"Star Trek" star George Takei detailed the "horrifying and terrifying" experience of his family being sent to an American internment camp in 1943, during World War II.
He made the revelations clear during an appearance on "Good Morning Britain." The 85-year-old actor said how, following events at Pearl Harbor, his family was taken with other Japanese Americans who were "deemed untrustworthy" to the camp.
"Japanese Americans on the West Coast, approximately 120,000 of us … were rounded up with no charge and no trial," he said, according to the Daily Mail.
"The attorney general of the state of California said we have no reports of spying or sabotage. But he said, 'The Japanese are inscrutable; we can't tell what they are thinking. So it would be prudent to lock them up before they do anything,' " Takei continued. "For this top attorney of California, the absence of evidence was evidence."
Takei said he could still remember clearly the morning his family was rounded up to be sent to the camp.
"I was 5 years old, but I will never be able to forget that morning when my father came into the bedroom that I shared with my brother … and told us to wait in the living room while my parents did some last minute packing," he said.
"Henry [his brother] and I were at the front window just gazing out and suddenly we saw two soldiers marching up our driveway, carrying rifles and they started banging on the door. Henry and I were petrified. My father came out and answered the door, and they pointed the bayonet at him and they said, 'Get your family out of this house.' Our home."
Takei, who explained that his family was released from the camp in 1946 after the war had finished, added: "I will never be able to forget that horrifying, terrifying morning."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.