George Takei Was Sent to a Japanese-American Internment Camp at Age Five

>>You were just in Pittsburgh
for Steel City Con.

How does it feel--

Much has been written about
the fact that, you know,

Star Trek was not anywhere near as
popular when it was airing as it is now.

Is it still surreal to you that fans are so
deeply connected to that show?

>>It's 53 years old.

We went on the air in 1966,
canceled in 1969,

exactly 50 years ago,
and here we are, 53 years later,

with another new Star Trek spin-off
with Patrick Stewart

and another movie being
talked about by-- with Tarentino.

I mean, it's an
amazing phenomenon.

>>And people must still
be so happy to see you

when they go to something
like Steel City Con?

>>I greet my fans like this.

[ Laughter ]

>>You know how to
please them. So...

>>We have lived much
longer than we expected

and prospered in so
many wondrous ways,

like all these fans.
>>That's fantastic.

This show, "Terror: Infamy"--

this is much more serious
subject matter, and, uh,

it's based on the internment
of Japanese-Americans.

Uh, there's a supernatural element to it,
but this is a very real issue for you--

not just being a Japanese-American,

but you were interned as a
child from the ages five to eight.

Is that right?
>>I'd just turned five years old.

A few weeks after that,

my parents got me up
very early one morning,

dressed us hurriedly up--
my brother a year younger

and my baby sister
still a baby, an infant--

and, uh, my father said
to my brother and me,

"Wait here in the living room
while we do some last-minute packing."

So the two of us were
just looking out the--

gazing out the front window,

and suddenly we saw two soldiers
marching up our driveway

carrying rifles with
shiny bayonets on them.

They stomped up the porch

and, with their fists,
began pounding on the door.

I-- the way I remember it,
the whole house seemed to tremble.

And my father came out
and answered the door,

and, literally at gunpoint,
we were ordered out of our house.

And so my father gave my
brother and me little packages to carry.

He hefted two heavy suitcases,

and we followed him
out onto the driveway

and waited for our
mother to come out.

When she came out, she had
our baby sister in one arm

a heavy duffel bag in the other,

and tears were streaming
down her cheeks.

It is a picture that's
burnt into my memory.

>>What did you think
was happening

when being that young
in a situation like that?

What were your memories
at the time of what this was

and why it was happening?

>>That morning was
a terrifying morning,

but then we were taken--

you know, the camps
were just being built,

so they took us to
Santa Anita Race Track,

a nearby race track.

We were herded over with
other Japanese-American families

to the stable area and assigned
a horse stall for us to sleep in.

From a two-bedroom home,
front yard, backyard,

on Garnet Street in LA,
to a horse stall.

For my parents, it was a degrading,
humiliating, painful experience

to take their three children
into that smelly horse stall,

still pungent with the--

and I still remember that
smell-- but, for me,

I thought it was fun to sleep
where the horsies sleep.

>>Yeah.
[ Laughter ]

>>You know, horsies slept here.
>>Sure.

>>I can smell them.

>>Now, how surreal was it
for you to return to a set

that was built to
evoke this time

and having such
specific memories of it?

I mean, obviously, you're coming back
in a much better perspective on it,

having the control of
telling this story, but was it

hard for you to walk onto a
set and see those camps again?

>>Remember, I was a five-year-old kid,
and they built on a 6.5-acre plot of land

an exact replica of the
internment camps.

The barracks were exactly
the way I remembered it.

There was a little crawlspace
down below,

and I recognized that because
we adopted a black dog,

cute little dog.
We named him Blackie.

And whenever
something scared him--

you know, when
gunfire was going off--

he got scared, and he would
crawl under the crawlspace,

and we crawled in after him,

so, you know,
I remembered the details.

The-- The set designers
did tremendous research.

The strips of wood that
held the tar paper on

were exactly the same dimensions,

so it was, to me,
a kind of a nostalgic return

because of my childhood
experience, but, as a teenager,

I learned a lot more
about the reality--

the harrowing experience that it
was for my parents, and so, uh,

with both the adult knowledge
and the memory of a child,

it was an eerie,
kind of a feeling.