The power of pride: George Takei at TEDxKyoto

This talk was given at TEDxKyoto, a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. George Takei draws his inspiration and strength from one of the darkest chapters of American history: the World War II uprooting and incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese-American citizens.

Recalling his childhood spent behind the barbed wire of America's concentration camps, Mr. Takei reveals his life-long journey from bitter confusion to an impassioned admiration and pride in his fellow Japanese-Americans and his country that encompasses and celebrates us all.

I am a veteran of
the Starship Enterprise.

(Laughter)

I soared through the galaxy,

driving a huge starship,

with a crew made up of people

from all over this world,

many different races,

many different cultures,

many different heritages,

all working together.

And our mission was to explore
strange new worlds,

to seek out new life
and new civilizations,

to boldly go
where no one has gone before.

Well...

(Laughter)

(Applause)

I am the grandson
of immigrants from Japan

who went to America,
boldly going to a strange new world,

seeking new opportunities.

My mother was born
in Sacramento, California.

My father was a San Franciscan.

They met and married
in Los Angeles, and I was born there.

I was four years old,

when Pearl Harbor was bombed

on December 7, 1941 by Japan.

Over night, the world was
plunged into a world war.

America suddenly
was swept up by hysteria.

Japanese Americans,

American citizens
of Japanese ancestry

were looked on
with suspicion and fear,

and with outright hatred --

simply because we happened
to look like the people

that bombed Pearl Harbor.

And the hysteria grew and grew

until, in February 1942,

the President of the United States,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

ordered all Japanese Americans
on the west coast of America

to be summarily rounded up,
with no charges,

with no trial,

with no due process.

Due process is the core pillar
of our justice system.

That all disappeared.

We were to be rounded up
and imprisoned

in ten barbed-wire prison camps

in some of the most
desolate places in America --

the blistering hot desert of Arizona,

the sultry swamps of Arkansas,

the wastelands of Wyoming,
Idaho, Utah, Colorado,

and two of the most desolate
places in California.

On April 20th,
I celebrated my fifth birthday.

And, just a few weeks
after my birthday,

my parents got my younger brother,
my baby sister, and me

up very early one morning,
and they dressed us hurriedly.

My brother and I
were in the living room

looking out the front window,

and we saw two soldiers
marching up our driveway.

They carried bayonets
on their rifle.

They stomped up the front porch
and banged on the door.

My father answered it,

and these soldiers ordered us
out of our home.

My father gave my brother and me
small luggage to carry.

We walked out and stood on the driveway,
waiting for our mother to come out.

And when my mother finally came out,

she had our baby sister in one arm,

a huge duffle bag in the other,

and tears were streaming down
both her cheeks.

I will never be able to
forget that scene.

It is burned into my memory.

We were taken from our home
and loaded onto train cars

with other Japanese-American families.

There were guards stationed
at both ends of each car,

as if we were criminals.

We were taken two thirds
of the way across the country,

rocking on that train
for four days and three nights

to the swamps of Arkansas.

I still remember the barbed-wire fence
that confined me.

I remember the tall sentry tower
with the machine guns pointed at us.

I remember the search light
that followed me

when I made the night-runs
from my barrack to the latrine.

But to five-year-old me,
I thought it was kind of nice

that they'd lit the way
for me to pee.

(Laughter)

I was a child,
too young to understand

the circumstances of my being there.

Children are amazingly adaptable.

What would be
grotesquely abnormal

became my normality
in the prisoner-of-war camps.

It became routine for me
to line up three times a day

to eat lousy food in a noisy mess hall.

It became normal for me
to go with my father

to bathe in a mass-shower.

Being in a prison,

a barbed-wire prison camp
became my normality.

When the war ended,
we were released

and given a one-way ticket
to anywhere in the United States.

My parents decided to go
back home to Los Angeles.

But Los Angeles was not a welcoming place.

We were penniless.

Everything had been taken from us,
and the hostility was intense.

Our first home was on Skid Row,
in the lowest part of our city,

living with derelicts, drunkards,
and crazy people.

The stench of urine all over,

on the street,

in the alley,

in the hallway.

It was a horrible experience.

And for us kids, it was terrorizing.

I remember, once,
a drunkard came staggering down,

fell down right in front of us,

and threw up.

My baby sister said,
"Mama, let's go back home!"

Because behind barbed wires
was, for us, home.

My parents worked hard
to get back on their feet.

We'd lost everything.

They were at the middle of their lives
and starting all over.

They worked their fingers to the bone,

and, ultimately, they were able
to get the capital together

to buy a three-bedroom home
in a nice neighborhood.

And I was teenager,

and I became very curious
about my childhood imprisonment.

I'd read civics books,

that told me about the ideals
of American democracy.

All men are created equal.

We have inalienable right

to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.

And I couldn't quite make that fit

with what I knew to be
my childhood imprisonment.

I read history books
and I couldn't find anything about it.

And so I engaged my father after dinner
in long, sometimes heated, conversations.

We had many, many
conversations like that.

And what I got from them
was my father's wisdom.

He was the one
that suffered the most

under those conditions
of imprisonment.

And yet, he understood
American democracy.

He told me that our democracy
is a people's democracy.

And it can be as great
as the people can be,

but it is also as fallible
as people are.

He told me that American democracy
is vitally dependent

on good people who cherish
the ideals of our system,

and actively engage in the process
of making our democracy work.

And he took me to a campaign headquarter.

The Governor of Illinois
was running for the Presidency

and introduced me to
American electoral politics.

And he also told me about
young Japanese Americans

during the Second Word War.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed,
young Japanese Americans --

like all young Americans --

rushed to their draft board
to volunteer to fight for our country.

That act of patriotism was answered
with a slap in the face.

We were denied service
and categorized as "enemy non-alien."

It was outrageous
to be called an enemy

when you are volunteering
to fight for your country.

But that was compounded
with the word "non-alien,"

which is a word that means
"citizen" in the negative.

They even took
the word "citizen" away from us,

and imprisoned them for a whole year.

And then the government realized that
there is a war-time manpower shortage.

And as suddenly as they rounded us up

they opened up the military
for service by young Japanese Americans.

It was totally irrational
but the amazing thing,

the astounding thing,

is that thousands of young
Japanese American men and women,

again, went from behind
those barbed-wire fences,

put on the same uniform
as that of our guards,

leaving their families in imprisonment,

to fight for this country.

They said that
they were going to fight

not only to get their families
out from behind those barbed-wire fences

but because they cherished
the very ideal

of what our government stands for --
should stand for --

and that was being abrogated
by what was being done:

All men are created equal.

And they went to fight for this country.

They were put into a segregated
all Japanese-American unit

and sent to the battlefields of Europe.

And they threw themselves into it.

They fought with amazing,
incredible courage and valor.

They were sent out
on the most dangerous missions,

and they sustained
the highest combat casualty rate

of any unit proportionally.

There is one battle
that illustrates that.

It was a battle for the Gothic Line.

The Germans were embedded
in this mountain hillside,

rocky hillside,
in impregnable caves.

And three ally battalions had been
pounding away at it for six months,

and they were stalemated.

The 442nd was called in
to add to the fight.

But the men of the 442nd came up
with a unique but dangerous idea.

The backside of the mountain
was a sheer rock cliff.

The Germans thought
an attack from the backside

would be impossible.

The men of the 442nd decided
to do the impossible.

On a dark moonless night,

they began scaling that rock wall,

a drop of more than a thousand feet,

in full combat gear.

They climbed all night long

on that sheer cliff.

In the darkness, some lost
their handhold or their footing,

and they fell to their death
in the ravine below.

They all fell -- silently.

Not a single one cried out,

so as not to give their position away.

The men climbed
for eight hours straight.

Those who made it to the top

stayed there until
the first break of light.

And as soon as light broke,
they attacked.

The Germans were surprised,

and they took the hill
and broke the Gothic Line.

A six months stalemate
was broken by the 442nd in 32 minutes.

It was an amazing act.

And when the war ended,

the 442nd returned
to the United States

as the most decorated unit
of the entire Second World War.

They were greeted back
on the White House lawn

by President Truman
who said to them,

"You fought not only the enemy
but prejudice, and you won."

They are my heroes.

They clung to their belief

in the shining ideals
of this country,

and they proved

that being an American

is not just for some people,

that race is not

how we define being an American.

They expanded
what it means to be an American,

including Japanese-Americans

that were feared
and suspected and hated.

They were change-agents,

and they left for me a legacy.

They are my heroes.

And my father is my hero

who understood democracy
and guided me through it.

They gave me a legacy.

And with that legacy
comes a responsibility.

And I am dedicated

to making my country
an even better America,

to making our government
an even truer democracy.

And because
of the heroes that I have

and the struggles
that we've gone through

I can stand before you

as a gay Japanese American,

but even more than that,

I am a proud American.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)