72 Time August 26, 20198 Questions‘
WE WERE
HERDED OVER
TO THE STABLE
AREA. EACH
FAMILY WAS
ASSIGNED TO A
HORSE STALL
’
the injustice of that incarceration. I
was inspired by speeches of Dr. Martin
Luther King that I heard on the radio
and what I read in the newspapers. I
read about the ideals of our democracy:
all men are created equal. I couldn’t
reconcile that with what I knew to be
my childhood imprisonment and what
my parents went through.You’re both an actor and consultant
on AMC’s The Terror: Infamy. Why
did you get involved? My mission in
life has been to raise awareness of this
chapter in American history. I’m the
last of the surviving generation that
experienced internment.The series, set during World War II,
centers on a series of bizarre
deaths that haunt a Japanese-
American community. Why tell
this story through a horror movie
with supernatural elements? That
is organic to the story. The immigrant
generation brought with them their old
beliefs, superstitions, religious rituals.
When people are terrorized—genuine,
government - sourced terror—older
people cling onto what they found
security in. People went crazy. And
when crazy people do crazy things, the
immigrant generation thought it was
the spirit of whatever evil that was
done coming to punish them.We rarely see the story of
internment being told in a major
U.S. TV show. Why do you think
that is? It’s a shameful chapter of
American history. The U.S. looks very
bad because it was a horrible mistake.How much of the show is historically
authentic? I play the oldest of the
immigrants. I went to school in Japan,
so I speak Japanese fluently. But I had
to learn the Wakayama accent, the
old Japanese of the province, to play
the part of my character. That’s how
authentic this is.
—melissa ChanY
ou were in Japanese- American
internment camps from ages
5 to 8. What was that like? We
were plunked down in the swamps of
southeastern Arkansas. To me, it was
an exotic, alien planet. Trees grew
out of the water of the bayou that was
right next to the barbed-wire fence.
I remember catching pollywogs and
putting them in the jar. Dragonflies,
which I’ve never seen before. The
first winter, it snowed there. I was a
Southern California kid. To wake up one
morning and see everything covered in
white, it was a magical place.What was it like for your parents?
For my parents, it was a series of
goading terrors, one after the other.
But children are amazingly adaptable.
We adjusted, and we got used to what
would have been a grotesque thing—
lining up three times a day to eat lousy
food in a noisy mess hall, or going with
my father to bathe in a mass shower.
When I made the night runs to the
latrine, searchlights followed me. I
thought it was nice that they lit the way
for me to pee.What do you remember about the
journey there?
I remember the terror of when the
soldiers came to our Los Angeles
home to order us out, and the
confusion and chaos at the Santa
Anita racetrack. There was a chain-
link fence around the whole
racetrack facility. We were unloaded
and herded over to the stable area.
Each family was assigned to a
horse stall. For my parents, it was
a degrading, humiliating, enraging
experience to take their three kids
to sleep in a smelly horse stall.
But to me, it was fun to sleep
where the horsies sleep.When did you understand what
you were part of? It wasn’t until I
was a teenager that I learned about
the reality, the horror, the terror andGeorge Takei The actor talks about his
new show, The Terror: Infamy, and his real-life
experiences in an internment camp