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I have two passions in my life. One is to raise the awareness of the internment of Japanese-American citizens. My other passion is the theater. And I've been able to wed the two passions.
Yes, I remember the barbed wire and the guard towers and the machine guns, but they became part of my normal landscape. What would be abnormal in normal times became my normality in camp.
And it seems to me important for a country, for a nation to certainly know about its glorious achievements but also to know where its ideals failed, in order to keep that from happening again.
My grandmother lived to 104 years old, and part of her success was she woke up every morning to a brand new day. She said every morning is a new gift. Her favorite hobby was collecting birthdays.
Should any terrorist strike or act of war occur in which American lives are lost, we must be on guard for any attempt by the government to turn that tragedy into justification for sweeping action.
I am emboldened, not cowed, by the words and actions of Trump and his circle. I believe many others are as well. Together we will stand in opposition. I'm not going anywhere, and I won't be silenced.
Well, it gives, certainly to my father, who is the one that suffered the most in our family, and understanding of how the ideals of a country are only as good as the people who give it flesh and blood.
I'd like to think that, when I explain it, that Mr. Trump will understand marriage is defined by two people who love each other, commit to each other, and will care for each other through thick and thin.
I'm most comfortable with my computer. Yes, I have an iPhone, but I've reached that point now where to read e-mails on my phone, I need my reading glasses. I'm most comfortable with the big-screen computer.
We were American citizens. We were incarcerated by our American government in American internment camps here in the United States. The term 'Japanese internment camp' is both grammatically and factually incorrect.
For me, country music symbolized freedom and the joys of life... roaming the country, experiencing the joys as well as the heartbreaks. It was a transporting kind of song, and I'd just kind of sing along with them.
When I came out, I was 68, and I was totally prepared for my career to recede when I spoke to the press for the first time. What happened after that blew me away. I started getting more offers. My career blossomed.
When I was a teenager, the biggest heartthrob was Tab Hunter. He was in every movie out of Warner Bros. until he was exposed as gay, and his career faded. That was an object lesson. I knew I must protect my sexual orientation.
At the core of 'Star Trek' is Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future. So much of science-fiction is about a dystopian society with human civilization having crumbled. He had an affirmative, shining, positive view of the future.
It has long been a dream of mine that this important story one day would be told on the great American stage of Broadway. In fact, I've dedicated much of the latter half of my life to ensuring the story of the internment is known.
Back in the day, coming out was something very personal. You began by acknowledging the truth, first to yourself, then to close family and friends. Those of us more in the public spotlight, though, also had to 'come out' to the press.
I grew up in the age of radio. That was my main boyhood form of entertainment: lying on the living room floor with my ears affixed to the radio. I loved shows like 'The Phantom,' 'Cisco Kid,' and even 'Happy Theater' when I was younger.
I don't consider it jumping ship. The 'Star Trek' philosophy is to embrace the diversity of the universe, and 'Star Wars' is part of that diversity. I also think 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars' are related beyond both having the word 'Star.'
Those Tea Party people are crazy. I mean, they're lunatics. They close down the government, throw people out of their jobs - hundreds of thousands of people - and they say that they're doing it ultimately in the interest of creating jobs.
Cat's are unpredictable. It is a fine line between the cure, inquisitive and innocent creature resting on our lap and the hissing, spitting and deranged banshee it might become at any moment. This is why we're trying always to win their love.
The word today is "detained," not "interred." People are being detained with no due process. They don't know what the charges are, why they're being detained. Simply because they have an Arab name or some association, but there are no charges.
I myself am a Buddhist, not a Christian. But I cannot help but think that if Christ ran a public establishment, it would be open to all, and He would be the last to refuse service to anyone. It is, simply put, the most un-Christian of notions.
It was an egregious violation of the American Constitution. We were innocent American citizens, and we were imprisoned simply because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. It shows us just how fragile our Constitution is.
The theatre for me is much more satisfying as an actor because you are working in front of a living, breathing, throbbing, gasping, laughing and hopefully applauding audience. And the immediate connection you get with that audience is very satisfying.
People forget that stereotypes aren’t bad because they are always untrue. Stereotypes are bad because they are not always true. If we allow ourselves to judge another based on a stereotype, we have allowed a gross generalization to replace our own thinking.
I was doing a civil rights musical here in Los Angeles, and we sang at one of the rallies where Dr. Martin Luther King spoke, and I remember the thrill I felt when we were introduced to him. To have him shake your hand was an absolutely unforgettable experience.
I am the grandson of immigrants from Japan who went to America, boldly going to a strange new world, seeking new opportunities. My mother was born in Sacramento, California. My father was a San Franciscan. They met and married in Los Angeles, and I was born there.
When Pearl Harbor was bombed, young Japanese-Americans, like all young Americans, rushed to their draft board to volunteer to fight for our country. That act of patriotism was answered with a slap in the face. We were denied service and categorized as enemy non-alien.
When Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the same-sex marriage bill, my blood was boiling. I had been silent, but that night, Brad and I watched the news and saw all these young people pouring out on Santa Monica Boulevard venting their rage, and I said, 'I have to speak out.'
You know what the lowest rated episode we ever had was? Where Captain Kirk kissed Uhuru - a white man kissing an African-American woman. All the stations in the American South - in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana - refused to air it. And so our ratings plummeted.
By seeing a same-sex couple in ordinary situations, that it might make people think twice about if they have, you know, questions about acceptance of LGBT equality, it's one way to just say that, you know, 'We're members of your family and gay people are like anybody else.'
We have the history of slavery or inequality to women, and now the civil rights movement of the 21st century is the struggle for equality for the gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people. And I think it's important for Americans to know about the times that we failed.
Children are amazingly adaptable. What would be grotesquely abnormal became my normality in the prisoner of war camps. It became routine for me to line up three times a day to eat lousy food in a noisy mess hall. It became normal for me to go with my father to bathe in a mass shower.
I'm optimistic, and I have a lot of goals. And I obey the laws of nature: I eat, exercise, and rest properly. But mostly it's about keeping the mind engaged. My grandmother lived to 104, and she had all of her faculties. I'm physically active and devout - just not as Buddhistic as she was.
Our democracy is dependent on people who passionately cherish the ideals of a democracy. Every man is created equal with an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's a wonderful idea, and it takes people who cherish that idea to be actively involved in the process.
'Star Trek' is science fiction. 'Star Wars' is science fantasy. Based on the episodes I worked on, I think with 'Star Wars: Clone Wars,' we're starting to see a merging, though. It does deal, philosophically, with some of the issues of the time, which is always something 'Star Trek' was known for.
Up until the time I was cast in 'Star Trek,' the roles were pretty shallow - thin, stereotyped, one-dimensional roles. I knew this character was a breakthrough role, certainly for me as an individual actor but also for the image of an Asian character: no accent, a member of the elite leadership team.
Even before I could vote, I was involved in the political arena. My father was an admirer of Adlai Stevenson, and he took me to the Stevenson for President headquarters, and he volunteered me. That was my introduction to electoral politics, which was exciting and fun and thrilling and very theatrical.
This political climate today reminds me of what my father must have gone through in 1942, when the winds of war and fires of hate were surrounding him. We have a candidate for the presidency of the United States, Donald Trump, using the same rhetoric that my father must have heard from elected officials.
Gene Roddenberry continually reminded us that the Star Trek Enterprise was a metaphor for starship Earth. And the strength in this starship came from its diversity, coming together and working in concert as a team. That is the strength of our countries, Canada and the United States. We are nations of diversity.
Good grief. If we can’t laugh at ourselves, and at one another, in good spirit and without malice, then what fun can be left? If we must withhold all ribbing in the name of protecting everyone’s feelings, then we truly are a toothless society. We will reach what I call “the lowest common denominator of butthurt.
I remembered some people who lived across the street from our home as we were being taken away. When I was a teenager, I had many after-dinner conversations with my father about our internment. He told me that after we were taken away, they came to our house and took everything. We were literally stripped clean.
I had a really unusual, remarkably unusual father because he, in our family, was the one that suffered the most. He was the one that explained American democracy to me. He said, ‘Our democracy is a people’s democracy and it can be as great as people can be, and it can be great… but we are also fallible human beings.’
My father told me about American democracy. And he said you have to be actively engaged in the political process to make our democracy work. So I've been doing that my entire life. Civil rights movement. The peace movement during the Vietnam conflict. The movement to get an apology and redress for Japanese-Americans.
I've known Lisa Lampanelli for quite some time. We did the Shatner roast together. Lisa didn't know Shatner, but she's a popular roaster, so she was invited to do it, and she is fantastic. Actually, despite her public image, she's a very sweet lady and very sensitive. She cries very easily. Most people don't know that.
'Star Trek' fans totally accepted my sexual orientation. There are a great number of LGBT people across 'Star Trek' fandom. The show always appealed to people that were different - the geeks and the nerds, and the people who felt they were not quite a part of society, sometimes because they may have been gay or lesbian.
I think Donald Trump's interpretation of marriage is something that he himself doesn't really believe in. 'Traditional marriage' is where two people love each other, commit to each other, care for each other over the years. It is a meaningful ceremony, and his interpretation of that is not recognizing what real marriage is.
They didn't incarcerate the Japanese-Americans in Hawaii. That's the place that was bombed. But the Japanese-American population was about 45 percent of the island of Hawaii. And if they extracted those Japanese-Americans, the economy would have collapsed. But on the mainland, we were thinly spread out up and down the West Coast.
We have to remember that Putin was a member of the KGB. He has already demonstrated that kind of macho, dictatorial attitude. Russia has breached their pledge to uphold the Olympic charter. This is a great opportunity for the IOC to say we cannot, given the situation that exists currently, allow the Olympics to take place in Russia.
When Brad and I got married in 2008, it got a lot of attention. And all the attention was over the fact that we were two men, but people were hardly conscious of the fact that we were entering into an interracial marriage. That's wonderful, because it was only 50 years ago with Loving v. Virginia that interracial marriages were made legal.