Remembering Pearl Harbor
Aug 16, 2013, 12:00 PM | Updated: 2:16 pm
Mr. Sulu, the senior helmsman aboard the USS Starship Enterprise, safely traversed much of the universe on “Star Trek,” successfully warding off alien beings who intended to abruptly end his “five-year voyage.”
But do you know who took actor George Takei prisoner? The United States government in 1942, when he was 5.
I was reminded of this sad story, this embarrassing part of American History last weekend on “CBS Sunday Morning.”
He and his Japanese-American family were ordered out of their Los Angeles home at gunpoint by U.S. soldiers and relocated to a camp in the agricultural backwater of Arkansas.
What were they guilty of that could explain such treatment? The same thing that more than 100,000 other Americans were guilty of. They were born with eyes shaped differently than the rest of us and names like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor.
It had to be that because our other World War II enemies, the Germans and Italians with eyes like ours had no camps. The Takei family were captives for four years. Sulu has gone where no one has gone before.
May George Takei’s journey be one no one ever takes again.
I’m Pat McMahon.
