They Called Us Enemy
George Takei, Justin Eisinger, and Steven Scott, illustrations by Harmony Becker
Top Shelf Productions
Nonfiction, Autobiography/Graphic Novel/Fiction
Themes: Cross-Genre, Diversity, Dystopias, Institutions
*****
Description
The world mostly knows George Takei through his iconic role as Sulu on Gene Roddenberry's groundbreaking series Star Trek, a show that embodied a multicultural, optimistic future for humanity. As a boy, he saw the opposite of that, when the attack on Pearl Harbor inflamed anti-Japanese hatred and fear. Almost overnight, assets were frozen, homes were lost, and Japanese Americans were rounded up and placed in "internment" camps. Though he was too young to recognize the true horrors, he watched his father and mother face daunting challenges to their patriotism, citizenship, and very humanity.
Review
As recent politics have made glaringly clear, there seem to be two different Americas: one that strives for equality amid diversity and works to build a better, more inclusive future for all, and one that embraces fear, prejudice, ignorance, and racism to create a future that favors one race, one religion, one creed alone over all others. Mixing personal memories with stories later gleaned from talks with his father, Takei recounts his personal experience staring down the barbed-wire teeth of the latter America, the one that hates. He was too young at the time to understand it all, and parts of those terrible days still seem like boyhood adventures, thrown into stark relief by what his parents were going through (which he learned only after the fact.) Despite everything, his father never lost faith in the idea of America and democracy, though the scars of those days never fully healed, lingering in all who lived through the camps and even in the politics of today. Set clearly in its history, with the actions of politicians and activists both within the Japanese American community and outside the gates, it presents an interesting, heartbreaking, but ultimately inspiring story of what it means to be an American, even when other Americans call you foreigner and enemy. Stories like Takei's need to be recorded and remembered - especially now that we are tumbling once again into the America of hatred and exclusion.