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February, 2002, SACRAMENTO, CA - As the plane began descending toward the Sacramento airport, the green patterns of the farm fields below shifted to suburban housing developments, then to a scattering of rectangular high rise buildings surrounding the golden dome of the state capitol. I tried to locate the Victorian structure of the Crocker Art Museum but the plane quickly flew past the downtown area and was again descending over farm fields. I could now see the airport approaching. I was arriving for the opening of one of the Japanese American National Museum's traveling exhibits, "Henry Sugimoto: Painting An American Experience" at the Crocker Art Museum of Sacramento.
This trip, however, was more than my fulfilling my duties as the Chairman of the Japanese American National Museum. Sacramento is a special place to me. It was to this land, one hundred years ago, that my grandparents came from Hiroshima, Japan. It was here that my grandfather began farming, growing strawberries, plums, and hops. It was here, in an old Victorian farmhouse that my mother was born. It was here in the soil of Sacramento, the capital city of California, that my American roots were first planted.
The exhibit of Henry Sugimoto's paintings is also very personal to me. When World War II began, this gifted artist was among the 120,000 Japanese Americans who were rounded up by the U.S. military and incarcerated in American internment camps. He painted scenes of his imprisonment in the two camps in Arkansas -- Rohwer and Jerome. Rohwer was the camp to which my family was sent from our home in Los Angeles. I look at Sugimoto's paintings of the camp landscape and they remind me of the swampy creek where I used to play by the barbed wire fence. I remember the scenes he painted of the communal hubbub in the washroom, where babies were bathed as well as the laundry done. I recognize the picture in his painting of the long line at the mess hall where we queued up three times a day for our meals. I look at these paintings by Henry Sugimoto and I'm reminded of the fear and anxiety of fellow Americans that sent us into that barbed wire imprisonment. I hear from these images on canvas, the resonance of the fear and anxiety felt today toward people of Middle Eastern descent. These paintings of sixty years ago are profoundly relevant to our times today.
We live in a time of terror. When in public places, when in congested places, certainly when we're at the airport, we feel an indefinable sense of anxiety.
A dark, bearded person might fill us with some unease. That nervousness is not irrational. We are responding to what we have read, heard, or seen. That sense of unease might be called experiential "racial profiling." But race has to be just one part of the whole picture. That dark, bearded person might be a student or a dentist or a salesman -- nothing more. Simple racial profiling is an inadequate rationale for anxiety. Indeed, a terrorist can look like the all-American boy next door - like Timothy McVeigh.
We are Americans, the most diverse people on this planet. We look like the people of the world - every race in every shape and form. We are also a people who subscribe to the rule of law - not of racial discrimination. We believe in a system of due process where a person cannot be detained without charges, due cause or right to counsel. That is what makes our system of justice so great. Yet, at times of stress, our government can react hastily and without clear thinking. In the aftermath of September 11th, Middle Eastern immigrant men have been detained without charges and without counsel, their families uninformed of where the men had been taken or when they might be released. It was exactly the same with Japanese immigrant men immediately after Pearl Harbor. This kind of racial profiling ultimately resulted in a most egregious violation of the U.S. Constitution - the wholesale removal and incarceration of all Japanese Americans from the West Coast. There was no due process - no charges, no trial, just imprisonment by race. The scenes that Henry Sugimoto painted from his "American Experience" have this profoundly important cautionary message for our times today.
The opening of the exhibit of Henry Sugimoto's works in Sacramento was a great success. I'm told that this was the biggest opening in the history of the Crocker Art Museum. In my mother's hometown, in my state capital, where my roots go down deep, my own American experience was hugely well received. The exhibit will be in Sacramento until March 24, 2002.
March, 2002, HOLLYWOOD - I love Hollywood. It's a part of my hometown, Los Angeles, that I've been stuck on all my life. My life history is literally embedded here.
When I was a kid, it was the exciting part of town that my parents took me to for special occasions - a movie, a dinner, and a drive admiring the glamour of the neon signs and art-deco architecture. As a movie-struck teen-ager, Hollywood Boulevard was where I hung out. It was where I got the only jay walking ticket in my life, dashing across Hollywood Boulevard right in front of the legendary Grauman's Chinese Theater. I spent hours exploring in bookstores on the boulevard, like Larry Edmund's and Pickwick Books, and chancing across stars like John Derek and Gig Young also browsing among the stacks. Music City, on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street, was where I went to listen to the latest hit records in the glass booths facing the street. In the evenings, we went to movies at celebrated theaters like the Pantages, the Egyptian, and, of course, Grauman's Chinese Theater.
But over the years, Hollywood started to decline. The big department store closed down, followed by other fine clothing stores. Seedy operations began opening up. The smaller movie houses shifted their booking to X-rated films. Fine restaurants closed and reopened as greasy spoons. The people on the street changed. We stopped going there at night. When the Pantages and Egyptian theaters went dark, I was shaken. Those were landmarks of our city. It was unthinkable. It was like a death of a loved one. It hurt - and I also felt guilty. I hadn't supported those great movie palaces in years. It was heartbreaking to watch a beloved, once legendary street going derelict.
A few hardy institutions were toughing it out against the tide of nastiness and squalor. Musso & Frank's Restaurant, the gathering place of stars since the days of silent movies, had been on the boulevard since 1919. I still went there on occasion for their steaks, chicken pot pies, and, especially, their great martinis. It was wonderful bumping into Ricardo Montalban there shortly after we worked together on "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn."
And tour buses still congregated at old Grauman's Chinese Theater with its autographed and hand printed forecourt. Through thick and thin, the Chinese was a perennial.
"Star Trek" did its galactic best to buttress up the renown and traditions of Hollywood. When Gene Roddenberry was honored with his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, we all gathered - with the exception of Bill Shatner - to rejoice with our boss, the Great Bird. With each new star on the Walk of Fame for a fellow member of our Star Trek family, we got together to celebrate the happy occasion. And hundreds of fans joined us from far and near.
The year 1986 was my turn and I will never forget the joy of that day. My name embedded in a rose terrazzo star on the sidewalk that I had been walking over all my life! Before feet from all over the world could tread over my good name, my mother, who gave me life and taught me to walk, had to be the very first one to step on my star. She reveled being in the spotlight. After the ceremony, we partied at the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Mayor Tom Bradley proclaimed October 30, 1986, George Takei Day in Los Angeles. The heady memory of that day will forever be my personal treasure.
Incredibly, that day was topped by a shared day of jubilation. In the 25th anniversary year of "Star Trek," just before the premiere of "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," the entire cast was honored with Hollywood's version of consecration - a place in the forecourt of the hallowed Grauman's Chinese Theater. Cheering fans lined both sides of Hollywood Boulevard as we paraded down in convertibles. The USC Marching Band blared away in front of us. We arrived at the Chinese to be greeted by the ever-ebullient Johnny Grant, the Honorary Mayor of Hollywood, with a cortege of young fans dressed as Starfleet officers, Klingon warriors and an Andorian Ambassador or two. This ceremony was going to be unique from any other in the Chinese Theater's long and colorful history. Ours had visitors from throughout the galaxy. A large square of fresh cement moistly awaited our autographs. The studio publicists had instructed us that, due to the limited space, we were to write our autographs only - nothing else. Bill Shatner and Leonard Nimoy led off obediently as instructed with only their signatures on the wet cement. I surmised then, that I was obviously the only one who knew the whole tradition. A handprint must accompany the autograph in the cement. It was tradition. As the only native Angeleno, the responsibility for continuing that tradition lay solely with me. When my turn came, I wrote my name clearly and then, despite the instructions from the studio, I pressed my palm firmly into the wet cement. The shocked exclamation that followed came from Bill Shatner. "George put his hand in!" Then after a pause, "I want to put MY hand in too!" Splat! He slapped his handprint into the moist cement right beside his signature. Pandemonium broke out as everyone else ran to add their handprints to their autographs. Leonard - always thinking in character - placed his handprint in the form of his Vulcan greeting. The continuity of the hallowed rite of the handprint was not broken. I took quiet satisfaction in knowing that I was the one responsible for maintaining that tradition.
The day after that memorable ceremony, I drove down Hollywood Boulevard. Tourists with cameras were still ambling around the Chinese Theater. But the rest of the street had returned to its shabby dereliction. The crowd was gone and the grungy, the delinquent and the deranged had shambled back. "Star Trek" had brought only a brief day of excitement to a growingly forlorn street.
Over the years, there were many initiatives to revitalize Hollywood. Every disappointment was followed by redoubled efforts to reclaim a valued part of the city. Everybody knows Hollywood. From Bombay to Helsinki, from Morocco to Outer Mongolia, Hollywood is a place known throughout the world. In some parts of the world, Hollywood may be better known than Los Angeles itself, of which it is actually a part. Los Angeles could not allow the decline to continue. Hollywood was too valuable and too well known.
With much effort, a revitalization plan was crafted with tax incentives, historic restoration credits, improved security programs and, most importantly, leadership commitment. When the film appreciation society, American Cinematheque, working closely with the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles, restored and reopened the historic Egyptian Theater as its new home, the re-ascendance of Hollywood began. It was quickly followed by the welcome return of the Pantages Theater. The great movie palace was magnificently restored and premiered just over a year ago with Disney's stage production of "The Lion King." It is a smash hit still playing today. And, last month, Hollywood saw the spectacular opening of the Kodak Theater and the Babylon Court of Hollywood and Highland. This is the biggest and most fantastically over-the-top complex of theaters, shops, and restaurants in Los Angeles. Just last week, the Japanese American National Museum held its annual dinner in the glamorous new Grand Ballroom on the rooftop of the complex. In two weeks, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will present the Oscars for the highest achievements in motion pictures for the year 2001 in the dazzling new Kodak Theater, designated as its permanent home.
Hollywood Boulevard is where Oscar belongs. It was born 75 years ago at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, just across the street from the Kodak Theater. Since then, Oscar roamed all over Los Angeles and Santa Monica, finally to find a permanent home back on Hollywood Boulevard. Hooray for Hollywood!
The people are coming back. The excitement is coming back. Now that the money is coming back, so are the politics.
There are people politicking to have Hollywood secede from the City of Los Angeles. After Los Angeles had struggled through the tough years of Hollywood, after all the effort and investment to revitalize the area, after the Metro Rail subway system was built to bind Hollywood with the rest of the city, there are activists trying to break away. They are advocating to place a measure on the November ballot declaring Hollywood an independent city. The irony is that, if they did succeed, they will still have to contract with Los Angeles for all their services.
I don't live within the specific boundaries of Hollywood. But, I consider it an intrinsic part of my hometown. I have childhood memories there. I went to summer school at Hollywood High. As a Los Angeles High School cross-country runner, I competed in races against runners from Hollywood High. I work in an industry that is synonymous with Hollywood. I go to movies, eat, play, and spend my money in Hollywood. I don't want a room in my civic home taken away from me.
One more thing - that world famous sign on the hillside of Griffith Park that announces "Hollywood" in great big bold white letters is in Los Angeles. And, we won't give that up. What is Hollywood without the Hollywood sign? It would be like Paris without the Eiffel Tower or New York without the Empire State Building. I say to the activists trying to break away, "give it up." Your effort is misguided. And we ain't giving up our Hollywood sign!
April, 2002, LOS ANGELES - The stern new security procedures at airports are not the only cause of travel traumas. There still is good old Mother Nature to compound the challenges. And she can be fiercely punishing.
I was the keynote speaker at a session of the annual convention of the National Association of Elementary School Principals in San Antonio, Texas. It was a huge gathering of about 9,000 people and my address had been well received. I must confess, I felt a smug sense of self-satisfaction with a job well done as I was driven back to the San Antonio airport. It had been showering lightly for the past two days but the highway was now starting to slowly dry off. I arrived more than two hours before my flight was scheduled to depart for Los Angeles so that I could comfortably navigate the strict new security checks. But security turned out to be a piece of cake. I sailed through without a glitch. The only bit of slowdown was when a couple of security attendants recognized me and I stopped to sign a few autographs.
I checked in, got my boarding passes to Dallas/Fort Worth connecting on to Los Angeles, and settled in with a copy of the New York Times. At 3 p.m., half an hour before the scheduled departure time, I gathered near the gate with others to await the boarding announcement. Nothing happened. 3:15 came and went with no boarding. The scheduled departure time came and we were still crowded around the gate. At 3:40, the announcement came. There was a storm headed our way and all flights had been temporarily grounded. However, airline officials assured us, as soon as we were cleared, the plane would be immediately available for boarding, and we would take off -- so we were told not to leave the gate area. The tension that swept through the crowd was palpable. I looked out the glass wall and saw that the sky was cloudy but spotty patches of blue could be seen. I speculated that they wouldn't keep us grounded for too long. I assumed that this delay was just precautionary.
At 4 o'clock, the public address system announced that we were still grounded but that there would be half-hour updates so do not leave the gate area. By this time the churning clouds had crowded out any patch of visible blue sky. Eyes began flashing alarmed looks at each other. But I had flown through storms before. This grizzled traveler didn't think there was any need for undue agitation. But I thought I should at least inform my business manager in Los Angeles that my arrival home would now most probably be delayed.
When I reached my manager on my cell phone, I could hear the alarm in his voice. He told me that his computer airline schedule was telling him that the Dallas/Fort Worth airport was also shut down because of the approaching storm. It looked bad. My connecting flight to Los Angeles had also been grounded.
I looked out the glass wall. Those churning clouds had turned much darker now. I began to feel uneasy about getting on that plane and barreling into those ominous-looking clouds. I'd better find another routing to get back home, I thought. I looked toward the gate clerk's counter and saw a long line forming of people with panic in their eyes. As an experienced traveler, I told myself, I'm not about to be stampeded by the hysteria. I knew how to avoid that crowd. With feigned self-assurance, I grabbed my rolling luggage and began striding for the main terminal ticket counter. It seemed, however, a good number of other people also had the same idea. Exactly what I was trying to avoid. Everybody was coming down the corridor right behind me. I blew whatever cool I had been faking. I began trotting with my luggage bouncing along behind me to stay ahead of the others. When I got to the main ticket desk, a horde of people were already there, yelling and demanding that they absolutely had to get home NOW! It is at times like this that I will be eternally grateful for First Class tickets. There were only two people waiting in the red-carpeted line.
When my turn came, the attendant in front of me seemed almost as frenzied looking as some of the passengers. He had thinning frizzy brown hair and he peered intensely at my flight itinerary through heavy, ringed Coke bottle spectacles. But, he was good. "Try Albuquerque as my connection -- or El Paso," I suggested desperately. "Or Las Vegas." His fingers clicked away at the keyboard like a woodpecker's beak. When they were no good, I spat out, "Try Salt Lake City?" No good. "What about San Francisco?" None worked. They were already all booked up. "But I've got to be back by tomorrow. I have a very important meeting," I pleaded. I could almost see him thinking, "So does everyone else." But he soldiered on silently intent, his eyes fixed on his computer screen. Suddenly, his eyes popped wide and his glasses almost jumped up. "How about through Phoenix at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning?" he asked. "I'll take it," I replied. "But it's on another airline," he warned. "I'd fly you guys because I like you," I assured him, "but your birds ain't flying. A bird in hand is better than a bird on the ground," I quipped now smug again. How quickly my desperation had faded. "But it doesn't go to LAX," he added. "It lands at Long Beach Airport." "That's close enough. I want that flight," I insisted. I had a way home now - but at 6 a.m. in the morning! That meant that I now had to get a hotel room near the airport. I had a new challenge. I know from anguished past experiences how quickly airport hotels can fill to capacity at times like this.
I rushed to the airport hotel-listing wall with a bank of telephones. The first one I tried was already full. Anxiously, I called the next one. I lucked out with the second. I hurried out of the terminal to a now lightly raining airport landscape. The front of the storm was arriving. I dove into a taxi and rushed over. Thankfully, the hotel was only about five minutes from the airport. It looked like a glorified motel from the outside, but the atmosphere in the lobby was almost like the airport. Frantic people and a screaming baby surrounded the reception desk. The room I finally got was the last available at the hotel. I had to get up early to catch my 6 a.m. flight back so I asked for a 3:30 a.m. wake up call and went up to my room.
Once I laid down on the bed, hunger gripped my exhausted body. I was famished. But the hotel had no restaurant or room-service. Fortunately, I remembered that I'd saved the bag of peanuts and the bag of pretzels from my two flight legs on my way to San Antonio. Munching on pretzels, I turned on the television. "60 Minutes" was on. It's one of my favorite shows. I had written off catching the show because of the travel, but, thanks to this disaster, at least I wouldn't miss tonight's show. I was getting into the program when suddenly the screen was filled with the bold words, WEATHER WARNING. 
An ominous voice intoned that a thunderstorm was headed toward Uvalde County with the possibility of tornadoes. Everyone was ordered to stay indoors in a safe part of the house. Then a map flashed on. Uvalde was just west of San Antonio and the storm was headed directly at us, east of Uvalde. "60 Minutes" then came back on but now, at the bottom of the screen, was a continuing scroll with weather updates. Trying to read the scroll and, at the same time, focus on the program, I tried getting back into the show. Suddenly, the WEATHER WARNING sign again broke in. The voice reported that hail the size of baseballs was now falling in Uvalde. The order to stay indoors was urgently repeated. It was getting bad, but I realized I had to get up at 3:30. I had better get some sleep. I muted the television so that I could read just the weather updates and turned out the lights. But I couldn't fall asleep. I kept tossing and turning. Suddenly, the entire room lit up electric white. I bolted up from bed. What was that? Then the room trembled with a horrendous crashing sound like the sky ripping apart. A beat later, a sheet of rain, almost like an ocean wave, slapped at the window. It was followed again by another slap with another flash of lightening. It was terrorizing. It was the same terror I felt as a child in the internment camp in Arkansas. Those Arkansas thunderstorms were the most frightening of my childhood experiences. The storm continued for most of the night. Just as it finally began to calm down and I started to doze, the phone rang. It was my automated 3:30 wake up call.
The hotel had promised that there would be a shuttle service to the airport at 15-minute intervals in the morning. The storm had passed but the street was glistening with rain. I waited under the canopy in front of the hotel entrance. A mini-bus, already filled with passengers and luggage, rolled up. There was just enough space for me to board. The driver announced, however, that there would be one more hotel stop where he had to pick up passengers before heading for the airport. There were about half a dozen sleepy looking people waiting there. Our bus could barely take only one or two more. The ones that forced themselves onboard were two out-of-shape women huffing and puffing with effort. The other waiting people would have to take the next bus. The cramped ride from there to the airport was the last ordeal. The check-in went unexpectedly smoothly. Although I was chosen for the special security check, where I had to take my shoes off, open my luggage, and be "wanded" all over, it seemed like nothing after the trauma I'd already endured. The take off was uneventful and landing in radiantly sunny Phoenix, Arizona, was a joy. But, the happiest was landing at Long Beach Airport. I was home! At last!
After a trip like that, I can't tell you how fervently I pray for the early invention of that Star Trek travel mode called "beaming."
May, 2002, LOS ANGELES - T. S. Eliot said, "April is the cruelest month." He meant it in the tragi-poetic sense of spring, the beginning of life, being the beginning of the suffering and sorrows that is an inescapable component of existence. The ultimate cruelty of life is death. In recent weeks I have lost two people - Nobu McCarthy and Fred Okrand -- who played important roles in my life.
Nobu McCarthy was a lovely actress and a good friend. She played opposite me in my very first paying TV engagement, a role in the famed live television program "Playhouse 90" in 1958. I played a defeated Japanese soldier who returns to war-ravaged Japan only to discover that his betrothed, the character played by Nobu, had fallen in love with a GI with the American occupation forces, played by Dean Stockwell.
Nobu herself had only recently arrived from Japan as the bride of an American GI whom she had met and married in Tokyo. Her television role closely paralleled her own life. But she was untrained as an actress and halting in her command of English. Rehearsals were an arduous struggle for her. At first, Nobu's stunning beauty was what struck me. But as I got to know her better during rehearsals, I was impressed by her grit and will to grow as an actress. She worked with determination from first reading to dress rehearsals, and, by air-date, she was nervous but ready. Nervousness just made her that much sharper. She turned in a beautiful performance.
A few months later, we were again cast together, this time as lovers in an episode of "Perry Mason." She was wonderful. With diligence and determination, she continued her study, and, ultimately, transformed herself into a fine actress. And we became good friends. We saw each other often socially. But we didn't work with each other again until the early 90's when we did Philip Kan Gotanda's play "The Wash" in New York and Los Angeles. Again, we played lovers - but now as senior citizens. Nobu played a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage; I played a lonely widower. What a joy it was playing her lover in the autumn of the character's lives. It was bliss just being on stage with Nobu. She was now a consummate artist, as well she should be. She had a collection of distinguished achievements both on stage and on film. She had been much lauded for her moving performance in the television drama on the internment of Japanese Americans, "Farewell to Manzanar."
Nobu had added another dimension to her career as well. She had become a teacher and a cultural leader. She taught drama at California State University at Los Angeles and at my alma mater, UCLA. When the East West Players, America's oldest Asian American theater, was in turmoil in the early 90's, Nobu stepped in as Artistic Director and brought it stability and balance. Thanks to her efforts, East West Players today is a solidly established and respected theater company in Los Angeles. Nobu was playing a leadership role in the cultural life of the community.
I last saw Nobu two months ago at a press conference called by the lieutenant governor of California to announce the funding of a program to make video copies of her television film "Farewell to Manzanar" available to schools in California for educational purposes. Nobu was glowing with happiness. This program combined the two passions of her life, one as an artist and the other as an educator. It was wonderful to see her in such good high spirits.
Shortly after that press conference, Nobu flew to Brazil to work on a film on location. The next time I heard of Nobu was a phone call notifying me of her passing in Brazil.
* * * *
The other immeasurable loss is Fred Okrand. He was an attorney and an extraordinary fighter for justice who also had a unique Star Trek connection. His son, Marc, is the creator of the Klingon language.
I didn't meet Fred Okrand personally until Marc and I became friends during the filming of Star Trek III, The Search for Spock. But I knew of Fred Okrand since childhood. My father had talked of the attorneys who stood against the wind and challenged the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Fred was one of the few. He had been a principled, courageous, and lonely voice during that time of war hysteria. A lifelong advocate of civil liberties, he later became the Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Honored frequently for his work, Fred is the holder of the Justice Award of the Japanese American Citizens League and was named Lawyer of the Year by the Constitutional Rights Foundation. The ACLU also presented him with the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Through Marc I got to know Fred, not only as an iconic fighter for justice, but as a whimsically rugged individualist as well. His most striking idiosyncrasy was in his clothes. He wore checkered trousers with wildly contrasting sport shirts or pale pastel pants with colorful Hawaiian shirts. He was clad in his office as if he were on a golf course. And he literally whistled while he worked. With his round, smiling eyes beaming out from behind large, round spectacles, Fred exuded an irresistibly elfin charm. Facially, Marc is the youthful spitting image of his father, but in attire, Marc is much more restrained. In contrast to his father, Marc is downright drab. When at work, however, Fred was a single-minded workaholic. He preached, practiced, and wore on his body the freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Throughout his illness, Fred never stopped working. At the time of his passing, he was co-counsel on another extraordinary class action lawsuit that went back to the unfinished business of World War II internment camps. Mochizuki versus U.S. is on behalf of over two thousand Japanese Latin Americans who were uprooted from their homes in Latin America and forcibly brought to and imprisoned in American internment camps during World War II. Japanese Americans had received apologies and redress from the U.S. government in 1988 but Japanese Latin Americans had not been included. Fred was continuing their battle for justice at the time of his death. Most fittingly, his memorial service was held in the stately Aratani Central Hall of the Japanese American National Museum. Fred Okrand's legacy is as strong and as magnificent a pillar of the U.S. Constitution as those elegant white marble columns at the entrance of the United States Supreme Court.
I will miss deeply the two wonderful people who passed away in recent weeks. But their legacies will always be with us to remind us of their magnificent work during the time they shared with us. Two beloved lives well lived, productively lived and importantly lived. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.