When Roosevelt signed the executive order nobody stood up to him.” “At least we had made progress by the time Trump got into office, because when he signed that executive order, acting attorney general Sally Yates refused to enforce it. He mentions Donald Trump’s executive order banning people from certain Muslim-majority countries entering the US. The story of racism and radicalisation has so many echoes with recent times, Takei says. Allegiance, in which he stars, explores how internment and the oath of allegiance divided families such as his. It was here that many prisoners were radicalised, Takei says. The family were then sent to the harsher Tule Lake segregation centre in California for “disloyals”. Takei’s parents refused to do so because the question wrongly assumed their loyalty was to Japan, while demanding allegiance to a nation that had horrifically mistreated them. In 1943, internees were asked to swear their loyalty to the US and forswear allegiance to the emperor of Japan. Takei’s father spoke fluent Japanese and English and was elected a block manager in what was the US’s largest internment camp. “To take innocent people who had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor and categorise them as enemy aliens was outrageous. The Takeis were transported more than 1,600 miles to an internment camp in Arkansas and forced to live in a converted stable. My father’s car was graffitied with three letters – JAP.” To take innocent people who had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor and categorise them as enemy aliens was outrageous “My parents were spat on in the street and yelled at. The day after the curfew was introduced his father discovered their bank account had been frozen. Like other Japanese Americans, the members of his family had not been allowed to leave their home between 8pm and 6am. What Takei didn’t realise at the time was that the terror had been going on for months. When she finally came out, escorted, she had our baby sister in one arm, a huge duffel bag in the other and tears were streaming down her cheek.” He had two heavy suitcases and we followed him out on to the driveway and stood there waiting for our mother to come out. My father gave us each a box tied with twine to carry. “My father came out of the bedroom and answered the door and they pointed the bayonets at him. I can never forget that terror of their banging.” You sense that every time he talks about it he experiences the terror anew. They carried rifles with shining bayonets on them and banged on the front door. Henry and I had nothing to do, so we gazed out of the window and saw two soldiers march up our driveway. “My father came into the bedroom I shared with my younger brother, Henry, and dressed us hurriedly and told us to wait in the living room while they did last-minute packing. It was three weeks after George’s fifth birthday, in 1942, that the military came for the Takeis. George (right) and his brother, Henry, with their father.
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