Q&A with Star Trek actor and Montgomery member George Takei

From May 2-4, Star Trek actor George Takei visited campus as part of the Montgomery Fellows program. The actor has participated in several events, including a fireside chat with the Dartmouth Asian Pacific American Alumni Association and a talk at the Hanover Inn titled From Internment to Stardom. According to the Montgomery Fellows Programs website, the fellowship aims to bring to campus outstanding luminaries from academia as well as non-academic spheres. The Dartmouth spoke to Takei about his acting career, background, and his role as a Montgomery Fellow.

What is your role as a Montgomery Fellow?

GT: I feel very honored. I was invited to speak about the internment of Japanese Americans, a subject that I consider my legacy because it is so little known today. Despite many history books that have been written and many historians who teach it at the university level, there are so many Americans who are unaware of this egregious chapter in American history. Because of our race, because we looked like those who bombed Pearl Harbor, there was a wild, rampant hysteria.

Japanese Americans were yelled at and attacked in the streets. Graffiti began appearing on Japanese Americans' businesses, homes, and cars. My father's car had three letters painted red: JAP. The government imposed a curfew. Japanese Americans were required to return home at 8 p.m. and stay home until 6 a.m. If you were caught at night, you were immediately arrested and thrown in prison. Our bank accounts have been frozen. Our money has run out. The government took it. Most Japanese Americans lost their entire savings because our bank accounts were frozen. It was a scandal. This is the kind of history Americans need to know.

How did your childhood background and experiences, particularly your internment during World War II, impact your acting career?

GT: The types of roles that existed when I started in the business in the late 1950s were very limited, very stereotypical and very unattractive. We had to be salespeople for much more humanized types of opportunities and, ultimately, advocate for writers who shared our point of view. Gene Roddenberry is an extraordinary example. A visionary and idealist, he created a science fiction show whose story takes place in the 23rd century. He created a company that values ​​diversity, recognizing this as Starship Enterprise's strength. You saw it in the composition of the management crew: a North American as captain, a European engineer, an African-American woman, and an Asian character who was the ship's helmsman.

After first studying architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, you transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, where you began pursuing theater. What made you decide to pursue acting?

GT: Like the fact that I'm gay, I was born with this passion for theater. I remember that in prison they periodically showed us Hollywood films. I remember seeing The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Charles Laughton, but they also showed us Japanese samurai films imported before the war.

My passion grew within me as I grew up. After the war ended, my father bought us a portable radio and I discovered radio theater. We were out of prison, but society still hated us. The only place we could find to live was in Skid Row, and that radio transported me out of Skid Row into the world of Manhattan, with siren hits in the big city at night, or to cowboy shows with galloping horses.

Who would you consider your biggest role models, both professionally and personally?

GT: I don't know the names of those Japanese actors I saw when we were in the prison camp, but later Toshiro Mifune, from so many samurai films, was my role model. Shortly after my release, my parents took me to see Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood, and I was absolutely transported to medieval England and Sherwood Forest.

But growing up, Richard Burton became the star of the very first feature film I ever starred in, and he was truly a charismatic person and a wonderful friend. He had to overcome many challenges. He was born into a poor Welsh coal miners' family with 17 siblings. He was number 15 among so many children. His mother was ill, so he was raised by his older sister. English was not his first language, it was Welsh. I found him a fascinating person and became a fan of his. He was a Shakespearean actor as well as a wonderful movie star.

As a devout Buddhist and a member of the LBGTQ+ community, how have these two identities intersected in your life?

GT: Buddhism accepts the reality of life in many ways, like the Starship Enterprise. The world is full of diversity. Selecting and classifying this diversity and suppressing others is a human creation, and it is our weakness. Working to harness the diversity and variety of people who can help make lives better is something that continues, especially on college campuses.

What do you think are the most pressing challenges facing Hollywood and the entertainment industry in the 21st century?

GT: Change is constant and technology evolves rapidly. Hollywood is no longer Hollywood. It's international. Narrative is now told through high technology, and the way it is delivered and consumed is changing dramatically. The way it is created has also changed dramatically. There is no more Hollywood. It's all over the world, and a different point of view comes from that diversity, from Indian films to Eastern European films to Asian films from different cultures.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.