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Our Human Linkage

September, 1999

Our Human Linkage
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September, 1999, ATLANTA — Last month I marveled at the myriad ways in which we are now interconnected technologically -- satellite communication, supersonic transportation and the internet (see "What's New" for August). On a recent trip to Atlanta I experienced the substance of our human interconnectedness more profoundly than I have ever felt before.

As a trustee of the Japanese American National Museum, I flew to Atlanta for the opening of two of our traveling exhibits, "America's Concentration Camps" and "Witness: Our Brothers' Keepers."

"America's Concentration Camps" is an exhibit on a dark chapter of American history that is also a story of my early boyhood. When I was 4 years old, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the U.S. was plunged into the fires of World War II. Our nation -- despite its ideals -- failed to draw the distinction between the imperialism of Japan and the citizenship of Americans of Japanese ancestry. With no charges and no trial, but simply based on race, Japanese Americans were forcibly rounded up from our homes on the West Coast and herded into 10 barbed wire camps in some of the most god-forsaken parts of the country.

As detailed in my autobiography To the Stars, I was taken with my family from our home in Los Angeles to a camp in the swamps of Arkansas. A year later we were moved to a desolate, wind-swept dry lakebed in northern California near the Oregon border. Four years of my childhood were spent confined behind the barbed wire fences of American concentration camps. Not until the end of the war did we return to Los Angeles.

For my parents, it was the most horrific experience of their lives. Everything was lost — property, business and, most of all, freedom. As astonishing as this story may seem to many Americans, it did happen right here in this country. The "America's Concentration Camps" exhibit had closed at the Ellis Island Museum in New York after a year-long run and opened in August at Atlanta's William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum.

A second exhibit, "Witness: Our Brothers' Keepers," is another extraordinary story with an ironic linkage with the Jewish community. Despite the incarceration of their families, an amazing number of young Japanese American men and women put on the uniforms of the U.S. military and fought with uncommon valor in both the European and Pacific theaters of the war. The all-Japanese American, 442nd Regimental Combat Team returned from the battlefields of Europe as the single most decorated American military outfit.

A strange irony of this war, however, is that another Japanese American outfit, the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion, forced open the gates to Dachau, the Nazi death camp that held Jewish, Gypsy and homosexual inmates from throughout Europe. While their own families were confined behind American barbed wire fences, these Japanese American soldiers were liberating the prisoners of the Nazis from their barbed wire incarceration. Certainly, the American concentration camps came nowhere close to the grotesque horrors the Japanese American soldiers found in the Nazi death camps. Providentially, there was no American policy of systematic elimination of people. But these Japanese American soldiers undoubtedly felt some poignancy in their linkage with the Jewish prisoners.

I certainly felt this linkage as I mingled among the people gathered for the opening of the exhibits at the Breman Jewish Heritage Museum. After the formal program where I shared the stage with Daniel Inouye, the war hero and U.S. Senator from Hawaii, my duty was to informally impart some of my childhood memories with the people in attendance as I moved among the exhibits. I found myself in turn deeply moved and enlightened by the stories that the Jewish people there shared with me of relatives lost to the Nazi holocaust. There is a horrific difference of degree in our stories but the lesson to be learned from both our histories is a common one. Bigotry combined with hysteria is the hideous ingredient of massive injustice.

This very same lesson was underscored the following day on a visit to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Atlanta, an important landmark of the American civil rights movement. Dr. King's birthplace is there, as is the Ebinezer Baptist Church where he, his father and his grandfather preached. His marble tomb rests on an island in the middle of a calm reflecting pool. Across the street is a museum of Dr. King's life and the civil rights movement.

As I moved through the exhibits, I was struck again by our interconnectedness. Bigotry takes on many forms. It manifests itself in different ways. Dr. King and the civil rights movement challenged the stony face of institutionalized bigotry. But he also confronted the bigotry and violence of his own people -- the rage that rises out of abject despair. His courage in facing down both the Black Panthers as well as a Sheriff "Bull" Connors, the personifications of racism in both races, was profoundly inspiring. He refused to be lowered to the depths of any bigot -- black or white. He was a firm apostle of non-violent social change.

I remembered a long ago day in the 60s, when I met Dr. King. I was performing in a civil rights musical titled "Fly Blackbird" in Los Angeles. The cast was asked to sing a few numbers from the show at a huge rally where Dr. King was to be the main speaker. It was a massive gathering at the L. A. Sports Arena. When he spoke, Dr. King's words connected mightily. He transported the crowd with his soaring eloquence. It was after this speech that we were escorted to Dr. King's dressing room. I will never forget this meeting. I remember taking his proffered hand. I remember the thrill of the human connection with an extraordinary man. Through his touch, I felt somehow linked to his ideals, his vision and his courage. It was this linkage that surely strengthened my participation in the civil rights movement. It was certainly this inspiration that galvanized me toward the movement to gain redress for Japanese Americans for our incarceration during World War II. It was his faith in the power of the American system and its ideals that invigorated me. And in 1988 -- more than four decades late, but ultimately nevertheless, this nation acknowledged its terrible mistake and Congress passed the redress bill for the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. Dr. King's spirit was there with me in this struggle as well.

Our lives and our communities are not separate. We are inextricably interlinked. What happens to one group impacts another. Yes, we may live in an amazing technologically interconnected world. But ultimately, what gives substance to the technology is our human interconnection.

A New Beginning

January, 2000

January, 2000, CANCUN, Mexico - Six days ago, we were living in the 1900's. That really sounds historic now, doesn't it? 1900's. Then we woke up on a Saturday morning, not only in a new century, but also a new millennium. It was January 1, the year 2000! Just the sight of those three zeros in a row looked so elegantly futuristic. Never have we had the same sense of history and the future in such close proximity.

It is six days later and I am now in Cancun, Mexico for a corporate speaking engagement with a biotechnology firm called Bio-Rad. Lounging on my hotel room balcony, gazing out at the waves gently rolling in on the beach at this paradisiacal resort on the Yucatan peninsula, my thoughts range philosophically.

Mindful of our rich but turbulent history, we as a civilization have managed to make notable advances. Our Star Trek communication device, imaginative science fiction thirty-five years ago, is today a necessary nuisance -- the cell-phone. Fifteen years ago, in the whimsical time travel film, "Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home," 23rd century Scotty had a comic scene where he attempted to talk to a 20th-century computer. Today, such a device, a voice-command computer that answers back audibly, is not only reality, it is a commercial product that a number of Star Trek actors have endorsed. Most astounding is the transformation of our geo-political landscape. When "Star Trek" first went on the air in 1966, the world was locked in the grips of the coldest of cold wars. Two great powers, the Soviet Union and the Western Alliance, were glaring at each other threatening mutual nuclear annihilation. Yet, on "Star Trek," we had a valued member of the Enterprise crew who spoke with a Russian accent and took pride in his Russian heritage. Back then, this character, Pavel Chekov, was pure fiction, a wistful hope for mankind's future. Today, we have had in fact, a space station called Mir up in the sky on which we heard not only Russian and American accents, but crew members speaking in the Russian language and English that worked together in concert. The grotesque presence of the Berlin Wall is gone. The Soviet Union is broken and in economic shambles while the United States has enjoyed the longest economic prosperity in its history. Despite the concern for irrational terrorist attacks that tempered our new year's celebration, looking back, our recent history has been good.

Turning from the past to our future and gazing out at a seeming infinity of tomorrows, all we can see is a vast unknown. We know that there are some certainties that serve as the benchmarks of time. The zero that punctuates the end of the year 2000 reminds us that this will be another census year. The political debates that have already begun in earnest tell us that there will be another presidential election. And the surest verity of any year -- we will be paying taxes. But the rest is a great mystery. We hope we will enjoy success. We expect there will be challenges. We pray we will not have setbacks. But we don't know.

All we can do to shape the course of what is to come can be determined by what we do and how we do it. And all we have to guide us in our actions are the values and ideals that have successfully brought us to this point. We have managed to build the most vibrantly pluralistic nation in history, still mindful of the inequities and conflicts that exist. We have made our free capitalist system the exemplar of the global economy while aware of the challenges that the deterioration of our environment industrial development brings. We have a dynamic peoples' democracy, as good as -- and as fallible as -- the people who participate in it.

As I gaze out on the waves on the beach of Cancun, rolling in with the same rhythmic regularity that it has maintained through countless millennia, I get a humbling sense of our small part in a great force. Whatever we do, let us give it our very best, acting with confidence in our problem-solving ability, our innovative talent and our creative imagination.

Hawaii Connections

February, 2000, HONOLULU, HI - January began with the gentle waves of the Caribbean rolling onto a sunny beach in Cancun, Mexico. And the month is ending with another idyllic beach scene -- this time with the waves of the Pacific rolling on to the beach at Waikiki in Honolulu, Hawaii. But it wasn't all play.

I am the newly elected Chairman of the Board of the Japanese American National Museum. Our first meeting of the year was scheduled to be held in Honolulu. But to make our confinement indoors in the Halekulani Hotel conference room bearable, the Hawaiian weather kindly obliged us with dreary, drizzly skies. Throughout our two-day meeting, it was showery and gray. It was still raining when I adjourned our board meeting.

The next morning, with the runways still wet with early morning drizzle, Irene Hirano, the Japanese American National Museum's executive director, along with several trustees and staff members, joined me on a flight to the city of Hilo on the big island of Hawaii. We were going there for the opening of one of our traveling exhibits, "From Bento to Mixed Plate," at the Lyman House Museum. This was the exhibit that had enjoyed a hugely successful six-month run at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.

We landed at the Hilo airport in a downpour. Our shuttle van valiantly struggled against the famously rainy welcome of Hilo. When we arrived at the museum, I saw what looked like an enormous convention of umbrellas gathered at the front entrance. As we stepped out, we were greeted by smiling faces under huge outspread umbrellas and quickly hustled through the crowd. We had arrived just in the nick of time for the 9 a.m. beginning of the opening ceremony.

It is a Japanese tradition to begin ceremonial occasions with a concert of drumming on enormous drums called Taiko. When the first thunderous "boom" sounded, as if pre-planned by some special effects man, the rain miraculously stopped, the clouds parted and golden rays of sunshine began to stream down on the gathering. If that is an omen for the "From Bento to Mixed Plate" exhibit's run at the Lyman House Museum, then it bodes very well for its success. After the ceremony, as expected, the event turned into something not unlike a Star Trek convention. I sat and signed autographs for the crowd of first day museum-goers. In the evening, legendary U.S. Senator Dan Inouye spoke eloquently about the exhibit at a lovely Hawaiian reception for the exhibit's generous supporters. And there I signed more autographs.

Although I have been to the state of Hawaii many times -- mainly to Honolulu -- this was my first visit to the "big island" of Hawaii. I'd heard and read about the beauty of this island, but the dramatic variety and contrasts in its scenery astonished me. Hilo, on the eastern side of the island, is a tropical rain forest matching our image of Hawaii.

The morning after the museum opening, I drove from Hilo to spend a few days of "R&R" at a resort in Kona on the opposite, west side of the island. Driving north, I left the rain forest jungles to a landscape of rolling green pasturelands that reminded me more of Wisconsin than any picture I had of Hawaii. There were herds of cattle grazing alongside white fences. I drove past a sign that announced "Parker Ranch," the biggest cattle ranch in the U.S. I stopped at a town called Waimea for lunch at a recommended place named the Paniolo Café. "Paniolo," I had been told, meant "cowboy" in Hawaiian. The waiter urged me to order the restaurant's famous paniolo hamburger. So I did. It tasted like hamburger - good, but no different than any other hamburger I've had on the mainland. I suppose that is what makes it famous in Hawaii.

About half an hour out of Waimea, the scenery changed again. This time, it became Arizona. Arid, scrubby desert landscape with occasional cactus plants trying to maintain themselves in the sandy soil. Even the sun seemed to get hotter.

Another half an hour and suddenly, the scene changed dramatically. It became a moonscape -- mile after barren mile of rocky, lifeless, unearthly vista. This was an ancient lava flow. Not a blade of grass could exist on this hot, forbidding terrain. I got off the highway on the road to the Orchid at Mauna Lani resort. The smooth roadway that cut through the jagged, rock-strewn topography seemed jarringly unnatural. What kind of god-forsaken resort did I get myself booked into, I wondered. Then, like a mirage, I saw graceful coconut palms swaying off in the distance. As I drove closer, bright splashes of crimson from Jacaranda bushes accosted me. Velvety green lawns appeared in sharp contrast to the jagged lava rocks. An elegant sign read, "Welcome to the Orchid at Mauna Lani." I drove up a curving drive to a grand porte cochere where a smiling group of stylishly clad bellmen was lined up to greet me. I had arrived at an unearthly oasis called the Orchid carved out of the stony crust of a lava flow.

The three days of rest and recuperation were heaven. But I must confess that the environmentalist in me did feel a slight twinge of guilt in this unnatural lap of luxury.

The other trustees of the Japanese American National Museum had returned home by the time I checked out of the Orchid. But I had another speaking engagement at a conference of the Pacific Telecommunications Council a few days later in Honolulu. So it was back to Honolulu and the beach at Waikiki for me. An onerous burden - to have to kill a few days at Waikiki.

At the Kona Airport for the return flight to Honolulu, Kona resident Midori Fujimoto showed me a wonderful museum, a memorial to Ellison Onizuka, the astronaut who died in the explosion of the Challenger Space Shuttle. Midori, whose late husband Fred spearheaded creation of the museum, told me that Ellison was a native son of Kona and took great interest in motivating young Hawaiians. I had met Ellison Onizuka in Los Angeles shortly before he flew off to Cape Canaveral for his ill-fated mission. I remember joking with him then that he was the 20thcentury ancestor of the character I play in Star Trek and thanked him for being one of the builders of the launching pad for the world of Star Trek. He modestly demurred and told me that Star Trek was one of his favorite shows and Sulu his inspiration. I thought of our mutual flattery with poignance as I walked through the Ellison Onizuka Space Center at Kona Airport, a most fitting tribute to the spirit of a space adventurer of our times.

Back in Honolulu, Hoyt Zia, executive director of the Pacific Telecommunications Council, had invited me to speak at his conference, where I met contemporary adventurers of a different kind. This was the annual gathering of high tech communications engineers, executives and entrepreneurs from the Pacific Rim countries from Asia to north and south Americas. Their great challenge is to connect people and nations through telecommunications. They are the explorers of today, linking up not just people, but ideas - sharing ideas, bringing ideas together to spark new ideas. They are the builders of our future in ways not unlike Gene Roddenberry's ideas that he shared through the telecommunications medium of television.

And, as it turned out, these conference delegates were eager Star Trek fans from way back in their college and university days. Star Trek was vibrantly alive even on the beaches of Waikiki. As the soft trade winds caressed us, the coconut palms swayed and the sound of the rolling waves serenaded us, we talked Star Trek and telecommunications.

Alien World Right Below

March, 2000, LONG BEACH, CA - We look up to the night skies with wonder. We see the stars and imagine galaxies beyond. In our mind's eye, we conjure up the possibility of alien life forms. We envision challenges and promises that the "final frontier" might hold. We are creatures conditioned by Star Trek.

Some of the most fantastical reality is found, however, not by looking up, but just by simply looking downward. I went to the dazzlingly new Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, Calif., last month and discovered the almost surreal world swarming just under the surface of the water. The most incredible life forms have literally been just below us under the water line since the beginning of time.

I saw almost transparent, mushroom-like sea life virtually invisible but for the luminous glow outlining their outer edges. There were tanks teeming with microscopic, needle-like fish, each with a single neon dot but swimming in perfect unison to appear like one large, moving creature made up of a million shimmering polka dots. There was a huge, python-like eel so well camouflaged lazing on the bottom of a sandy aquarium that it became detectable only when it moved. No Star Trek episode had fictional alien life forms more fantastical than the real ones at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

There were more recognizable but nevertheless exotic sea life like the colorful tropical fishes from the south Pacific. Sea horses, I learned, carry their young in pouches until they are old enough to fend for themselves --- just like kangaroos. And sharks lay their leathery eggs, already containing little, wriggling fingerling sharks, among the sea kelps. We saw such an egg on display with a tiny, miniature shark visibly moving in it.

The aquarium itself is a technological marvel. The tank containing fish from north Pacific waters is churning turbulently, replicating the choppy waters of the Alaskan currents. This primeval savagery of the sea is powerfully recreated by unseen sophisticated technology. There is another tank that is the equivalent of a three-story building filled with sharks and other large fish happily plunging down and shooting right up the entire height. The newest addition to the aquarium, a torpedo-like Blunt Nosed Seven-gill shark, was curiously exploring the full loftiness of its new home. I was in awe of the strength of the clear plastic enclosing what must be tremendous pressure from all that water in the gigantic tank.

The Aquarium of the Pacific is nature's science fiction world made possible by the advances in technology. But the sobering message from the day at the aquarium is that the technology that helps display this wondrous sea world so realistically, also threatens this world. Sea life is endangered by improved fishing technology, massive pollution and rapacious oceanic exploitation. The tired irony of our times is that the wonders of nature are placed in jeopardy by the wonders of technology.

As I drove back to Los Angeles with the night sky twinkling down, I realized that we don't have to look up to the sky and wonder about strange alien life forms. We don't have to conjure up fictional challenges. We don't have to imagine some future "final frontier." We have it all, right here, right now, right under us.

Excelsior Passion

Excelsior Passion
ViacomCBS (was Paramount Pictures and/or CBS Broadcasting, Inc.)

April, 2000, PASADENA, CA - The press conference theater was standing room only and a buzz of expectation was in the air. On stage, seated at a conference table, were Grace Lee Whitney, Commander Rand of "Star Trek VI," Susan Sackett, Gene Roddenberry's long-time executive assistant, and me. Russ Haslage, the leader and organizer par excellence of the Excelsior campaign, was standing with a microphone at the ready as the moderator. All of us wore black Excelsior T-shirts. Suddenly, Russ shouted out. "Excelsior!" The audience roared back in unison. "Excelsior!" A few fists shot up into the air. It was almost like a revival meeting.

This press event, at the huge Grand Slam Convention in Pasadena, was part of Haslage's strategy to convince Paramount Studios to do the next Star Trek television series based on the adventures of the U.S.S. Excelsior with Captain Sulu.

The people in the audience were not only American, but from all over the world - including Brazil, Germany, Japan, Italy, Britain and wherever else Star Trek had touched and inspired the viewers. A bit of history was present in the person of Bjo Trimble, who led the charge on the initial "Star Trek Lives" campaign to revive the show after its cancellation by NBC in 1969. The overwhelming sense of the people assembled there was a chorus of agreement. "We want Gene Roddenberry's shining vision back. We want the Excelsior and Captain Sulu back on the air!" It was impressive, flattering and humbling.

I never cease being astonished by the phenomenon of Star Trek fans. The passion of the fans from the very beginning in 1966 has not only remained constant but has grown and intensified over the years and the generations. That passion has been the singular force that drove the course of Star Trek's history throughout. After cancellation of the original series, it was fan effort that brought Star Trek back 10 years later as a major feature film. When the studio announced that "Star Trek - The Motion Picture" would be the only film because of the enormous cost over-runs, it was the unexpectedly explosive fan support at the box office that produced the series of Star Trek sequels.

When a producer decided that the 25th anniversary sixth film would be a prequel going back to the Starfleet Academy days of our heroes, thus recasting the beloved characters with younger actors, it was fan outrage that ultimately drove this producer off the studio lot and put the show back on course with my favorite Star Trek film, "Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country" directed by Nick Meyer. And, once again, the fans have become galvanized. Again, they have grabbed the helm to re-direct the course of Star Trek. Again, they are sending their message loudly and clearly. They want Gene Roddenberry's bright vision of the future back as Star Trek.

The fans have demonstrated time and again that they are the real proprietors of the Star Trek phenomenon. At every turning point in the history of Star Trek, they have ultimately prevailed -- against network cancellation, against studio executive pessimism and even against a producer's decision. They have prevailed because they have defined, established and sustained the Star Trek marketplace. And for the studio, that has got to be the Ferengi bottom line.

It puzzles me that the fans must continue to remind the studio powers-that-be of this simple fact: Star Trek fans rule!