They Called Us Enemy (2023 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

I met George Takei in 1986. I was 8 and I had spent almost all day waiting to meet him and Walter Koening at a video store signing in Cary, NC. While Walter was busy being hugged and kissed by a bevy of fans, George was very nice to spend extra time talking with my dad and me. He talked about upcoming TV shows he was guest-starring in. He listened as I told him that 'The Naked Time' was one of my favorite Star Trek episodes, to which George proclaimed was one of his too. I told him how sorry I was to see the Enterprise explode (in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock) and Takei hinted that he might be behind a new console very soon. 

Then it was time to meet Walter Koening and he could not have been more distant to me. I immediately became a George Takei fan. In those nearly 40 years since, I may not have agreed with his politics, methods or style 100%. But I never lost my respect for him because he took time to respect me that day in Cary. 

In 2019, George Takei recounted the tragic affair of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II in the Top Shelf published graphic novel, They Called Us Enemy. Assisting Takei in his personal recollection of his family's 3 year plus imprisonment under the suspicion of being Imperial Japanese spies were Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott. The Takei story is essentially told from 3 perspectives: George as a young child who saw the episode as a frightful camping experience, George as a young man struggling to understand his father's ability to allow his family to be imprisoned while wanting justice for all, and George as a much older man who lived to see the American government apologize for the passing of Executive Order 9066 and later allow the actor/activist chances to talk to others about the atrocities. 

The American government has made great steps to apologize for internment. Yet it seems for every step forward, our nation takes a couple steps backward. For example, towards the end of this memoir, Takei discusses Fred Korematsu's 1944 Supreme Court lawsuit on his internment. Korematsu sued for the right to remain free of the camps and lost 6-3. Then in 2018, the Supreme Court reversed Korematsu V. United States all the while simultaneously providing 5-4 favor in the ruling of Trump Vs. Hawaii, which allowed the government to restrict Muslim immigration into the US. 

At one point in the book, Takei recounts how years later he was invited to the ancestral home of Franklin D. Roosevelt. At Springwood, Takei was invited to speak about the wrongful action of imprisonment of Japanese Americans on the 75th Anniversary of EX 9066. George Takei points out that 'only in America' can someone who was wronged by a world leader actually get to discuss the issue in the very house FDR (George's jailer!) was born and raised in! While Takei admits that America provides great freedoms unlike many countries on earth, it still has a long way to go to get things right.

The artwork was by Harmony Becker. Using black and white art with gray shading, They Called Us Enemy was drawn in the Manga style.

They Called Us Enemy was nominated for several awards, winning in both the American Book Award and Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work in 2020.

Completing this review completes Task #41 (A Memoir) of the 2023 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

 

Gaijin: American Prisoner of War

This graphic novel from 2014 recounts the internment of Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The story is about a half-Japanese boy named Koji, who is forced into a prisoner of war camp on the suspicion of his father, who's visiting his ailing father in Japan, of being a spy for the Imperial Japanese. Not willing to allow her preteen son stay in a prison camp by himself, Koji's white American mother joins the internment camp as well.

   On the streets of San Francisco, Koji is viewed as the enemy and a possible spy or enemy agent of the Japanese. In the camp, Koji is also an outsider, particularly amongst the teen boys because of his mixed heritage. Koji is bullied, his mother is accused of being a whore, and the commander of the camp sees him as a trouble maker. With the help of a wise elderly Japanese man, Koji is given one last chance to find himself. But when the detention site is forced to move from the shipyards of Alameda to the New Mexican desert, Koji must decide to run from himself and flee with some of the boys in the camp or to finally make peace with his jumbled status, accepting his incarceration and transfer East with his mother.

    The setting of this story is 100% true. During World War II, Japanese Americans along the West Coast of the United States were forced to leave their jobs and home and were imprisoned in about a dozen camps nationwide. The camps were converted barns, with manure and filth everywhere or makeshift barracks hastily and dangerously erected. These sites were overcrowded and there was not enough food, provisions or decent care for the hundreds and thousands of prisoners encamped. Reports have said that a hardened prisoner at Alcatraz in 1942 had it better than the American POWS whose only wrong was their nationality or heritage.

   You might think with the prejudices Koji experienced in San Francisco, maybe the internment camps were for the good and safety of the Japanese Americans. But with very little choice, these families were left with no win solutions. They had to sell or rent their possessions and property and suspend their livelihoods.  After the war, some families would return to their homes only to find that the unscruplous whites that they trusted their estates to sold them off or claimed legal but unethical squattership. So much for looking out for the safety of our fellow man...

     As for Koji and his mother- they are fictional characters but they are based on the exploits of artist and writer Matt Faulkner's great aunt. She was a white American married to a Japanese man. The two had a daughter who by December 7th, had a daughter as well. Not willing to see her daughter and granddaughter detained, Faulkner's aunt went into the prison camps with them until eventually finding sponsorship for the family to move to Chicago under parole conditions.

   The story of the Japanese American internment is sadly a forgotten part of American history. I don't recall ever learning about it in school or college and I was a History Major. It wasn't until I saw the 1999 film 'Snow Falling On Cedars' that I even learned of the plight of the Japanese American during World War II. I learned about the Dust Bowl- a lot! Why not this?

   It may not seem like a very important part of American history. But not 15 years ago, we almost repeated history when such camps were suggested after the events of 9/11. Thank God we didn't listen to those voices calling from the desert again.

    Gaijin is a dynamic story that left me speechless. It should be required reading in schools. I wish had a couple million dollars because I'd snatch the rights to this book up and make it into a feature film. It's that good and that important to not just American history but to the survival of the human race as well.

    Worth Consuming

   Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.