NEED TO KNOW
- George Takei is the 2025 Honorary Chair of Banned Books Week
- The actor, author and activist kicked off the annual campaign, which raises awareness of book censorship, during an event at the Brooklyn Public Library in New York on Oct. 6
- Takei discussed his childhood experiences in a U.S. internment camp, which he wrote about in his own books, including the 2019 graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy
George Takei is continuing the fight against book censorship.
The actor, activist and author, 88, was named Honorary Chair of 2025’s Banned Books Week, an annual campaign that “highlights the value of free and open access to information,” according to their website.
Takei kicked off the campaign, which takes place this year from Oct. 5 to Oct. 11, during the Unscripted: A Night Against Censorship event at the Brooklyn Public Library in New York City on Oct. 6.
In conversation with poet and librarian Adeeba Rana, Takei discussed growing up in various U.S. internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II. His experiences were the subject of his 2019 graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy, which has also been the target of book bans in multiple school districts nationwide.
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“I grew up in a U.S. internment camp in three different places,” Takei said. “But we were forced out of our homes at gunpoint and taken to Santa Anita racetrack in the outskirts of Los Angeles … The camps weren’t built yet. We were taken there in a caravan of buses.”
The cover of ‘They Called Us Enemy’ by George Takei, Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott.
amazon
Takei and his family were eventually moved to a prison camp in Arkansas. Takei remembered that his father said the family was “going on a long vacation in the country.”
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“I was really excited,” Takei said. “I had never had a train ride before, so this was going to be a treat. The ‘country’ that we were going to took three days and two nights, way east from Los Angeles to the swamps of Arkansas.”
After the war, Takei and his family returned to Los Angeles.
“My father talked about [how] many parents of my generation didn’t talk to their children about the internment because it was such a painful, excruciating experience,” Takei said. “But my father did talk to me.”
George Takei in 2019.
John Lamparski/Getty
Takei has written multiple books, including the 1994 memoir To the Stars and the 2025 graphic memoir It Rhymes with Takei. The author previously spoke with PEOPLE about sharing his experiences during World War II with a new audience in the 2024 picture book My Lost Freedom.
“It’s an American story because it’s a chapter of American democracy, and yet so many Americans either know absolutely nothing about it or whatever they know is rather skimpy,” Takei said. “It’s so shocking to me that an event so important to the idea of American democracy is so little-known.”
During the Unscripted event, the actor also reiterated the power of stories, and shared that he was particularly impacted by James Baldwin’s 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room.
“I’m proud to serve as honorary chair of Banned Books Week, because I remember all too well the lack of access to books and media that I needed growing up,” Takei previously said in a statement.
“First as a child in a barbed-wire prison camp, then as a gay young man in the closet, I felt confused and hungry for understanding about myself and the world around me. Now, as an author, I share my own stories so that new generations will be better informed about their history and themselves.”
