George Takei Recalls His Childhood in a WWII Internment Camp

In this short video from the BBC narrated by Helena Bonham Carter, activist and actor George Takei talks about his imprisonment in an American concentration camp during WWII because he was of Japanese descent.

I began school in Rohwer, a real school, in a black tar paper barrack. There was an American flag hanging at the front of the classroom and on the first morning, the teacher said, “We’re going begin every morning with the pledge of allegiance to the flag. I will teach it to you and you are to memorize that.” But I could see right outside my schoolhouse window the barbed wire fence and the sentry tower as I recited the words “with liberty and justice for all”. An innocent kid, too young to understand the stinging irony in those words.

Takei has done many talks & interviews over the years about his experience, including for the Archive of American Television, Democracy Now!, and a TED Talk back in 2014:

He also published a graphic novel about his time in the camps called They Called Us Enemy.

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George Takei, top Amazon reviewer

George Takei, in case you don’t know, played Hikaru Sulu on the original Star Trek series. Nowadays, he is a relentless tweeter of internet memes. But he’s also a top-1000 reviewer at Amazon, where he writes humorous reviews of some of retail giant’s most unusual products. Like an inflatable human hamster ball:

When Brad asked what I wanted for my birthday, I said “jet pack,” just like I have for the past four years. Now, Brad thinks I’m too far into my “Golden Years” to strap on any kind of propulsion unit, so each year his gifts have been disappointing: A bow-tie. A snuggie. Gel insoles.

Imagine my delight when I came home to the ZORB HUMAN HAMSTER BALL in our back yard. “Not as good a jet pack,” Brad noted, shrugging. “But safer.”

Brad was a bit winded after blowing it up for six hours (I recommend an air pump), so we left it inflated. We strapped it to our car roof using the 120 left-over bungee cords from our home bungee jumping kit (I would NOT recommend this product). We then drove up to the Hollywood Hills sign for a test roll.

And uranium ore (real radioactive uranium ore):

Brad and I figured it would be poetic justice to tuck one of these babies, along with a DVD of hard core gay porn, inside a gift basket sent to our favorite Iranian madman, ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during his last rant-filled visit to the UN. Just a small token of our esteem and thanks, you understand, for torturing and hanging those two gay teens.

And my personal favorite Amazon item, the 55-gallon drum of lube:

Brad and I will be Grand Marshals at this year’s San Diego Pride Parade, and we were looking for just the right touch to add a bit of pizazz to our appearance. So when we stumbled across the PASSION NATURAL WATER BASED LUBRICANT - 55 GALLON drum, we felt we’d struck gold: “Just enough volume to soak an entire parade of spectators, and yet fits easily in our float.” Double win.

Newt Gingrich has actually reviewed many more items on Amazon, but his are a lot less fun.

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