Though racism and anti-Asian sentiment existed in the United States prior to the country’s entry into World War II, They Called Us Enemy shows that, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, anti-Japanese sentiment exploded. Several passages in the graphic memoir depict white civilians destroying a Japanese family’s car and painting racial slurs on it, while others show how powerful people in the military and government accused Japanese Americans of conspiring against the U.S. without any evidence to support this outrageous and racist claim. This widespread racism culminated in the country incarcerating more than 120,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps for the duration of the war. Through this, They Called Us Enemy shows that while racism certainly exists during peacetime, the onset of war can make racism worse by painting minority groups as enemies of the nation and framing racism against them as patriotic.
Throughout the memoir, there’s a tension between America’s pervasive racism and the nation’s claim to be welcoming to immigrants. Daddy—an immigrant from Japan—encapsulates this paradox. On the one hand, Daddy remains optimistic throughout his life that the U.S. is a land of opportunity for all. Prior to World War II, he was able to find success in America by starting a dry cleaning business and purchasing a home with Mama, and after the war, he was able to start over, raising a tight-knit family and succeeding in business once again. But despite thinking of himself as an American and believing wholeheartedly in the American Dream, racist immigration laws nevertheless kept Daddy from applying for U.S. citizenship. In addition, the government pulled the rug out from under him by seizing all his assets—his home, business, and bank accounts—at the beginning of the war, and then by illegally depriving him and his family of liberty when they were forced to relocate to the camps. While the nation purports to be welcoming to immigrants, Daddy’s life is an extreme example of how the government mistreats some immigrant groups.
The memoir points to war as being particularly dangerous, as it can intensify pre-existing racism. Many important figures, such as California’s attorney general Earl Warren and Los Angeles mayor Fletcher Bowron, saw the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as proof that racism against Japanese Americans wasn’t just acceptable, but also necessary to protect the state. Both men insisted that it didn’t matter how many generations a family had been in the United States—any person of Japanese ancestry must be loyal to Japan and therefore an enemy who was plotting against the U.S. These officials also accused Japanese Americans of being “inscrutable” (difficult to read, so perhaps duplicitous) and “nonassimilable” (unable to become American). Earl Warren even told white Americans that it was their “patriotic duty” to report if their Japanese American neighbors were violating curfew or otherwise acting suspicious. And while there was no evidence that Japanese Americans were loyal to Japan—rather than to the country they lived in, the United States—racist rhetoric against Japan exploited people’s fears. The war was genuinely scary, and it was easy for public figures to scapegoat immigrant groups and whip up racism in the name of patriotism, building solidarity against an “enemy” who wasn’t really an enemy at all: Japanese American families. The result of this rhetoric was the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans—more than two-thirds of whom were American citizens—with little to no evidence that any Japanese Americans were actually conspiring against the U.S.
In the memoir, George Takei illustrates that the racism that led to internment had devastating and long-lasting consequences on Japanese Americans. For Mama and Daddy, internment was an assault on their dignity and that stole everything they’d worked so hard to achieve. They went from owning a two-bedroom house in Los Angeles to living in horse stalls and tiny rough-hewn cabins. Being tagged with identification numbers was even more demeaning, as it created the impression that interned Japanese Americans were little different than livestock. The squalid conditions in the internment camps made it clear to those held there that because of their race, the quality of their life didn’t matter. But perhaps the most difficult consequence to deal with was shame. Takei explains that many adults who were interned refuse to speak of their experiences—even to their children. They were ashamed of having been interned, even though they did nothing wrong; they were the victims. Takei himself felt some of that shame as he got older, once he realized that he essentially grew up in a prison. Shame, the memoir suggests, results in silence—and silence only allows racism to flourish.
To Takei, the best way to help people who feel ashamed—and the best way to keep events like Japanese internment from happening again—is to talk about what happened. Daddy and George, for instance, speak often about what happened in the camps, and this inspires George to, later in life, advocate for reparations to be paid to victims of the camps, and to eventually found the Japanese American National Museum. Racism, the memoir acknowledges, can be uniquely damaging to victims of it—but people can only begin to heal and move on by speaking out and ensuring that racist rhetoric isn’t allowed to flourish again.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Racism and War ThemeTracker
Racism and War Quotes in They Called Us Enemy
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
Memory is a wily keeper of the past... usually dependable, but at times, deceptive.
Childhood memories are especially slippery.
Sweet and so full of joy, they can often be a misrendering of the truth.
For a child, that sweetness... out of context and intensely subjective... remains forever real.
I know that I will always be haunted by the larger, vaguely remembered reality of the circumstances surrounding my childhood.
“Die, you Japanese cowards! Bang bang bang!”
“He got me! I’m dead!”
“Gotcha again! America wins the war!”
“Let’s play again, but this time I’ll be American.”
The older boys would play “war.”
“Nuh-uh, you be Japanese. I’m American.”
“No fair! You’re always American!”
It was like cowboys and Indians, but with Japanese and Americans instead.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“We’re free! We can finally go home!”
“Don’t be a fool! You think our homes are still there? You think white people will welcome us with open arms?”
The irony was that the barbed-wire fenced that incarcerated us also protected us.
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.”
Of course, I did get that role.
As Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, I had the chance to represent my Asian heritage with honor...to millions of viewers on television...
And six times on the silver screen as (Lt.) Commander Sulu, eventually reaching the rank of captain.
But most importantly, my unexpected notoriety has allowed me a platform from which to address many social causes that need attention.
