{"id":98222,"date":"2014-11-04T09:45:39","date_gmt":"2014-11-04T14:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=98222"},"modified":"2023-06-27T12:07:51","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T16:07:51","slug":"star-treks-takei-boldly-goes-toward-social-justice-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2014\/11\/star-treks-takei-boldly-goes-toward-social-justice-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Trek\u2019s Takei Boldly Goes Toward Social Justice Issues"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"George<\/a>
Actor and activist George Takei. (Photo provided)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Actor and activist George Takei says he believes in following the mantra that is the overarching theme for his best-known work as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the Starship Enterprise.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe, as \u2018Star Trek\u2019 says, in boldly going where I haven\u2019t been before,\u201d says the actor. Takei will speak at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 5, at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts about his five-decade acting career and his 21st-century second act using social media to advance his role as an activist for social justice.<\/p>\n

Takei says his ascent to having more than seven million likes on Facebook began when he was promoting his Broadway-bound production “Allegiance<\/a>,\u201d which originated from his own experience as a child during World War II, first living in the stables of Santa Anita Park in California and then relocated for internment to the Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas. Japanese Americans were sent by the United States government to several remote locations after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the musical production centers on a family moved from Salinas, Calif., to an internment camp in Wyoming.<\/p>\n

\"Legendary<\/a>
Legendary photographer Ansel Adams documented life in the internment camps in California in 1943, including the Manzanar Relocation Center, and donated his work to the Library of Congress. (Photo by Ansel Adams\/Library of Congress)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The actor was 5 years old when his family was among the 120,000 American citizens of Japanese descent living on the West Coast sent to the camps in 1942. Later in the war, some internees were permitted to leave the camps to continue their education at colleges, including 18 who arrived at UConn in 1944<\/a>. That same year, as the Allied Forces needed more soldiers to bring the war to a close, Japanese Americans were recruited to make up the 442nd Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army fighting in Europe, where it became one of the most decorated combat units in U.S. military history.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was my childhood imprisonment that shaped who I am,\u201d Takei says. \u201cWhen I was behind those barbed wire fences, I was too young to understand what was going on and why we were there. As a teenager starting to read books and being exposed to ideas of our democracy, not being able to reconcile our childhood incarceration I engaged my father in long discussions after dinner. My father explained our democracy as a people\u2019s democracy, with all of the potential greatness that people have as well as the fallibilities that people do have.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fallibility of people is what made the incarceration of innocent people,\u201d he adds. \u201cI\u2019m a political activist because of my childhood incarceration.\u201d<\/p>\n

George Takei was asked by director J.J. Abrams his thoughts on casting Korean American actor John Cho as Sulu in the 2009 reboot of the \u201cStar Trek\u201d film series, instead of a Japanese American actor.
\n\u201cI told him as long as the guy is Asian, that\u2019s what matters,\u201d Takei says. \u201c[\u2018Star Trek creator\u2019] Gene Roddenberry felt that the strength of Starship Enterprise, which was a metaphor for the planet Earth, was the diversity of this planet coming together. That\u2019s why he had an African woman as communications officer, a North American as captain, a Scottish engineer representing Europe, and the helmsman representing Asia.\u201d
\nTakei says Rodenberry chose Sulu as the character\u2019s name because it was the name of a sea off the coast of the Philippines, not a name specific to a nation: \u201cThe waters of the sea touch all shores. That\u2019s how he came up with the name Sulu for the Asian character.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working in films and television \u2013 including \u201cPerry Mason\u201d and \u201cThe Twilight Zone\u201d on television \u2013 early in his career led to Takei\u2019s casting as Sulu in the original \u201cStar Trek\u201d television show from 1966 to 1969. After \u201cStar Trek\u201d ended, he continued to find roles on television and in film, while also becoming active in Los Angeles politics. He served as an alternate delegate from California to the 1972 Democratic National Convention, and was appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley to the board of the Southern California Rapid Transit System, where he cast the tie-breaking vote to create the Los Angeles subway system after being called away from the set of \u201cStar Trek \u2013 The Motion Picture\u201d in 1978.<\/p>\n

Takei continued to work as an actor on television, in film, and on stage, including appearances on radio with shock jock Howard Stern, where his natural humor and inclination to talk about any issue drew a favorable audience response. When Stern moved to satellite radio, Takei became his regular announcer and developed the actor\u2019s now signature response to some of the host\u2019s antics: \u201cOh my!\u201d<\/p>\n

The rise of social media increased Takei\u2019s ability to reach a wider audience using postings of photos with commentary that is both humorous and insightful. The online news aggregator, \u201cThe Huffington Post,\u201d said of Takei: \u201cHe isn\u2019t just about fun and games; in times of national upheaval he gives solid advice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since revealing his long-time homosexual relationship in a 2005 magazine interview, Takei has traveled around the nation to advocate equality for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community. He sees this as part of his effort to speak out on social justice issues \u2013 including raising awareness about the wartime internment of Japanese Americans, which he calls a \u201cdark chapter of American history\u201d \u2013 using the kind of technology that \u201cStar Trek\u201d foretold years ago, as well as his stage production of \u201cAllegiance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I began social media, I had a very small base of support, made up of sci-fi geeks and nerds. I had to grow that,\u201d Takei says. \u201cThe audience grew, and as it grew, I started adding social justice issues and it grew more. That\u2019s how I got to be called King of All Media. We have this amazing technology which still surprises me. It can grow this fast and this massive. I have over 7.8 million followers on my Facebook page. Just the numbers are mindboggling. \u2018Star Trek\u2019 as a TV series didn\u2019t get a fraction of that viewership. We live in an amazing world of astounding technology. We can tap that to do what we want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information about \u201cAn Evening with George Takei\u201d at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts, go to the Jorgensen website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The program is sponsored by Asian American Cultural Center, Asian & Asian American Studies Institute, Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts, Student Affairs, CLAS, Neag School of Education, Global Affairs, UConn Alumni Association, Community Outreach, Leadership Office, Residential Life, Rainbow Center, Puerto Rican Latin American Cultural Center, Women’s Center, and the African American Cultural Center.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actor and activist George Takei will speak at Jorgensen today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":98303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2306,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-98222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uconn-voices","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-28 11:50:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98222"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98366,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98222\/revisions\/98366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/98303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98222"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=98222"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=98222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}