They Called Us Enemy - George Takei / Harmony Becker (artist)

 

Of course, George Takei is famous for his role in Star Trek but as he has gotten older he has become more politically outspoken, especially as he has seen past transgressions repeated over the years. He is of the age that he was taken to a Japanese Internment Camp when he was a child - a bit of shameful history that is glossed over in most American schools - and so he is extremely aware of the dangers of racial profiling and biases.

I initially thought that this would be a "regular" novel, but it is a well-done graphic novel with illustrator Harmony Becker doing a great job with plenty of expressive work and now'n'then just a touch of Anime influence for some of the more innocent childhood memories.

The Takei's were a successful, happy, middle class family in the LA area until Pearl Harbor was bombed and the US government's response to its own citizens was racist to an extreme. Anyone of Japanese descent, citizen or not, lost literally everything and was sent to camps. Of course, the children didn't really understand what was happening and George and his siblings actually have some fond memories of their incarceration, mixed with some of the violent horrors that they and their fellow internees experienced.

George's powerful tale is used to highlight the more repugnant policies of some of our more recent (republican) administrations in the hopes that some of our population, at least, can learn for our terrible past that has mostly been expunged from our history books.

As with many civil rights issues, this is not ancient history - many people who had to experience these degradations and worse are still alive and most want the government to acknowledge their shortcomings and they want no one else to have to experience what they lived through. 

Very well done and a story that needs to be repeated often, as it appears that we are going to be living through something similar soon, and it will be just as wrong as it was in the past.