George Takei's Journey Through Fear, Silence, and Activism - The Assignment with Audie Cornish - Podcast on CNN Podcasts

CNN

a day ago

Audie Cornish
00:00:00
In journalism, sometimes we go over the top with the superlatives, the best, the tallest, the oldest. The truth is something better, taller, and older is bound to come along, right? But honestly, it's hard to overstate how great today's guest is.
Star Trek clip
00:00:17
Check elapsed time, Mr. Sulu. My chronometer is running backwards, sir.
Audie Cornish
00:00:25
George Takei is a cultural force. His influence is generational.
3rd Rock from the Sun clip
00:00:30
Seeing all of you here makes me feel like a kid again. Almost as if, as Mr. Sulu once said, my chronometer's running backwards.
Audie Cornish
00:00:39
His career spans seven decades. For years, people embraced his work on TV, in films, theater, and even video games.
Skylander video game clip
00:00:48
Thank you, Lord Chaos. Thank you very much.
Audie Cornish
00:00:52
He's been a regular on Howard Stern.
Howard Stern clip
00:00:55
George? Yes? Would you call it a guacamole? Guacamole.
Audie Cornish
00:00:59
But he's also become an internet culture icon, marrying his Star Trek fandom with a killer instinct for memes.
Oh my clip
00:01:06
Oh my.
Audie Cornish
00:01:09
'Along the way, he's found ways to be vulnerable about his path growing up in the civil rights struggles of post-war America.
It Rhymes with Takei trailer clip
00:01:18
'From about the time I was nine years old, I knew I was different. I am Japanese-American, so I was already different in an obvious way. But then came this growing realization that I had another difference...
Audie Cornish
00:01:37
'As far back as the 70s, he was speaking out against war and speaking for black civil rights. And although it took him decades to come out publicly as a gay man, he did so in the most public way, on the heels of the national legislative movement for same-sex marriage.
It Rhymes with Takei trailer clip
00:01:55
I lived life as a rhyme of myself for so long, but when selfish politicians threatened the rights of my community, I finally decided enough was enough.
Audie Cornish
00:02:11
Now, at 88, George Takei has written a new memoir. It's called, It Rhymes with Takei, a nod to the joke he once made in protest of a law that banned teachers from saying the word gay. This is an illustrated telling of the experiences that shaped him, growing up behind barbed wire during World War II, marching for civil rights, coming out late in life after decades of watching others take the risks he felt he could not. So today I'm talking to George Takei about the cost of silence, the power of protest, and what his life says about democracy in a moment when it feels like it's under threat. I'm Audie Cornish, and this is The Assignment.
Audie Cornish
00:03:05
George Takei's new graphic memoir is the story of his life, from his time in a Japanese internment camp as a child during World War II, to his fight for LGBTQ civil rights. Before Takei became an activist or even an actor, he was just a teenager falling in love with the stage and quietly learning what that could cost someone like him.
George Takei
00:03:29
'During my teenage years, I discovered that I loved acting. I loved the theater, both the stage, film, and television, and the radio. My favorite actor, my heartthrob, was Tab Hunter, a good-looking, blond, blue-eyed guy who regularly took his shirt off, and he had a great physique. And He was my favorite movie star. He had a term contract with Warner Brothers Studio and he was the lead in almost every new picture. But when I was about 14 or 15, I think it was, a scandal sheet exposed him as being gay and suddenly he disappeared. Warner's didn't cast him in any movies. They just let the contract run out. And... That was an object lesson for me. I knew that there was a social disapproval of gays and lesbians, but you could not aspire to be an actor, to be hired by a producer in Hollywood if it was known that you were gay. And so I put myself in my own self-created, invisible barbed wire prison camp. The term then was closeted. I was visible in other social and justice issues, but I never touched my own situation because I desperately, passionately wanted to be an actor.
Audie Cornish
00:05:13
How did coming out shift your sense of purpose? And I believe he came out in your late 60s, right?
George Takei
00:05:19
It was 2005. Because of the activism of the people that were out campaigning for LGBTQ equality, things were starting to happen. In 2003, in Massachusetts, through the Massachusetts State Supreme Court, marriage equality was granted. It was a landmark event. But two years later, on the West Coast in California, And this time, the people's representatives, the state legislature, the state senate, and the state assembly passed the marriage equality bill. It was a thrilling experience. Now it was starting to happen, but that bill needed one more signature. The signature of our governor, a movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger. When he campaigned for the governor's seat, He campaigned by saying, I'm from Hollywood. I've worked with the gays and lesbians. Some of my friends are gays and lesbiens creating the impression that marriage equality was not a problem for him. But when Bill landed on his desk, he vetoed it, the hypocrite. I was outraged because of that campaign. And that's when I teamed up with the Human Rights Campaign. And went on a nationwide speaking tour speaking against Schwarzenegger's hypocrisy and veto.
Audie Cornish
00:06:57
'We're now in this interesting moment where you have Donald Trump returning to office and making sweeping executive orders that affect the LGBTQ community. You mentioned same-sex marriage in Massachusetts way back when, and I was actually like a cub reporter in Massachusetts at the time, so I followed that story really closely and a lot of the weddings and marriages that happened then, and it is a really interesting moment to be in right now. Where you have executive orders, policy changes, and almost more importantly, state-level proposals that could have an impact on same-sex couples. What is that like? Do you feel the atmosphere changing? What are your concerns?
George Takei
00:07:44
'It is changing. And it's because we have what I call Klingon in the White House, this authoritarian, self-important, singularly-minded person. They're advocating for the erasure.
Audie Cornish
00:08:01
But is this different from what you experienced in prior decades, the political atmosphere? I mean, you just talked about Schwarzenegger and sort of how that drew you into the political arena. Does this feel like another time that is better or worse than what you experienced?
George Takei
00:08:18
'It was worse for us as Japanese Americans. It was a lie. They categorized us as enemy alien. We were neither. We were American-born, educated, patriotic Americans. And yet, they had this falsity. And they fanned the flames of hatred. The whole country was swept up. My poor parents couldn't even walk down the sidewalk in front of our home without cars roaring down and yelling, spy, saboteur, Jap, get out.
Audie Cornish
00:08:53
Let me pause for a second because I want to break down this story a little bit so people understand kind of what happened to you. You were talking about being a kid basically in LA when your family under this executive order that where the government could basically turn all kinds of whole states into military zones where certain people were excluded and your family was among those 120,000 Japanese Americans who were—
George Takei
00:09:21
A hundred and... We have the precise number now.
Audie Cornish
00:09:23
Oh, tell me.
George Takei
00:09:24
125,181. Scholars had been doing the research. And we at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, we have this huge tome that lists the name of every person that was rounded up in 1942.
Audie Cornish
00:09:45
One of the things that's interesting about that moment is it also, obviously you were a child and today there are also families in detention. What comes to mind when you think of children in this moment who are experiencing this?
George Takei
00:10:03
I can only use myself because I was a child then. We had very protective parents and they were exemplars for me. And after the war too, my father explained to me. The American Constitution is a great form of government. He used to quote to me Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address, ours is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. He said, those are noble words. That's what makes American democracy great. But the weakness of American democracy is also in those words because people are fallible human beings and they make mistakes. Even great presidents can get swept up in the hysteria of the times because to Roosevelt, the West Coast of the United States was just like Pearl Harbor. It was open. Unprotected and vulnerable. And here were these people that looked exactly like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor. And so he panicked out of ignorance. And this is where teachers and librarians are the pillars of democracy. They can teach them this truth that people, even great presidents, can be stampeded by hysteria. And that's what we're going through right now. However, we, Japanese Americans of our generation, in the 70s, began a campaign to get an apology and redress. In 1980, under Jimmy Carter's leadership, Congress created a commission on getting information on the internment, and they held hearings. And I testified in 1981 at that. And in 1984. They came out with a report stating that the cause of the imprisonment of innocent Japanese Americans was based on three factors. One, war hysteria, two, racism, and three, the failure of political leadership.
Audie Cornish
00:12:23
You have a president who is now saying he's carrying out mass deportations because it's popular, or saying that he has popular support for going after undocumented migrants. And it made me think, as I was reading your book, about the fact that a majority of Americans at the time, in the 40s, supported the removal of Japanese Americans. And so how does your experience of that inform your thinking of the way the president is saying now? That there's somehow, there are at times popular support for these kinds of actions.
George Takei
00:13:01
'The important thing, and my father taught me this when I was a teenager, I had many, many after dinner conversations. Americans need to speak out. We were a small minority and cowed really under the force, the huge tidal wave force against us. And the Japanese Americans, when you have rifles with the bayonets pointed at you. And I, as a five-year-old, I saw a bayonet pointed at my father right at our front door. I was terrified. I'll never forget that. But politicians lie, and people believe that lie because there's hysteria rampant at that time. And in our time today, right now, people got swept up by a lie and elected him. And now people have regrets. People must speak out.
Audie Cornish
00:14:02
More with George Takei after this.
Audie Cornish
00:14:07
As we're speaking, the president is going to be visiting Florida, he's going to be visiting a new migrant detention center, which is being called Alligator Alcatraz, because it's going be in the Everglades. And I was reminded of all the stories you've told over the years about how isolated those Japanese American internment camps were. What do you think when you hear our modern government getting excited? About the prospect of putting detainees in far or dangerous or isolated places.
George Takei
00:14:39
'That's Old Hat. We were in the swamps of Arkansas. And actually to a five-year-old boy from Southern California, it was an exotic place. Trees, great giant trees that grew out of water and their roots came out and twisted and went back in and out and in and now like a snake. And I've got, my father waited out and cut off one of those sculptural root pieces that came out of the water. He had it mounted and we had it in our living room. After my father passed, I stopped by and I walked in the living room and it was gone. I said, mama, what happened to daddy's kobu? We called it a kobu, daddy's Kobu. And she said, oh. It reminds me too much of camp. I put it in the garage. And I said, in the garbage, can I have it if you don't want it? And she said, take it, take. And so I have in my library at home to this day, the swamps reminded me of my parents and the love that they gave us and the guidance that they give us under horrific circumstances. My father told me about how seeing his two boys playing on the dirt road right by the barbed wire fence. And he thought he had so much hope for us. And it just tore him apart that here we were with this unknown future. He didn't know what kind of future his children had. And I'm reminded of that story too.
Audie Cornish
00:16:32
One of the things that I have a hard time processing is what it was like for your family and others to come back to their communities. I mean, when you were forcibly removed, you had to leave behind your belongings. And I was reading that sometimes people in those neighborhoods took those belongings. How do you join the community that rejected you again? How do feel American again and come back after you're released?
George Takei
00:17:00
It wasn't just the loss of our home. I mean, my parents knew it probably would not be there, but it was a nation that still hated us. We weren't behind barbed wires anymore, but they still saw us as the enemy, and their son or their husbands may have been killed by people that looked like us in the Pacific War. And so we were going back to a hostile America. We couldn't find housing, jobs. Our first home was on Skid Row in downtown LA. And I thought probably the worst part was coming home. Coming home was terrible.
Audie Cornish
00:17:46
And still hostile, that's the part that I think in a way I'm surprised by.
George Takei
00:17:53
Yes, this is America. American history. More people should know that. And that's why I say teachers and librarians are the pillars of our democracy. We need to have an educated electorate so that they can participate with information on the issues of our time. Because there are bulldogs like the one we have now, who will just bluster their way through, and people are easily sold. We are fallible human beings, as my father said.
Audie Cornish
00:18:35
Did it shake your patriotism? Did it shake the patriotism of your parents?
George Takei
00:18:41
'When I became a teenager, I remember the terror, but I wanted to understand why we were incarcerated and subjected to that. So I had many after-dinner conversations with my father, and that's when he talked about the Gettysburg Address, and that the important thing is that citizens... have the beneficiary of all those ideals, but also the responsibility of citizenship to participate, to speak up and engage. It was the example of my parents, both my father and mother, that guided us to be activists in the democratic process.
Audie Cornish
00:19:28
I have gotten a chance to look at both books. And the thing that struck me is that your dad was always helping one community understand the other. And I wonder if you're still doing the same thing in telling these stories over and over again.
George Takei
00:19:44
'I'm an American, and America's strength is its diversity. And I was blessed in being cast in Star Trek, which has as its guiding idea. Oh, we had an acronym, IDIC, I-D-I-C, infinite diversity in infinite combinations. And so you saw that in the makeup of the cast.
Audie Cornish
00:20:09
And when you think about your personal history, how does that help you understand what it means to be an American?
George Takei
00:20:20
So many young people of my generation didn't have a father like my father. They're very, they don't speak up. They're reluctant to. So many Japanese Americans, we have this Japanese saying, the nail that sticks up is the one that gets hammered down. It's a terrible saying, discouraging young people to speak up, My father urged us to speak up and be actively engaged in society. And so many of my Japanese American generation didn't do that.
Audie Cornish
00:21:01
You've said that if we don't know the unpleasant aspects of American history, and we don't learn the lesson those chapters have to teach us, we will repeat them, right? Very famous saying. As you've written this story so many times in different formats, right, introducing it to different generations at different ages, do you feel heard? Do you feel like Americans are taking away the right lessons from the Japanese American internment story?
George Takei
00:21:30
I've been doing a lot of promotionals with the book and I am encouraged. When I'm introduced to speak to a large audience of 200, 250 people in a huge auditorium, it's a standing ovation largely because of my Star Trek notoriety and it feels good. To an actor or a speaker to be greeted like that. But that's a select audience. And I am always mindful that there is a flip side of that. As a matter of fact, both my books, "They called us Enemy" and my Star Trek book where I talk about the internment were banned in various schools. But the thing that gets me hard is the Star Trek fans then, and they're very organized and they are a powerful group, they teamed up and took different parts of the issue and they went to the library board or whatever board that banded. And they argued so successfully that the book was put back on the shelves. Our democracy... feflects the people. And if the people are cowed and silent, it fails. Democracy fails. It's because we have people that are informed and do speak up on the information that they have, that our democracy is healthy. And that's where I have hope, even beyond this horrific period that we're living through. We've survived before, and we'll survive again.
Audie Cornish
00:23:34
George Takei, actor, writer, and activist. His graphic memoir, It Rhymes with Takei is on shelves now. The Assignment is a production of CNN Podcasts, and this episode was produced by Lori Galarreta. Matt Martinez is our senior producer, our technical director is Dan Dzula, and the executive producer of CNN podcast is Steve Lichteig. Special thanks to Wendy Brundige. We're gonna be back with a new episode on Thursday Thanks for listening, I'm Adi Cornish.