They Called Us Enemy is a graphic novel written by George Takei, a famous actor from Star Trek and one of the japanese people enclosed in the internment camps during World War II as a child. The book is about his experiences in the camp primarily.
The main messages of the book are as follows:
- People will believe what they want to believe despite all evidence, and this will very often harm vulnerable populations.
- Democracy only works if everyone is not only allowed to participated, but willingly chooses to do so on a regular basis.
- Participation in democracy is more than just voting. It is making your voices heard in public.
- A system can still be a good one, even if it produces an abomination on occasion.
I have a number of personal takeaways myself.
People will find a way to justify hatred for anyone they already hate. American politicians during World War II found an excuse to incarcerate japanese-american citizens in the very fact that they had absolutely no evidence to back up their claim that they were inherently treacherous. Putting aside the dubious logic of someone’s genetic code determining someone’s loyalties to a nation a third of the planet away, the shear refusal to let go of their opinion in the face of clear evidence is disgusting. As I once taught my class over in the matagual valley, there is no shame in being wrong, but refusing to admit when one is wrong in the face of clear evidence to the contrary is the mark of a coward. Only a coward refuses to swallow his pride for the sake of truth, and it seems to me that those politicians of the time were cowards of the worst sort.
But of course, history is not a straight line; to look back in time and laugh scornfully at the sins of our ancestors is to blind oneself to truth just as surely as if one were denying it directly. Technology advances, but mankind remains ever the same. Putting aside the obvious terrorist attacks and genocides, here on American soil we still have stupid camps where we stick people we don’t want. They aren’t Nazi-style concentration camps to be sure, but they certainly do remind one of the Japanese internment camps that I just read about in Takei’s book. It hurts to know that my brothers in faith are being held there, not knowing if they will be able to stay together as a family or if they will be split up. And then there is the fact that Trump actually considered ending birthright citizenship, reminiscent of the laws attempting to revoke the citizenship of the japanese in america, except potentially worse if it is done retroactively.
The book also brings to my attention the precarious nature of life in america. People still hate Jews, Catholics, black people, and asians. Now all that has happened is the priorities have been shifted around and a new one has been added: Muslims, who since the 9/11 attacks have been plagued with association with murderers and maniacs in the minds of americans, and association which I do not envy. Even now, I almost daily stumble upon people on the internet saying the most vile things about Jewish and Catholic people, from persistent accusations of pedophilia to conspiracy theories about us taking over the world or practicing Luciferian rites in our churches and synagogues. And now, with COVID-19 in full swing, anti-asian sentiment has once more reared it’s ugly head, with americans once more attacking chinese-americans in the streets, this time because they believe them to be spreading the disease. It seems nothing has really changed in our nation at all.
On a significantly happier note, I have come out of reading the book loving Quakers even more than I already do. Whenever I hear about them in US history (or even abroad), they always seem to be risking their lives to help people, from protecting the rights of Catholics to worship, to helping slaves escape from plantations into the north, to that one guy Takei mentions who risked his life just to get some books to his fellow citizens. Under the name of The American Friends Service Committee, they were one of the few groups to organize any significant effort to rescue Jews from the concentration camps in Nazi Germany (along with Catholic loyalists under Pope Pius XII and the Nazi double-agent Oskar Schindler), and they did it despite being an entire ocean away in a country that was absolutely apathetic to the cause. They are an example that I believe all americans should follow. I FREAKING LOVE QUAKERS.
I was also asked to give an assessment as to the pros and cons of presenting a story in graphic novel form. I suppose the biggest up-side is the fact that more people are likely to read it. Literacy may be the norm in most parts of america, but even my perfectly literate friends shy away from reading thick text, and like to see images to help them process the information better. My guess is that this was the intent when Takei wrote the thing, so that the message might spread where it needs to go.
The downside is the amount of space that is taken up when presenting information in this manner. There are many reasons why scholarly sources are written the way they are, and one of them is expediency; one can fit far more information on a sheet of paper if one does not need to illustrate each idea (of course this comes at the cost of the reader’s ability to digest said information).
For a fairly linear and concise story like the one Takei was telling, the graphic novel format worked well, making the story easy to digest even for the most casual of readers, and thus allowing its important messages to reach the audiences it was meant to reach. However, if he wanted to give a more detailed account of his life, I would imagine he would switch to a more text-based account.
Anyways, that’s what I got out of the reading
🎝that’s all there is, there isn’t… any more🎝
History 336 