Touring a Japanese-Canadian internment camp near Hope, actor George Takei said he admires Canada and urges us to learn from our mistakes.
Takei, who portrayed Mr. Sulu in Star Trek, is in the Vancouver area to promote his book "They Called Us Enemy."
During the Second World War, Japanese Canadians and Americans were stripped of their property and placed in camps throughout North America.
“We were innocent people, we had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor,” said Takei. “But we happen to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor.”
He was five years old when he and his family were forced to leave their home.
“Literally at gunpoint they ordered us out,” he recalled.
Prolific on social media and never afraid of sharing his opinion about the U.S. President, Takei said publishing his graphic memoir comes at a critical time in the U.S.
“He’s tearing children away from their parents and putting them in disgusting filthy cages,” he opined about Donald Trump and U.S. government policy at detention centres along that country's southern border.
On Monday, Takei visited the Tashme Japanese Canadian intern camp in the Sunshine Valley, about 130 kilometres outside of Vancouver. During the war, more than 2,000 Japanese Canadians were forced to live there in old barns or tiny shacks.
Today, the site is a museum open to the public on Saturdays.
