George Takei

A visual history of Japanese American car culture in Los Angeles, from gardeners' trucks and family sedans to hot rods and race cars.Cruising J-Town: Japanese American Car Culture in Los Angeles explores how generations of Japanese Americans in Southern California shaped, and were shaped by, local automobile cultures and industries: from desert lakebeds to concrete speedways, gas stations to design centers, souped-up import tuners to humble gardening trucks. Along the way, cars and trucks became literal and figurative vehicles for Japanese American self-expression, social mobility, community identity, and much more. Cruising J-Town is driven to explore how these diverse relationships between people and the world of cars have steered the Nikkei community's American stories across the generations.Interviews and oral histories chronicle the people and stories behind how Japanese Americans have played vital roles in countless car scenes throughout the region. Cruising J-Town is filled with vintage and contemporary photographs, drawings and ephemera that bring the story to life.

A moving, beautifully illustrated true story for children ages 6 to 9 about growing up in Japanese American incarceration camps during World War II--from the iconic Star Trek actor, activist, and author of the New York Times bestselling graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy. February 19, 1942. George Takei is four years old when his world changes forever. Two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares anyone of Japanese descent an enemy of the United States. George and his family were American in every way. They had done nothing wrong. But because of their Japanese ancestry, they were removed from their home in California and forced into camps with thousands of other families who looked like theirs. Over the next three years, George had three different "homes" the Santa Anita racetrack, swampy Camp Rohwer, and infamous Tule Lake. But even though they were now living behind barbed wire fences and surrounded by armed soldiers, his mother and father did everything they could to keep the family safe. In My Lost Freedom, George Takei looks back at his own memories to help children today understand what it feels like to be treated as an enemy by your own country. Featuring powerful meticulously researched watercolor paintings, this is a story of a family's courage, a young boy's resilience, and the importance of staying true to yourself in the face of injustice.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A CALIBA GOLDEN POPPY AWARD WINNER - A moving, beautifully illustrated true story for children ages 6 to 9 about growing up in Japanese American incarceration camps during World War II--from the iconic Star Trek actor, activist, and author of the New York Times bestselling graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy. February 19, 1942. George Takei is four years old when his world changes forever. Two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares anyone of Japanese descent an enemy of the United States. George and his family were American in every way. They had done nothing wrong. But because of their Japanese ancestry, they were removed from their home in California and forced into camps with thousands of other families who looked like theirs. Over the next three years, George had three different "homes" the Santa Anita racetrack, swampy Camp Rohwer, and infamous Tule Lake. But even though they were now living behind barbed wire fences and surrounded by armed soldiers, his mother and father did everything they could to keep the family safe. In My Lost Freedom, George Takei looks back at his own memories to help children today understand what it feels like to be treated as an enemy by your own country. Featuring powerful, meticulously researched watercolor paintings, this is a story of a family's courage, a young boy's resilience, and the importance of staying true to yourself in the face of injustice.

George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwidewith his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights.But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as afouryearold boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's andtheir entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. In 1942, at the order of President FranklinD. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded upand shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," hundreds or thousands of milesfrom home, where they would be held for years under armed guard. They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthandaccount of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing upunder legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith indemocracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishingfuture. What is American? Who getsto decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do? To answerthese questions, George Takei joins cowriters Justin Eisinger & Steven Scottand artist Harmony Becker for the journey of alifetime.

When “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the official U.S. policy on gays serving in the military, was repealed in September 2011, soldier Stephen Snyder-Hill (then Captain Hill) was serving in Iraq. Having endured years of this policy, which passively encouraged a culture of fear and secrecy for gay soldiers, Snyder-Hill submitted a video to a Republican primary debate held two days after the repeal. In the video he asked for the Republicans’ thoughts regarding the repeal and their plans, if any, to extend spousal benefits to legally married gay and lesbian soldiers. His video was booed by the audience on national television. Soldier of Change captures not only the media frenzy that followed that moment, placing Snyder-Hill at the forefront of this modern civil rights movement, but also his twenty-year journey as a gay man in the army: from self-loathing to self-acceptance to the most important battle of his life—protecting the disenfranchised. Since that time, Snyder-Hill has traveled the country with his husband, giving interviews on major news networks and speaking at universities, community centers, and pride parades, a champion of LGBT equality.

Best known as Mr. Sulu, helmsman of the "Starship Enterprise"TM and Captain of the "Starship Excelsior, " George Takei is beloved by millions as part of the command team that has taken audiences to new vistas of adventure in "Star Trek"&reg--the unprecedented television and feature film phenomenon. From the program's birth in the changing world of the 1960s and death at the hands of the network, to its rebirth in the hearts and minds of loyal fans, the "Star Trek" story has blazed its own path into our recent cultural history, leading to a series of blockbuster feature films and three new versions of "Star Trek" for television. The "Star Trek" story is one of boundless hope and crushing disappointment, wrenching rivalries and incredible achievements. It is also the story of how, after nearly thirty years, the cast of characters from a unique but poorly rated television show have come to be known to millions of Americans and people around the world as family. For George Takei, the "Star Trek" adventure is intertwined with his personal odyssey through adversity in which four-year-old George and his family were forced by the United States government into internment camps during World War II. "Star Trek" means much more to George Takei than an extraordinary career that has spanned thirty years. For an American whose ideals faced such a severe test, "Star Trek" represents a shining embodiment of the American Dream--the promise of an optimistic future in which people from all over the world contribute to a common destiny.