Racialicious Crush Of The Week: George Takei

By Andrea Plaid

Courtesy: wikimedia.org

Of course, when I think of this week’s Crush from the standpoint of my childhood, he’s forever Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, looking calmly into the starry universe and co-steering the USS Enterprise through it on the reruns I’d watch with my mom on Saturday afternoons. In my adult life, he’s the criminally underutilized character, Kaito Nakamura, on Heroes. And a helluva of a social media user and activist, boldly using the former for the latter.

The US government forcibly relocated Takei’s family from their home in Los Angeles to an interment camp in Arkansas in 1942, when he was 5 years old, and then to another internment camp in northern California. After World War II ended, his family moved back to Los Angeles. In junior high school Takei was voted student body president; he was also a Boy Scout at his Buddhist temple. After the jump is an interview in which he recalls his childhood:

Takei first studied architecture when he attended college but ended up earning a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in theater from UCLA in 1960 and 1964, respectively. He also studied  at the Shakespeare Institute in England and at Japan’s Sophia University. (Source)

When Takei pursued acting in the late 50s, there were few Asian American images on the large and small screen, and the ones that were seen veered into stereotypes, from the Yellow Peril (e.g. the character of Dr. Fu Manchu) to yellowface. His first role was voiceover work for Japanese monster films. His first major co-starring role was in a Twilight Zone episode called “The Encounter” in 1964, which  caused Japanese Americans to complain that, unlike the father of his character who spied for the Japanese navy during WWII, there was no evidence that Japanese Americans committed such espionage or other forms of disloyalty during the Second World War. Due to complaints of the anti-Japanese American racism about the ep was omitted from syndication. (You can watch it on Netflix–that’s where I saw it–and Twilight Zone DVDs.)

In 1965, Gene Roddenberry tapped Takei to play the iconic Lt. Sulu. Takei has gracefully aged with the character, not only appearing in the first six Star Trek films but also appearing in other episodes in the Star Trek franchise and at sci-fi conventions, in cartoons and video games, and in a fan-created web series.

After Star Trek ended, Takei returned to electoral politics: he served as California’s alternate delegate for the Democratic National Committee in 1972. In 1973 he barely lost his bid for Los Angeles’ city council but was tapped that same year to be on the board of directors for the city’s public-transit team who helped design Los Angeles’ subway system.

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