I am reposting George Takei's speech given during this year's Tule Lake Internment Camp Pilgrimage, because it is so powerful and speaks so directly to events happening in this country. It has special meaning to me, in a way, presenting another view of the stories I grew up hearing from my Mom.
Mother was born in Arkansas in April, 1930, right before the build-up to WWII. She remembers growing up near one of the internment camps (possibly Rohwer), and often talked of the 'strange people' she saw, sometimes spoke to, and interacted with (Issei, and Nissei and Sansei Japanese Americans) as well as some German POWs.
My mother was a mixed race child: her father Native American, her mother, what was then called Octaroon (1/8 black). Mom had more freedom to go where she pleased in the little town nearby than most non-white children in the area, because my grandmother's white first cousins were members of the wealthiest family in town, and my grandfather had been deep and fast friends from childhood with the most feared law enforcement official in the area. Everyone knew if you wanted someone to go to bat for you with the Sheriff, my grandfather was the Man.
Mom often spoke of the interment camp residents, what she saw, about things she didn't understand as a child that became clear as she became an adult. She talked about the awful things the whites in the area did, and said, and how, even though they had just as much prejudice against the Germans, they made differences for the big, blond-haired blue-eyed man-children they used to work their rice-fields and other crops, that they would never make for the quiet, polite, frightened 'Others' in the internment camp, and how, for years, she didn't understand that, either. Oh, she knew to keep her eyes downcast, to not speak unless spoken to, to not react when called Bum's Pickaninny (that's what they called my grandfather Alfred, whose real name we didn't know until WE were adults and he was in his 70s), and to NEVER, ever, show any anger or retaliate when mistreated - she didn't have that much freedom.
But, never the less, when I heard Mr. Takei speak, I hurt. For him, for his family, for the other American citizens of Japanese descent, hurst for his having been interned there as a child, for the other good Americans who had everything taken away from them, and who were scorned, blamed, and reviled by much of the country because they LOOKED like, and some worshiped like, our enemies. How they were herded like cattle, like my Native American ancestors, like my African ancestors, like the Jews, Gypsies, intellectuals, the old, the infirm, and LGBQT folk of Europe, into cattle cars,trains, trailors, and busses, taken away from their homes, and treated worse than we would treat our livestock.Victims of racism, xenophobia, and cynical political grand-standing. How he recalls the same things that landed them in the camps, are akin to the rhetoric being batted about now and directed at latino immigrants, Islam-practicing Americans, and those of non-European descent who look like our (presumed) enemies.
History repeating itself. Again.
