gardner street.

so, my husband did some rearch and we were able to find it. there was a mexican family living there and i recognized the configuration of the rooms. the front porch, the window we were looking out of, and the soldiers that stopped up right in front of us -- stomped up righin it was quite shabby. this was, i guess, in the 1990's. maybe in the 21st century. [laughter] peter: george takei, why was your family sent to the lake camp in california? you called at the camp for this loyalists -- disloyalists. george: it was a high-security camp with armament, tanks,

machine guns pointed at us from the sentry towers. it was a whole series. the interment was totally irrational. they categorized us not as having committed some, just a category, enemy alien. that already tells you the story. we weren't the enemy and we weren't aliens, except for my father, but he grew up in america and felt very american. we were categorized as enemy aliens, subjected to all that terror and imprisonment. and a year into imprisonment, 1943, the government realized that we

have a wartime manpower shortage and here are all these young people. and some who actually, right after pearl harbor, like all young americans had rushed to the recruitment centers to volunteer to serve in the u.s. military. an act of patriotism which was answered with a■ slap in the face. denied military service, categorized as enemy alien, and imprisoned with the rest of us. now, the government did a flip-flop. they changed their mind. they needed these people, but here theylq are, categorized uss enemy alien, already imprisoned how to rationalize drawing them out -- drafting them out of confinement and use them as

soldiers. they came down with a notorious loyalty questionnaire.■ in the chaos and confusion of wartime, incompetence got lodged in the bureaucracy of government. it was clearly this incompetence that put together the so-called loyalty questionnaire. there were two questions that were considered critical, absolutely important that they have yes answers to. que28. qu asked, are you willin on combat duty wherever ordered? my parents had three very young children. sister was by then a toddler. i was■f six, henry was five.

■áthey were being essentially asked to abandon their children because they would not give any other details on what would happen to their children. just are you willing to serve in the military on combat duty wherever ordered? they were being asked to leave their children therend bear arms to defend the country that is holding their children hostage. the only rational answer that any parent could give was no. they were not about to abandon us and bear arms to fight for a country that is holding their ildren prisoner. they answered no to that. question 28 was one sentence with two conflicting ideas. it asked will use where your loyalty to the united states of america and forswear4ámi your

loyalty to the emperor of japan? it was insulting to think that the government of the united states thought we had an inb■ho, racial loyalty to the emperor. it was outraouit was insulting. so, if you answered no, meaning i don't have loyalty to the emperor to that applied to the first part of the very same sentence. it is asking for your loyalty to the united states. some people said it might be safer to put more weight on thav and answer yes to that. but then, that yes applied to the second part of the same sentence, which assumed we had an inborn, racial loyalty to the emperor.

they were confessing to a nonexistent loyalty to the emperor. my parents answered honestly. they answered both those questions with no's. with that, they were categorized as disloyal. it was totally crazy. and cruel to ask that kind of question of the people that are already imprisoned. so, all those that answered no to those two questions had to th loyal internees. and the northern california camp was selected as the segregation camp for disloyals. -- and it was a totally

different conflict, in dramatic contrast■ú to the slums of arkansas. it first of all became the biggest, most populous of all the tin camps. most camps held about from 6000 to 13,000 people. tallulah lake held 18,000 people. most of them families with children with parents that did not want to abandon their children and -- armaments. tallulah lake had two layers of barbed wire fences. the sentry towers had more than just an armed soldi g down from the tower. they had machine guns installed in them and down at us -- them

aimed down at us and had half a dozen tanks patrolling the perimeter. tanks are battlefield vehicles, not vehicles to intimidate and goad people who are already seething with anger and resentment. and therefore tallulah lake became the most of the camps. there were fights, there were riots, there were raids. it was constant terror in the tallulah lake. peter: what is the word washoi? george: it's a jogger's cadence. a good number of the young men,

some of whom rushed to the recruitment centerradicalized bm the government. they said you were going to call us the enemy, well, we will show you what kind of enemy you have to deal with these radicals were created by the government's stupidity. they were intimidated to fight for japan when they land on the continental united states. we will join the japanese army. so they jogged early in the morning and that was their cadence. wasshoi, wasshoi. that doesn't have any meaning other than hup-to.

peter: did those young men get in trouble? george: there's more to come. i remember waking up to the distant wasshoi, wasshoi, and as they got closer ey louder, and d away as jogging. but at the end of the jog, wherever they might have ended up, they gathered together and in unison, loud, "bonsai, bonsai, bonsai" went up and then they scattered so military police would not catch them. they had some from the reports from the sentry towers. but that's what wasshoi was. an real agitators in camp.

they tried to get more volunteers to join them and if some other young men did not they might jump them in the dark at night and beat them up, and so other■ you men would catch the radicals. they were not altogether. and beat them up. and then other groups formed and it was a turbulent camp full of different factions and soldiers would come not during the ■daytime because that may create a riot. they would come in the night having picked out certain units ected of housing one of the leaders of the radicals.

and they would go in and pulled them out and their wives or are there children or their mothers would be yelling, "don't take him away. he's innocent." or the kids would say, "daddy, daddy, don't go away." in the middle of thep> night, ty would be taken away, and the remaining family would be sobbing and shouting the government is terrible. they are ruining our family, breaking us apart. so it was constant turmoil in tule lake. peter: what do you remember about the day that you were told you were free? george: it did not come like

that. there was a long period of rumors that a horrible bomb, two horrible bombs, were dropped ono one had ever experienced before in the world. whole towns -- hiroshima was completely flatten. eoe died. this was just a(v rumor becausee got no information. this was a prison. we had n radio, no newspapers, shortwave radios were certainly forbidden, so somehow, that rumor got around, and, for my mother, it was the most torturous part of the whole internment. her parents, my grandparents, saw or felt the winds of war coming and they left the farm in

their oldest son's, my uncle's, care, and they returned to japan before the war -- before pearl harbor happened. they returned to hiroshima. and in that whispered rumors, the first bomb that had been dropped on my mother was constantly breaking down in tears said it was supposed to have been a horrific bombing. you cannot torture yke this. you have to eat. you have to try to live. and he said let's accept that your parents had passed and finally my mother's crying

stopped and she accepted that. as it turned out, long after the end of the war, because there was little communication, no mail, we received the news from our grandmother that they had survived. their home located in a place where the radiation went e lay of the land and my grandmother survived ng honor.ng and the house my grandfather, who wairsuccessn sacramento, when they went back, he was day, he was in the inlandfishing, ane -- saw in the distance the mushroom cloud go up. hwas not in hiroshima but

he saw it from a long ways away. and they both had survived, but that brought abo the end war, ae free. we are going to close down the camp. but we heard rumors that the hostility did not end just because the war is over. the hate was still intense and we were not sure how safe -- my parents were not sure how safe it would be to go back to los angeles, so they decided my father would leave first to scout out the climate in los angeles, get a job and a place to stay. it took him 10 weeks before anr -- told our mother, come on

down. we went back -- my mother kept saying "home" to los angeles. i before we were incarcerated but i did not consider that home. home was wherever my parents were. we arrived at union station in y waiting for us on the platform and i captured that in the last page. daddy was hunkered down with his arms open and henry and i ran toward him with that momentum that we had going, and he was hunkered down. we knocked him over. and we kind of rode around on th platform hugging our father. and my mother came and my baby sister was hiding behind her. ■ñ10 weeks and she had become s.

daddy was kind of a strange man. isn't that funny, how little children forget? she hid behind her skirt and daddy had to kind of draw her out to give her a hug and she was kind of awkward about the whole thing, but we were home in los angeles, and coming home was not a happy time for us. the teacher kept calling me the jap boy. peter: your father worked as a dishwasher. george:■q he got a job as a dishwasher in a chinatown restaurant. only other asians would hire us. he had enormous difficulty finding that job. but the thing was, at both

camps, california, he was the block manager. he gave advice and and other kinds of support to people who had difficulties. and here were all these people coming back from imprisonment, and they went to mydn father for help in finding a joor stay, ane -- he was a volunteer to a fault. he worked the breakfast dishwashing and the lunch dishwashing and he had a small pulse in little tokyo -- small office in little tokyo to help people find jobs and a place to stay, and my mother

said, you have to quit this volunteerism. we have to eat too. and she kept nagging him and nagging him and after three or four months, he found a dry cleaning shop in east l.a., anml mexican-american neighborhood. and in retrospect, i think we were lucky in going to a mexican-american neighborhood, another oppressed group of people, and they welcomed us. my classmates were all mexican americans and my■j friends

kids with nicknames like chichi. i learned street well and later in high school and college, i maintained my spanish studies. my father used to say -- i was a theater arts major at ucla and my minor was latin american studies. my father said i hopeless major and a useless minor. i'm going to be supporting you th life. well, i showed him. peter:o, takei, in the camps and at home, japanese was spoken exclusively? george: no. japanenglish. my fatherd spoke better english. my mother would say things like -- the japanese word for cut is

kiru. nx÷bshe would say something liko play over there. i am kiruing this cucumber. no one else would understand it. but she spoke -- even in sacramento -- not sacramento, florin -- it was a farming community called florin that later was engulfed by sacramento and became sacramento but that was a little japanese american community there. ■#at home, they spoke japanese. so my mother had a distinct japanese accent. i call it a japanese american accent. whereas my father spoke good american english. peter: that's a complex, rough

story that we have beenaw -- again. and as a teenager, i sat down with my father to learn more about our imprisonment. i did not understand it. i remember it. i went through it but i wanted to get an understanding of why in this country, when this was our country, that that happened.

and so i had many, many after dinner conversations with him and he did share with me his anguish and he said -- i remember he would see henry and i playing on at arkansas with a barbed wire us, and he thought of -- he had such hope and aspiration for his two boys, and he thought what kind of future are my boys going to have? and he said it tore him apart. and in writing about that memory, i found myself sobbing computer. so he shared fully his feelings with me in those after dinner

conversations and i learned about american democracy from my father. he often quoted to me abraham lincoln's gettysburg address, the part of the goes of the peo. he says those are noble words. they are what makes american democracy great. but he said the weakness of american democracy is in those words too, because he said people are fallible human beings. even a president is a fallible human being. he said he admired president roosevelt back in the 1930's, when we were in the depths of a crushing economic depression.

people were unemployed, homeless, hungry, and the spirit of america was broken, and the president had to galvanize, get the people going to b t them there's nothing to fear but fear itself. and the peoplevitalized and the economy was revitalized by that. but when pearl harbor was boed, that great president became fearful. the president who said there's nothing to fear but fear itself. he saw that the west coast was just like pearl harbor. it was open, unprepared and vulnerable, and living on the west coast, with people that

looked just like the people that bombed pearl harbor, and he the hate and the racism and his lack of wisdom and leadership. he got stampededh and acted one hysteria of the time and put ind wire prison camps. peter: what should we know about henry and rachel after the camps? george: the asian tradition is the oldest, firstborn son is the one that has to show the rest of his siblings. he's got to be the supporter of the family and be an example to

others. i was a black sheep. i became an actor. my brother became a dentist. my sister became a schoolteacher. my brother, the dentist, is now retired. my sister,he schoolteacher, is now retired, andn assisted care home. i'm the oldest and still working and still carrying on the peter: "my lost freedom," a japanese american world war ii story, written by georged by mi. thank you for your time. george: thank you very much.

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