They Called Us Enemy
The graphic novel They Called Us Enemy was written by actor George Takei, Justin Eisinger, and Steven Scott. Published by Top Shelf Productions in 2019, all illustrations are by comic book artist Harmony Becker. It should be noted that, while three are credited for the graphic novel’s writing, the story is based on a true retelling of Takei’s own experiences growing up in several Japanese Internment Camps located across the United States.
On December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japanese war planes. Following the attack, American politicians rushed to pass laws labelling all Japanese Americans as “Enemy Aliens,” leading to racially motivated hate crimes, deep paranoia, and mass internment. George Takei (b. 1937), best known for this role as Star Trek’s lieutenant Sulu, spent years of his childhood being bounced between several of the Internment camps. His retelling is done through a lens of childhood naivety and innocence, interspliced with the anxiety his parents were experiencing as they cared for three children in the midst of losing everything.
Takei delves into what he experiences living in the camps, the racism he faced after leaving the camps, and seeing parallels in the mass deportations under Donald Trump’s first term. Seeing as we are now in the midst of his second term with more deportations happening, it seems even more appropriate to present this comic. What Takei retells and Becker depicts on the page is similar to what many are experiencing today; this unending fear of being grabbed off the street, of coming home to an empty house, of not knowing what happened to someone you love.
This is not the first instance of a comic book being used to tackle uncomfortable topics or themes. The horrors of the Hiroshima bombings are covered by the Japanese manga series Barefoot Gen, meanwhile Joe Sacco’s comic Palestine is a non-fictional retelling of Sacco’s experiences speaking with Palestinians under occupation while visiting the Gaza strip. They Called Us Enemy is one in a long line of comic book retellings of history, masking much of the horror through a veneer of entertainment.
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– Olivia, Special Collections Graduate Art History Fieldworker
