They Called Us Enemy

From the Publisher:

George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his magnetic performances, sharp wit, 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 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard.

They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the terrors and small joys of childhood in the shadow of legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's tested faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.

What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do? To answer these questions, George Takei joins cowriters Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker for the journey of a lifetime.

My Thoughts:

I have read several memoirs about internment, including Farewell to Manzanar by Jean Wakatsuki Houston so this first hand story of internment is not new, however, in Wakatsuki Houston's case she was a teenager versus Takei who was still a child. 

The genre of graphic novel is an ideal form to tell Mr. Takei's story because his lens balances the innocence and excitement of being at "camp" with his growing understanding as a teen after they are out of the camps and struggling to start over again. The graphic novel itself can embrace both the darkness and the fun much better than if it is just described in prose. 

The historical facts, the attitudes of the men in power, the small anecdotes of hope, put into the sparse prose of a graphic novel actually act like poetry to focus emotion and frustration into a very concentrated format. Although it is supposedly an easier read, I found myself tearing up on the plane as I was reading because the poetry of the words just hit me to the core. 

What was most moving was the Zen like strength and calm of his father. He is a role model for a modern immigrant father trying to lead others to social justice through his actions and not his angry rhetoric. 

George Takei reads from his book