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Actor George Takei worries Trump will force US to repeat dark past
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Actor George Takei worries Trump will force US to repeat dark past

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one of them actor George Takei His first memories were of the day two soldiers arrived, pointed their bayonets at his father, and told the family they had five minutes to evacuate their home in Los Angeles.

Takei, 5, stood in the driveway with his younger brother and watched as one of the soldiers escorted his mother out of the house. He was carrying his little sister in one arm and a giant bag containing his belongings in the other hand. Tears streamed down her face.

“This terror is engraved in my brain,” Takei, 87, told USA TODAY.

Now former president Donald Trump has vowed to implement the same law as part of efforts to tighten border controls.

Some experts on this historical period argue that Trump’s mass deportation plans date back to World War II. He says it carries echoes of widespread internment during World War II; where more than 100,000 Japanese Americans, most of whom were U.S. citizens like Takei’s family, were forcibly detained in prison camps.

German Americans and Italian Americans, whose ancestral homelands were at war with the United States, were also detained, although not in the same numbers.

The entire episode is considered a stain on American history, spurred by “racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and failure of political leadership” by Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt and others., according to US Congress, Apologizing for the events of 1988 and authorized payments of $20,000 to each individual detained in compensation.

But now some experts on this period of history worry that the United States is heading into another chapter it may one day regret. And this is personal for Takei, who is famous for playing the role of Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu in the TV series “Star Trek.”

“We are trying to erase this stain by reminding Americans that we are a government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people,'” said Takei, a civil rights activist who has made his voice heard on social media. Now we have a former president who acts the same way Roosevelt did.

former president Donald Trumpa Republican running too close to calle against the Vice President Kamala HarrisA Democrat, he sometimes suggested it was a joke, but repeatedly said he “dictator for a day” if he retains the presidency. He has said he will go after people he sees as enemies, demand the personal loyalty of government employees and deport more than 11 million immigrants. “We are poisoning the blood of our country,” he said.

Trump has variously described his comments as humorous or frivolous, at times using language reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s. He says Democrats are “autocrats” because they want to silence what they see as “hate” speech or launch a “witch hunt” with criminal cases against him that have resulted in 34 felony convictions.

Embers, who recently said “I’m not a Nazi, I’m the opposite of a Nazi“He promised to use Alien Enemies Act To round up certain groups of immigrants, the same law used to detain Japanese-Americans like Takei’s family.

The law, passed in 1798, says that foreign nationals living in the United States “shall be under the obligation to be arrested, subdued, secured and removed as foreign enemies” if they come from a country with which the United States is at war.

Political hashtags and talking points

Trump’s talking points have prompted some Democrats and even some Republicans, including members of Trump’s last Cabinet, to take action on the issue. call him “fascist” and “autocratic” – terms that refer to a style of leadership in which the executive has complete control and the people are essentially powerless.

In the Second World War, The U.S. War Department told service members they were fighting against fascism and warned of the dangers of fascism at home; They said it was often difficult to detect but would “occur under the guise of a well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions and other groups.” The War Department warned that fascist leaders often targeted minority groups and blamed them for the country’s problems.

And he warned that fascists would divide the world into two factions: “The world has only two options: fascism or communism, and they label anyone who refuses to support them as ‘communist’.”

Trump and his allies have repeatedly Labeled Harris a “communist”“Even if his stated policies and beliefs do not align this ideology.

rule of law

The Takei family spent the first night after their arrest in a horse stable at a local racetrack, buzzing with flies overwhelmed by the smell of horse manure.

“There was no accusation, trial or due process,” Takei said. “They didn’t tell us anything… We didn’t have a trial, just the soldiers pointed their bayonets at us.”

This is considered the most “un-American” part of what happens to the descendants of Japanese and other Americans who are assumed, without any evidence, to be enemies of the country of their birth simply because of their appearance or location. The grandparents had arrived.

Takei’s family was then sent by train to an internment camp in Arkansas, one of 10 camps in the United States. He said that it was really a “concentration camp” and that the places where Jews and others were deported to Germany were described as: the name was actually “death camps”.

“It’s an ironic word to use: ‘We were lucky,'” Takei said. “The US government at the time acted like the Nazis did in Europe.”

After the war, the family returned to Los Angeles and lived on Skid Row. The government had frozen the bank accounts of everyone it detained, so the Takeis lost everything, including their home and her father’s high-end dry cleaning business across the street from the Bullocks Wilshire store. He eventually got into real estate.

Takei said what happened to his family “is an important chapter in American history.”

Because of this, he became a political activist as well as an actor, helping to found the Japanese American Citizens League, among other things. “We are strong believers in the rule of law.”

Trump’s supporters say the rule of law is the primary reason they support his plan to massively use the Alien Adversaries Act. deporting immigrants Those living illegally in the country.

Immigration experts have questioned the feasibility of mass deportation, given the federal government’s limited staffing and detention capacity.

But former Trump administration officials, including Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, the architects of the immigration policy, said Trump would use the US military and National Guard to carry out this mission.

“I hear a lot of people say that talk of mass deportation is racist,” Homan said. He said on CBS’ 60 Minutes in October. “He’s threatening the immigrant community. He’s not threatening the immigrant community. He must be threatening the illegal immigrant community.”

He added that families do not have to be separated: “Families can be deported together,” he said.

William Wei, a historian and expert on Asian-American history at the University of Colorado Boulder, said: Alien Enemies Act abused In 1941, he took action to round up people of Japanese descent because two-thirds of those arrested were American citizens.

The FBI and Naval Intelligence later determined that Japanese Americans did not pose a threat to the United States. Wei said the law that arrests people simply because of who they are goes against American values.

“The moment you start holding a group of people collectively responsible for crimes,” he said, “that’s a violation of our ideals of individuality.”