Please read the attached article and answer the questions in complete sentences. This is an article written by actor George Takai that reveals his feelings for the United States in spite of the treatment he and his familiy recieved during World War II.

1.  In what ways was Takei’s grandparents’ journey to the United States similar to the journey made by the Starship Enterprise alluded to in the opening of the speech? How did both groups “boldly go where no one has gone before?” 
2. What function does Takei’s citing of the Declaration of Independence have on his argument for “why he [loves] a country that once betrayed [him]?” In what ways does his thesis gain support from the tenets of the Declaration? Use evidence from the text to support your answers. 
3. Identify Takei’s claim regarding heroism. Evaluate Takei’s depiction of the heroic soldiers fighting the Germans at the Gothic Line. What is the importance of this story to Takei’s claim? How is it effective in illustrating the allegiance the Japanese- Americans had to a country that was suspicious of them? 

Name: Class:

“George Takei” by Bart is licensed under CC BY-NC

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By George Takei

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George Takei is an American actor, director, author, and activist of Japanese descent. Takei is well-known for
his role on Star Trek, a science fiction television and movie series. In this TED Talk, Takei discusses his
experiences being interned during WWII and how he feels about America today. As you read, take notes on
what Takei values about America.

I’m a veteran of the starship Enterprise.1 I soared
through the galaxy driving a huge starship with a
crew made up of people from all over this world,
many different races, many different cultures,
many different heritages, all working together,
and our mission was to explore strange new
worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations,
to boldly go where no one has gone before.

Well — (Applause) — I am the grandson of
immigrants from Japan who went to America,
boldly going to a strange new world, seeking new
opportunities. My mother was born in
Sacramento, California. My father was a San
Franciscan. They met and married in Los Angeles,
and I was born there.

I was four years old when Pearl Harbor was
bombed on December

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, 1941 by Japan, and
overnight, the world was plunged into a world
war. America suddenly was swept up by hysteria.2

Japanese-Americans, American citizens of
Japanese ancestry, were looked on with suspicion
and fear and with outright hatred simply because
we happened to look like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor. And the hysteria grew and grew until
in February 1942, the president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, ordered all Japanese-
Americans on the West Coast of America to be summarily

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rounded up with no charges, with no trial,
with no due process.4 Due process, this is a core pillar of our justice system. That all disappeared. We
were to be rounded up and imprisoned in 10 barbed-wire prison camps in some of the most desolate

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places in America: the blistering hot desert of Arizona, the sultry

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swamps of Arkansas, the wastelands
of Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and two of the most desolate places in California.

[1]

1. the spacecraft from Star Trek, a science fiction television and movie series
2. Hysteria (noun): exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion
3. in a prompt or direct manner
4. the legal requirement that the state must respect all legal rights that are owed to a person
5. Desolate (adjective): deserted of people; in a state of bleak emptiness
6. hot and humid

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On April 20th, I celebrated my fifth birthday, and just a few weeks after my birthday, my parents got my
younger brother, my baby sister and me up very early one morning, and they dressed us hurriedly. My
brother and I were in the living room looking out the front window, and we saw two soldiers marching
up our driveway. They carried bayonets7 on their rifles. They stomped up the front porch and banged
on the door. My father answered it, and the soldiers ordered us out of our home. My father gave my
brother and me small luggages to carry, and we walked out and stood on the driveway waiting for our
mother to come out, and when my mother finally came out, she had our baby sister in one arm, a huge
duffel bag in the other, and tears were streaming down both her cheeks. I will never be able to forget
that scene. It is burned into my memory.

We were taken from our home and loaded on to train cars with other Japanese-American families.
There were guards stationed at both ends of each car, as if we were criminals. We were taken two
thirds of the way across the country, rocking on that train for four days and three nights, to the
swamps of Arkansas. I still remember the barbed wire fence that confined me. I remember the tall
sentry tower8 with the machine guns pointed at us. I remember the searchlight that followed me when
I made the night runs from my barrack9 to the latrine.10 But to five-year-old me, I thought it was kind of
nice that they’d lit the way for me to pee. I was a child, too young to understand the circumstances of
my being there.

Children are amazingly adaptable. What would be grotesquely11 abnormal became my normality in the
prisoner of war camps. It became routine for me to line up three times a day to eat lousy food in a
noisy mess hall. It became normal for me to go with my father to bathe in a mass shower. Being in a
prison, a barbed-wire prison camp, became my normality.

When the war ended, we were released, and given a one-way ticket to anywhere in the United States.
My parents decided to go back home to Los Angeles, but Los Angeles was not a welcoming place. We
were penniless. Everything had been taken from us, and the hostility was intense. Our first home was
on Skid Row12 in the lowest part of our city, living with derelicts,13 drunkards and crazy people, the
stench of urine all over, on the street, in the alley, in the hallway. It was a horrible experience, and for
us kids, it was terrorizing. I remember once a drunkard came staggering down, fell down right in front
of us, and threw up. My baby sister said, “Mama, let’s go back home,” because behind barbed wires
was for us home.

[5]

7. a blade that is fixed to the open end of a rifle
8. a tower where a soldier is stationed to keep guard of a place
9. a building or group of buildings, usually intended to lodge soldiers

10. a toilet or outhouse
11. Grotesque (adjective): comically or repulsively ugly or distorted
12. an area in Downtown Los Angeles that contains one of the largest stable populations of homeless people in America
13. a person without a home, a job, or property

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My parents worked hard to get back on their feet. We had lost everything. They were at the middle of
their lives and starting all over. They worked their fingers to the bone, and ultimately they were able to
get the capital together to buy a three-bedroom home in a nice neighborhood. And I was a teenager,
and I became very curious about my childhood imprisonment. I had read civics books that told me
about the ideals of American democracy. All men are created equal, we have an inalienable right to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and I couldn’t quite make that fit with what I knew to be my
childhood imprisonment. I read history books, and I couldn’t find anything about it. And so I engaged
my father after dinner in long, sometimes heated conversations. We had many, many conversations
like that, and what I got from them was my father’s wisdom. He was the one that suffered the most
under those conditions of imprisonment, and yet he understood American democracy. He told me that
our democracy is a people’s democracy, and it can be as great as the people can be, but it is also as
fallible14 as people are. He told me that American democracy is vitally dependent on good people who
cherish the ideals of our system and actively engage in the process of making our democracy work.
And he took me to a campaign headquarters — the governor of Illinois was running for the presidency
— and introduced me to American electoral politics. And he also told me about young Japanese-
Americans during the Second World War.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed, young Japanese-Americans, like all young Americans, rushed to their
draft board to volunteer to fight for our country. That act of patriotism was answered with a slap in the
face. We were denied service, and categorized as enemy non-alien. It was outrageous to be called an
enemy when you’re volunteering to fight for your country, but that was compounded with the word
“non-alien,” which is a word that means “citizen” in the negative. They even took the word “citizen”
away from us, and imprisoned them for a whole year.

And then the government realized that there’s a wartime manpower shortage, and as suddenly as
they’d rounded us up, they opened up the military for service by young Japanese-Americans. It was
totally irrational, but the amazing thing, the astounding thing, is that thousands of young Japanese-
American men and women again went from behind those barbed-wire fences, put on the same
uniform as that of our guards, leaving their families in imprisonment, to fight for this country.

They said that they were going to fight not only to get their families out from behind those barbed-wire
fences, but because they cherished the very ideal of what our government stands for, should stand for,
and that was being abrogated15 by what was being done.

All men are created equal. And they went to fight for this country. They were put into a segregated all
Japanese-American unit and sent to the battlefields of Europe, and they threw themselves into it. They
fought with amazing, incredible courage and valor.16 They were sent out on the most dangerous
missions and they sustained the highest combat casualty rate of any unit proportionally.

[10]

14. Fallible (adjective): capable of making mistakes
15. to repeal or do away with something
16. Valor (noun): great courage in the face of danger

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“Why I Love a Country That Once Betrayed Me” from TEDxKyoto by George Takei. Copyright © 2014 by TED. This text is licensed under CC BY-
NC-ND 4.0.

There is one battle that illustrates that. It was a battle for the Gothic Line. The Germans were
embedded in this mountain hillside, rocky hillside, in impregnable17 caves, and three allied battalions18

had been pounding away at it for six months, and they were stalemated.19 The 442nd was called in to
add to the fight, but the men of the 442nd came up with a unique but dangerous idea: The backside of
the mountain was a sheer rock cliff. The Germans thought an attack from the backside would be
impossible. The men of the 442nd decided to do the impossible. On a dark, moonless night, they
began scaling that rock wall, a drop of more than 1,000 feet, in full combat gear. They climbed all night
long on that sheer cliff. In the darkness, some lost their handhold or their footing and they fell to their
deaths in the ravine below. They all fell silently. Not a single one cried out, so as not to give their
position away. The men climbed for eight hours straight, and those who made it to the top stayed
there until the first break of light, and as soon as light broke, they attacked. The Germans were
surprised, and they took the hill and broke the Gothic Line. A six-month stalemate was broken by the
442nd in 32 minutes.

It was an amazing act, and when the war ended, the 442nd returned to the United States as the most
decorated unit of the entire Second World War. They were greeted back on the White House Lawn by
President Truman, who said to them, “You fought not only the enemy but prejudice, and you won.”

They are my heroes. They clung to their belief in the shining ideals of this country, and they proved
that being an American is not just for some people, that race is not how we define being an American.
They expanded what it means to be an American, including Japanese-Americans that were feared and
suspected and hated. They were change agents, and they left for me a legacy. They are my heroes and
my father is my hero, who understood democracy and guided me through it. They gave me a legacy,
and with that legacy comes a responsibility, and I am dedicated to making my country an even better
America, to making our government an even truer democracy, and because of the heroes that I have
and the struggles that we’ve gone through, I can stand before you as a gay Japanese-American, but
even more than that, I am a proud American.

Thank you very much. (Applause)

[15]

17. unable to be captured or broken into
18. a large body of troops ready for battle
19. a state in which neither side is able to gain an advantage or win

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Text-Dependent Questions
Directions: For the following questions, choose the best answer or respond in complete sentences.

1. PART A: Which of the following identifies George Takei’s main claim in the text?
A. While America’s democracy is imperfect, the ideals that the country represents

encourage citizens to continue fighting for it.
B. America’s democracy only protects the rights of certain identities, regardless of

what they contribute to the nation.
C. The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II proves that the

government values the safety of some citizens over others.
D. The government’s actions against Japanese Americans during World War II

shows that the United States is not a true democracy.

2. PART B: Which detail from the text best supports the answer to Part A?
A. “the president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, ordered all

Japanese-Americans on the West Coast of America to be summarily rounded
up with no charges, with no trial, with no due process.” (Paragraph 3)

B. “All men are created equal, we have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness, and I couldn’t quite make that fit with what I knew to be
my childhood imprisonment.” (Paragraph 8)

C. “He told me that American democracy is vitally dependent on good people who
cherish the ideals of our system and actively engage in the process of making
our democracy work.” (Paragraph 8)

D. “That act of patriotism was answered with a slap in the face. We were denied
service, and categorized as enemy non-alien. It was outrageous to be called an
enemy when you’re volunteering to fight for your country” (Paragraph 9)

3. PART A: How does Takei’s understanding of his internment develop over time?
A. He comes to realize that his internment was relatively easy compared to other

Japanese Americans.
B. He normalizes his experiences at first but eventually understands that his

internment was not an example of democracy at its best.
C. He begins to view his internment as a betrayal by America and loses faith in the

ideals he once associated with it.
D. He appreciates the internment camps as a child and isn’t able to understand the

injustice of the government’s actions until he is an adult.

4. PART B: Which quote from the text best supports the answer to Part A?
A. “It became normal for me to go with my father to bathe in a mass shower. Being

in a prison, a barbed-wire prison camp, became my normality.” (Paragraph 6)
B. “My baby sister said, ‘Mama, let’s go back home,’ because behind barbed

wires was for us home.” (Paragraph 7)
C. “My parents worked hard to get back on their feet. We had lost everything. They

were at the middle of their lives and starting all over.” (Paragraph 8)
D. “we have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and I

couldn’t quite make that fit with what I knew to be my childhood
imprisonment.” (Paragraph 8)

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5. How does Takei’s discussion of the 442nd contribute to the meaning of the text?

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Discussion Questions
Directions: Brainstorm your answers to the following questions in the space provided. Be prepared to
share your original ideas in a class discussion.

1. In the context of the text, how does a person overcome adversity? How did Japanese
Americans challenge the prejudice they experienced during WWII? Cite evidence from this
text, your own experience, and other literature, art, or history in your answer.

2. In the context of the text, what are the effects of prejudice? How does the article explore
the various ways in which Japanese Americans were discriminated against during WWII?
How did this continue to affect them after they were released from internment? Cite
evidence from this text, your own experience, and other literature, art, or history in your
answer.

3. In the context of the text, how has America changed over time? How does the text explore
America’s shifting views on democracy? Cite evidence from this text, your own experience,
and other literature, art, or history in your answer.

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Why I Love a Country That Once Betrayed Me
By George Takei
2014
Text-Dependent Questions
Discussion Questions