If you didn’t make it out to RUPA’s event, “An Evening With George Takei,” on Wednesday, March 25, don’t sweat it – not only did we cover the event, but we also interviewed George Takei. That’s right, we’ll unabashedly fill you in on all of the uncensored details of the evening, starting with his interview and ending with his charismatic and insightful talk.
The event was held at 8pm in the College Avenue Gym at Rutgers University, where the interview would also take place. At around 6:30pm, RUPA guided us to the interview scene. We walked across the basketball court and through the doors that led to the basement of the gym. We snaked around the underground labyrinth until finally reaching our destination: a small locker room.
George Takei entered the locker room. All eyes turned to him; his charismatic and charming presence was captivating and his laugh was infectious. Excitedly, with an air of cheekiness, he exclaimed, “I’ve never had an interview in a locker room before!”
During the interview, he mostly talked about the need for change, specifically within the political arena and the importance of intersectionality in social justice. When asked about what he hopes Rutgers students will take away from his talk this evening, he replied, “What’s worrisome is that the voters participation rate is going down, particularly amongst younger people. In the midterm elections, the young people were missing in action. I’m hoping that my talk will encourage more people to participate in particularly midterm elections.”
After having interviewed George Takei, we were ushered out of the tiny locker room and we were guided back to navigate our way through the labyrinth. Eventually, we reached the basketball court of the gym, and there we waited for the event to begin with giddy anticipation. Luckily boredom never struck us because we were entertained by an episode of Star Trek, “The Naked Time,” and we became engrossed in the action.
Soh Daiko, a New York-based taiko drumming group, opened the event with an invigorating and 
captivating dance and drum show that prepared the audience for the main festivities of the evening. Their gracefully synchronized movements and powerfully percussive music mesmerized and captivated the audience. Once their performance ended, students representing the Asian American Cultural Center, Center for Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities, RU SciFest, and Geek Week gave the opening keynote address and invited George Takei onto the stage.
Then the moment we’ve all been patiently (more like impatiently) waiting for… Takei takes the scene with grace and charisma. He eloquently delivers his opening speech with a show of Scarlet Pride as he waxed poetic about the great accomplishments of Paul Robeson, a Rutgers University alumnus, who he says, is one of his all-time heroes. He continued on to talk about how a lot has been achieved thanks to the Civil Rights Movement, however our country continues to face many other challenges that we need to overcome. His speech, needless to say, was highly politicised with a focus on social justice issues.
Not only is Takei an LGBTQ advocate, but also a survivor of the Japanese internment camps during World War II – a dark, somber part of the United States’s history. Takei elaborated on the implications of the internment camps on his family and his efforts in educating the US public on this chapter of history that has been overlooked. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, overnight Japanese-
Americans were looked at with suspicion. Japanese-Americans soon lost many rights. They were denied the right to enlist in military service and were labelled as the “enemy non-alien,” a citizen denied in the negative. A curfew would soon be forced upon them. Their bank accounts were then frozen. On February 19, 1942, President FDR signed executive order #9066 that ordered Japanese-Americans to be forcibly arrested and imprisoned without charges or due process. A few months following the passing of the bill, Takei would turn five. The former Star Trek actor recounted the day his family was taken captive, “Two soldiers stomped in my driveway, banged on the front door, and ordered my father at gunpoint out of the door… Tears were streaming down my mothers cheeks… We were loaded in a truck filled with other Japanese-Americans and sent to the racing tracks.” The living conditions in which his family was placed were horrendous. His family occupied a stall, “a single, smelly horse stall,” which would act as their home for a few months.
A few months later, his family was then transported to an internment camp situated in Rohwer, Arkansas. As a child, he did not comprehend the gravity of the situation. But it was due to his lack of comprehension that he and the other children at the internment camp found it easy to acclimatize themselves in their new environment. He explains, “For a child who did not understand what was happening, what was grotesquely abnormal became routine and normal.” A year into imprisonment, the US government needed more men to draft into the army and so government officials decided to draft “enemy non-aliens.” However, the government had to test the worthiness of these marginalised US citizens with a Yes/No questionnaire – a loyalty questionnaire. Among the questions there was one that stood out from the rest, question 28. This question was to be answered by all internees over the age of 17: “Will you swear loyalty to the United States of America and forswear your loyalty to the Emperor of Japan?”Answering either yes or no criminalized the prisoner, because an answer in the positive forced an admission of having loyalties to Japan and an answer in the negative made you sound like a traitor. George Takei’s parents answered “no” to preserve their dignity. As a result, their family was labeled as unloyal and were transferred to another, harsher camp in California.
At the end of WWII his family was released from the camp and given a total of 25 dollars to start their lives over. When most other prisoners decided to migrate across the country to the north and the east, his parents decided to settle back in Los Angeles. They had a difficult time making ends meet. His parents worked very hard to provide for their family. His father finally found success in real estate, just as many Japanese-Americans were getting back on their feet and buying homes. When Takei was in his teens, he wanted to learn more about his time in the internment camps. It was at this time his father explained to him the basics of a democratic government, “Our democracy is a good as the people are, and as fallible as the people are. Our democracy is dependant on good people who believe in the ideals of democracy.” Soon afterwards, Takei would become heavily involved in the political sphere in his community before pursuing his acting career.
Star Trek was a series that dared to push the social limits and racial barriers. Originally conceived during the ‘60s, during the apex of the civil rights movement, the show prided itself on its “IDIC” philosophy: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. According to Takei, Gene Roddenberry, the producer of the TV series, intended to make Star Trek a symbol of humanity coming and working together on our planet. The show proved to break white-hegemonic social norms by including non-stereotypical, non-racist representations of African-Americans and Japanese-Americans on screen. Nichelle Nichols played Lt. Nyora Uhura, one of the first African-American female TV characters portrayed in a position of power and not as a servant. George Takei played Hikaru Sulu, a captain of Japanese heritage. Moreover, Star Trek was the first TV series to air an interracial kiss between Captain Kirk and Lt. Uhura.
But before Takei landed the groundbreaking acting role, he felt as though he was alone regarding his sexuality. As his acting career as Sulu was taking off, so was his comfort with exploring his sexuality. He shares experience he had when his friends introduced him to a gay bar for the first time, and it was there that he felt like he could be himself. Despite feeling like his true self and enjoying the camaraderie of like minded folk, there was still danger looming overhead. Gay bars during the 1960s would occasionally be raided by police, who would photograph and fingerprint the bar-goers and place their record on file. Everytime he walked into a bar, he would keep his eye out on the nearest exit sign and immediately plan an escape route should the occasion arise. Gays and lesbians were criminalized for their sexuality. It was this moment that Takei noticed a parallel with his “childhood imprisonment and the way gays and lesbians were treated in these gay bars.”
George Takei recalled that the year 1969 proved to be a turning point. Ratings for Star Trek remained at an all-time low and with no sign of improving, the show was cancelled. During the summer the police raided The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, New York. The clients of The Stonewall Inn decided to resist and take a stand against the police brutality and began throwing any objects within their reach – beer bottles, ashtrays, chairs – at the police. The police retreated and called for reinforcements. While inside the patrons were busy making phone calls and gaining support of their own. “Gays and lesbians surrounded the bar when reinforcements came,” describes Takei, “and were throwing bricks and trash cans [for protection].” This was a pivotal moment in the LGBTQ rights movement as it was a public stand against police brutality, discrimination, and the beginning of the gay liberation movement.
The actor, at this point, still remained uninvolved with LGBTQ activism. It would take years before he would take up arms in the fight for equality. In 2003 Massachusetts was the first state to make marriage equality constitutional. California lawmakers aimed to pass the same bill in their state, but Arnold 
Schwarzenegger vetoed it. It was at that moment that George Takei had decided to come out publicly to the press and stand up for LGBTQ rights. “Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger brought me out,” he humorously admits. LGBTQ rights have since become an important part of his mission for equality.
Why has it taken him so long to publicly defend and advocate for LGBTQ rights? There was already the fear of discrimination based on his looks, his ethnicity which he could not hide. He was masking his sexuality because that was hidden, invisible, had no discernible features. His Japanese heritage was something he and his family had been punished for once, and to be punished yet again for his sexuality that strayed from mainstream heteronormativity…. That was a fearful thought. But somehow he mustered up the courage and is now a strong LGBTQ rights advocate.
By the end of the event, George Takei’s message was clear- we need to work to make America better. Thirty six out of fifty states in the union have marriage equality so soon “we will indeed have a United States of America to pledge allegiance to” and not just the thirty six states, remarked Takei. Everyone who sat in the audience was instilled with a message that we have the power to shape our future, incite change for a better America, protect civil liberties and rights, and work towards true equality for all Americans regardless of sexual orientation or race or gender. If his talk didn’t inspire students from the audience to spur into action and become active participants in our democracy, then we aren’t quite sure what would have. George Takei delivered his talk with conviction, charisma, and humor. Takei’s talk proved to be political in the most engaging and informative manner possible and we are better people for having been present for the occasion.
Lashae Horne and Olympia Christofinis