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They Called Us Enemy follows five-year-old George Takei and his family as, in the months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, they are incarcerated in a Japanese internment camp. The graphic memoir details George’s personal experiences of growing up in internment camps, as well as the larger story of Japanese internment in the United States and the policies that enabled it. The story of Japanese internment poses a challenge to foundational American myths: that the nation is welcoming to immigrants, that the constitution protects vulnerable citizens, and that all Americans are entitled to liberty and due process. But even as he is deprived of his rights, George’s father, Daddy, remains optimistic about the future of American democracy, citing its potential to grow into its own ideals—especially if Americans remain civically engaged and vigorously protest when the nation is doing something wrong. Thus, They Called Us Enemy suggests that while the ideals of American democracy are easy to corrupt and manipulate, democracy is also a system that, thanks to engaged citizens who agitate for change, can always be improved. To Takei, no matter its wrongs, the country is still worth fighting for.
They Called Us Enemy makes it clear that Japanese internment betrays democratic ideals, such as the right to due process and equal protection under the law. In the days and weeks after Pearl Harbor, government officials—from mayors and military personnel, all the way up to President Roosevelt—actively stoked fears that Japanese Americans were conspiring against the U.S. This wasn’t at all true, but these government officials used racist rhetoric to justify seizing Japanese Americans’ assets and, ultimately, incarcerating them in the internment camps. This is a major departure from the country’s democratic ideals. The right to due process, simply put, means that a person can’t be deprived of liberty or property without just cause and approval from the courts. For Japanese Americans, this means that it should’ve been illegal to seize their assets and incarcerate them in internment camps without any evidence that they’d done something wrong. Equal protection, meanwhile, means that the state has to treat one person the same as it would treat any other person in a given situation—so targeting a single racial group, as the government did during World War II, should also have been illegal. The fact that internment happened at all, then, suggests that it’s not hard—and, perhaps, is shockingly easy—to betray American democratic ideals. Each of the bills and executive orders that enabled internment went through the proper legal channels, showing that these legal channels alone aren’t enough to guard against abuse.
Rather, the memoir makes the case that in order to maintain and protect American democracy, citizens must be involved in the process and protest when they see abuses taking place. Throughout the memoir, George Takei shows that protest can take many different forms. Some people, like Mama (and to a degree, Daddy) protest by making their lives in the camp as beautiful and homey as possible. This is why Mama smuggles her sewing machine into the camps. The government wants to dehumanize and demoralize Japanese Americans, but by keeping her family’s spirits up, Mama resists the government’s actions. Other Japanese Americans protest in ways that are perhaps more conventional. For instance, when the government distributes a loyalty questionnaire, every adult in the internment camps has to decide how to answer two questions in particular, one that asks whether the respondent is willing to serve in the military and one that asks respondents if they’re willing to swear loyalty to the United States—and give up any loyalty to the Japanese Empire. George notes that the questions’ premises are faulty, exclusionary, and ridiculous, as they ask Americans to serve a country that treats them like criminals and assume that anyone of Japanese ancestry has “racial loyalty” to Japan. While some answer yes-yes to the questions and serve in the military, others like George’s parents answer no-no to protest the questions’ premise. For the Takei family, this lands them in the highest security internment camp—and some young men go to prison for their refusal to serve. This draws on a long tradition of Americans going to jail for standing up for their rights, something that George touches on later in the memoir when he meets the civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. This is all in addition to the various marches and protests that crop up in the camps at various points. With this, George Takei shows that those who were interned didn’t sit quietly and simply accept the government’s discriminatory treatment. Through various methods, Japanese Americans fought for their rights and made others recognize them as Americans.
But despite chronicling the nation’s abuses, They Called Us Enemy also shows that what makes American democracy special is its ability and willingness to right past wrongs and continue to move the country forward. While George details several of these improvements in the memoir, something that affects him personally is the fact that, beginning in the early 1980s, Congress began to investigate the internment camps. In 1988, Congress decided that the government would issue formal apologies and $20,000 to every Japanese American who was incarcerated. This, George argues, is proof that the U.S. can live up to its ideals and deal effectively with its mistakes. And this is why George—and Daddy, up until his death—remain firm in their support for the democratic system. They acknowledge that the people who make up the government are fallible and can make grave mistakes. But They Called Us Enemy ends on a hopeful note, one that encourages readers to believe in the U.S.’s ability to continually improve. It suggests that what sets the American system apart, and what makes it great, is its ability to self-correct and its willingness to admit and then right wrongs.
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American Democracy and Civic Engagement ThemeTracker
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American Democracy and Civic Engagement Quotes in They Called Us Enemy
Below you will find the important quotes in They Called Us Enemy related to the theme of American Democracy and Civic Engagement.
They Called Us Enemy
Quotes
“In the meantime, we, the people, are already prepared for action.”
That same day the president signed a proclamation declaring that every adult Japanese citizen inside the U.S. was now an “alien enemy” and must follow strict regulations.
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In California at that time, the single most popular political position was “lock up the Japs.” The attorney general of California, Earl Warren, decided to get in front of that issue.
He wanted to run for governor... and would do anything to get that office. He saw the division his rhetoric caused.
He knew that he was talking about a hundred thousand people who had not been charged with any crime. But he made an amazing statement for not just any lawyer... but the top lawyer of the state.
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On February 19, 1942, seventy-four days after Pearl Harbor... he issued Executive Order 9066.
The order never used the words “Japanese” or “camps”—it authorized the military to declare areas “from which any or all persons may be excluded,” and to provide “transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations” from persons excluded from these areas.
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Each family was assigned a horse stall still pungent with the stink of manure. As a kid, I couldn’t grasp the injustice of the situation.
But for my parents, it was a devastating blow. They had worked so hard to buy a two-bedroom house and raise a family in Los Angeles... now we were crammed into a single, smelly horse stall. It was a degrading, humiliating, painful experience.
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As a teenager, I had many after-dinner discussions with my father... discussing everything from the government’s forced incarcerations of Japanese Americans... to politics.
He taught me the power of American democracy—the people’s democracy.
“People can do great things, George. They can come up with noble, shining ideals.
“But people are also fallible human beings, and we know they made a terrible mistake.”
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Mama began the impossible work of making a home for us out of the rough-hewn single room.
She ran up curtains made from government surplus fabrics.
Using strips of discarded rags, she braided together colorful floor mats.
About the only thing Mama didn’t have to do was cook.
But to her it was no relief. The kitchen was just one more aspect of caring for her family that she was denied.
One more loss. I realize that besides comforting us... perhaps everything she did was also her own statement of defiance.
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There were fishermen and farmers, shopkeepers and professionals. We were so diverse, all so different. And yet, we were the same. We were all Japanese Americans and we were all in Block 6 at Camp Rohwer. That was our common denominator. Daddy felt keenly that we needed to forge a community together.
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From the moment the war began, our loyalty as Americans was constantly under suspicion.
General John L. DeWitt, the commanding general of the western theater of operation:
“A Jap is a Jap... It makes no difference whether he is theoretically an American citizen, he is still a Japanese.”
Senator Tom Stewart (D-TN):
“They cannot be assimilated. There is not a single Japanese in this country who would not stab you in the back.”
Never mind that in the early days of the war, Japanese Americans showed up in great numbers to register for military service.
This was an act of patriotism, but it was met with a slap in the face. They were denied military service and categorized as 4-C: enemy aliens.
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Question 27 wanted us to pledge our lives for a country that had upended our families and put us behind barbed-wire fences.
Question 28 rested on a false premise: that we all had a racial allegiance to the emperor of Japan. To answer “yes” would be to agree that we had such a loyalty to give up. Yes or no, either response would be used to justify our wrongful imprisonment—as if they’d been right to call us “enemy aliens” and lock us up in the first place.
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As President Clinton said that day, “Rarely has a nation been so well-served by a people it has so ill-treated.” These brave soldiers clung to their belief in the shining ideals of their country.
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Though they responded in different ways—caring for their families...
Fighting on the battlefield...
Or serving time for their principles—all these Japanese Americans showed incredible courage and heroism.
They proved that being American is not just for some people. They all made difficult choices to demonstrate their patriotism to this country even when it rejected them.
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During out after-dinner discussions, Daddy would reveal more details about that time in our lives... filling in some of the gaps that escaped me.
“It was a demonstration in protest of the arrest of a man accused of being a radical.”
“Was he?”
“No! But regardless of whether he was or not... it was important to exercise our right to assemble. Send a message that we were united as a group and opposed to their actions.”
It dawned on me in that moment... I had been participating in democracy as far back as I can remember. That is the strength of our system. Good people organized, speaking loudly and clearly. Engaged in the democratic process.
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I had an unsettling feeling...
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America...”
That her calling me “Jap boy” had something to do with our time in camp.
“...and to the republic for which it stands...”
I was old enough by then to understand that camp was something like jail...but could not fully grasp what we had done to be sent there.
The guilt which surrounded our internment made me feel like I deserved to be called that nasty epithet.
“One nation, indivisible...
“with liberty and justice for all.”
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It was not until 1991 that I received a letter of apology...with a check for $20,000 signed by George H.W. Bush. As my father would say, “the wheels of democracy turn slowly.”
That makes an amazing statement about this country.
It took a while, but it did apologize. That apology came too late for my father. He passed in 1979, never to know that this government would admit wrongdoing.
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It was a disastrous depression that Roosevelt pulled us out of.
It took that man, and his determination and creative energy...
To establish all those programs, and lift the fortunes of our great country.
But as we were driving here today, I thought, “I’m going to the home of the man who imprisoned me.”
And now I’m here in his home...
Only in America could that happen.
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