George Takei, actor and activist, testified before the CWRIC reflecting on his childhood memories of incarceration during WWII. Speaking not as a celebrity but as a former child prisoner, his words captured the innocence of not understanding and the lifelong weight of shame that followed.

• Childhood Memories: Recalled the family’s forced moves — from the horse stables at Santa Anita racetrack, to the swamps of Arkansas, and finally to Tule Lake in the California desert.

• Scenes of Fear: Remembered women weeping as belongings were piled on trucks, armed guards herding families, and waking at night to hushed conversations between worried parents, his mother sometimes in tears.

• Unspoken Tension: Too young to grasp the meaning of those discussions, but old enough to feel the anxiety and fear saturating camp life.

• Shame & Identity: After the war, his growing awareness left him with a painful sense of shame — about his years behind barbed wire, and even about being Japanese when teachers mispronounced his name in class.

• Democracy’s Fragility: Declared that ideals are fragile, and America must be strong and honest enough to admit its failure.

• Call for Restitution: Urged that restitution was not only for Japanese Americans but for the very integrity of American democracy — to redeem the ideals betrayed when citizens were incarcerated.