George Takei, who played Hikaru Sulu on the original “Star Trek” television series and is now a social media icon, visited The Heart Mountain Interpretive Center on Tuesday.
As a child during World War II Takei was held at Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas. This was a troubling time in American history, and Takei’s own experience being imprisoned, led to the creation of the Broadway musical, “Allegiance,” in which he stars. The story of “Allegiance” is fictional, but draws on historical events that occurred during Japanese internment.
Various members from the production of “Allegiance,” as well as George’s husband, Brad Takei, were also present at Heart Mountain. The internment camp referenced in “Allegiance” is Heart Mountain.
Brad Takei said the writer of “Allegiance” likely chose Heart Mountain out of the 10 U.S. internment camps because of its romantic name. “The reason he chose Heart Mountain was probably because it sounds so poetic,” he said. “You need an image that’ll communicate love and loneliness.”
This was George Takei’s first visit to the Park County site. On his drive out to Heart Mountain he noted the desolation and tried to put himself in the shoes of those coming here for the first time in 1942. “I tried to put myself in that place,” George Takei said. “We drove through a portion that kind of broke my heart.”
Upon Takei’s arrival he spoke with two men who had been confined at Heart Mountain: Sam Mihara and Takashi Hoshizaki. Both now serve on the board of directors for the interpretive center and come back up to four times a year.
Hoshizaki arrived at Heart Mountain as a 16 year old with his parents, four sisters and one brother. While Hoshizaki said he enjoyed exploring Heart Mountain, being a part of Boy Scouts and finding out which mess halls had the best food, he knew something wasn’t right. By the time he turned 18 he had joined a resistance group within Heart Mountain called the Fair Play Committee.
The group was made up of 63 men who were resisting the draft on principle that their civil rights were already being stripped from them.
“Our stand was, ‘give us our civil rights back, get our families back to where we came from and we will gladly serve,’” Hoshizaki said. Hoshizaki and the men were arrested and tried in Cheyenne.
“We were the forerunners,” Hoshizaki said. “They wanted to make sure we didn’t start up a ground swell of resistance.”
The men were sentenced to three years at McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary in Washington state. Hoshizaki said going to prison didn’t phase him, because he had already been living behind barbed wire for two years at Heart Mountain. He only served two years of his sentence. Hoshizaki, along with the other members of the Fair Play Committee, was pardoned by President Truman nearly a year after the war ended.
From the Cody Enterprise