To the Stars

by George Takei

  I tentatively thumped the floor with my foot. It was firm. It felt secure. But it sounded hollow. We had thousands of feet beneath that thin, light floor. My sweaty hands gripped the armrest firmly.

  “First time flying?” A portly businessman sitting next to me smiled.

  “Yes. I guess it shows,” I responded. “I’m loving it, though. I think it’s great.”

  “Isn’t it amazing,” he chortled. “I flew a bomber in the Pacific during the war, and here I am still flying. This time on business. Progress in aeronautics is amazing.”

  Then, without any indication of interest on my part, he proceeded to tell me how amazing he thought this progress had been.

  The man was a garrulous raconteur who rambled on and on to a captive audience tightly strapped in the seat. I kept an obliging but nervous smile on my face. I soon discovered that his favorite topic was his wartime air exploits. My smile froze in place, then slowly faded. He continued regaling me with his adventures. It was nerve-racking enough flying for the first time. Of all passengers on this full flight, why did I have to get for my seatmate an ex-bomber pilot who loved talking about bombarding Japanese?

  Then, out of the clear blue, he said, “I suppose you were in one of those Japanese camps here during the war.”

  I gripped my armrest—gripped it hard to restrain my welling emotion. To him, I thought, I’m probably still the same as those enemies he fought in the war. I felt like ignoring him and looked out the window. Immediately, the memory of Mrs. Rugen, my fourth-grade teacher who called me Jap, came rushing back into my mind. No, I won’t look away this time. I will confront him.

  With a tight smile, I turned to him slowly. As cool and as controlled as I could be, I answered, “Yes, I grew up in an internment camp in Arkansas. But, as a matter of fact, it was an American camp for American citizens of Japanese ancestry.” I got it out. It felt good.

  He sighed and looked down, shaking his head. “A terrible thing. A terrible thing,” he said, and sat there, silent for the first time, only shaking his head. I was puzzled. What did he think was terrible?

  “It was a terrible thing that was done,” he began slowly. “You know, during a war people do crazy things. One of my neighbors in Denver is a Nisei—Jack Ishihara. Sweetest guy you could know. Veteran of the war in Europe. Fought for old Uncle Sam while his family was behind barbed wire. Terrible thing. Terrible.” He sat there, mutely shaking his head.

  He knew. He understood. He wasn’t the man I had girded myself against. Suddenly, my unclenched muscles let loose a flood of emotions. I excused myself to go to the lavatory. I locked the door, and the pressure broke. Uncontrollably, the tears began to flow. There are people who know about us. There are people who understand. It took me some time to regain my composure. Then I washed my face and returned to my seat. The nerves had eased. I felt much lighter. Even the flight seemed smoother.

  My fighter pilot seatmate, too, was back in his chatty mode.

  “Did you know that the two most critical points in flying are the takeoff and then the landing?” he asked.

  Before I could answer his question, he was saying, “The landing is actually the tougher of the two.” Automatically, my fingers gripped the armrest again. I braced my foot. We were now descending.

  He nattered on and on about the various dangers involved in the landing process—wind shears, updrafts, downdrafts, atmospheric instability, and other ominous-sounding pilot jargon—as my grip got sweatier. The plane dipped. Then violently, it jounced and trembled.

  “Whoops,” the man exclaimed, as my stomach seemed to surge up into my throat. But he seemed to take all of the turbulence in stride. I was a tight ball of nerves as the tarmac of Denver’s Stapleton Airport began rushing up at us. We could hear and feel the vibrations of the landing wheels reaching out for the ground. A hard bounce, and, for just a moment, the wheels touched solid earth, then again, and again. Then we were rolling on the runway. The entire plane burst out in relieved applause.

  I grinned at my loquacious seatmate as we joined in the clapping. But my applause was not only for the pilot of this aircraft. It was also an appreciative hand for the lesson my fighter pilot seatmate had unwittingly taught me. Amazing advances may have been made in aeronautics, but remarkable progress was being made in people as well.

  * * *

  Colorado Springs was a glorious setting for a group of young student leaders to gather and commune—with each other and with nature. The air was crisp and stimulating; ancient cedar trees rose up into the heavens. The exchange of ideas was animated and the participants’ optimism soaring. Our anthem, written by a black songsmith, Evelyn Burwell, said it all:

  In hearts too young for enmity,

  there lies the way to make men free.

  When childish friendships are worldwide,

  new ages will be glorified.

  Let child love child and

  wars will cease.

  We were going to change the world. The older generation had despoiled everything with its wars, pollution, and greed. We were the ones with the ideas, the energy, and most of all, the will to make things better. I returned to Los Angeles fired up.

  * * *

  Idealism can have a grim underside. Youthful idealism especially is vulnerable to it. Its shine can become dulled by arrogance, an insidious self-righteousness. To this day, I deeply regret a painful conversation I had with Daddy on arriving home from Colorado Springs. I want to wish it away somehow.

  It was after dinner, and everyone else had left the table. Only Daddy and I remained sipping tea. He wanted to know all about my Colorado experience. I could sense his pride in my exuberant recounting of my summer adventures. His son was fulfilling more of his expectations.

  I told him about our discussion sessions, the campfire singing at night, the beauty of the scenery, the dynamism of the city of Denver, and I told him about the terror and exhilaration of my first air travel experience. Then I shared with him the insight I had gained from my fighter pilot seatmate. I said to him, “People change, Daddy. This man was bombing Japanese during the war, and now he’s living next to a Japanese American. He understands the distinction, and he knows that what was done to us was wrong.”

  And then I asked pointedly, “Daddy, why did we go to camp? Why did you comply with what was fundamentally wrong? Why did you take us to those camps?”

  He thought silently for a moment forming his response, then he answered, “You have to know what it was like back then. All the forces were against us. I had you kids to consider.”

  “But it was wrong, Daddy,” I interrupted. “By your going, you acquiesced to the wrong. You passively consented.”

  He gazed at his teacup and took a sip. “Then what is it you think I should have done?” he asked calmly.

  “I would have protested. It was wrong—period! And the decent Americans knew it. With an appeal to the consciences of good people, I know it could have been stopped.” Then I added vehemently, “The trouble with the Japanese is, we’re too passive. We don’t speak up. We can’t raise our voices. I would have protested!”

  Daddy sat there listening to my gush of passion. When I finished, he remained silent. Then, with a patient tone that angered me even more, he said, “The circumstances were different then. It was a very different time. You’ll understand one of these days.”

  “When I grow up? Is that what you’re suggesting?” I retorted heatedly. “Well, I am grown up now. And I do understand a lot. I understand that you took us like sheep to slaughter into a barbed wire prison!”

  Daddy was quiet for a long time. He stared at his teacup and took a sip. Then he said with melancholic calm, “Maybe you’re right.” Then he got up and went into his bedroom.

  I was a young Japanese American who could speak up. I could speak up righteously—and foolishly. It still pains me today to think of that impetuous boy’s outspoken bluntness. His arrogance inflicted on his father, who knew the anguish of those dark internment years so much
more keenly than that boy could ever understand, was a second torment. My father suffered in silence the self-righteous condemnation from the son in whom he took so much pride—in whom he held so much hope. For both of us, Rohwer and Tule Lake were still not history.

  * * *

  L.A. High had many clubs—the Drama Club, Glee Club, Stamp Club, Chess Club, and a host of others. These were hobby clubs, and anyone who was interested could join them. I was a member of the Drama Club and the Glee Club.

  Then there were the elite clubs—the Barons, Nobles, and Cardinals. The most popular guys, the brightest guys, and the best athletes belonged to them. Just by virtue of their club memberships, they became envied members of the select “in” crowd of L.A. High.

  Some of my friends were members of these clubs. But how one became a member was a mystery to me. When I asked anyone, the only answer I got was a vague and evasive, “You have to be invited.” How the invitation was extended or by whom was never explained. It was shrouded in secrecy. But it wasn’t long before it dawned on me that an invitation would never be forthcoming to me. These clubs were all white. I became further aware of the fact that the Cardinals was all Jewish and that the Barons and the Nobles were white Anglo-Saxon Protestants—that stinging acronym, WASP.

  Although I felt very much a part of L.A. High, I was becoming conscious of the subtle distinctions that were drawn in certain sectors in the life of the school.

  I sang with the Glee Club and performed with it at student assemblies. But when Lerner and Loewe’s Brigadoon was announced as the big musical production of the school year, I was made acutely aware of the Scottish locale of the play. Casting, it was emphasized, would be based on creating the look of authenticity. I may have thought I had talent, but I knew I didn’t look like a Scotsman. I didn’t bother auditioning.

  Brigadoon was a radiant production, and the two guys who played the leads, Jerry Cottone and Dennis Daily, were terrific. They sang entrancingly and danced superbly. They and the entire company transported me to the misty, mystical Scottish highland village of Brigadoon. They were friends and classmates, and still they were able to work their magic on me. And they did something else. They enlivened in me again my suppressed theatrical yearnings. It would be wonderful to be an actor—to be the creator of all this magic. That dream gnawed at my insides.

  But I was a math-science student and got good grades. I was on the track team during the spring semesters and ran cross-country in the fall. I busied myself with student service activities and ignored my growing awareness of the invisible but nevertheless clear lines of distinction that existed around me. I held in check my personal aspiration and applied myself to fulfilling Daddy’s and Mama’s expectations of me. I studied hard to be accepted by a great university.

  * * *

  There are certain moments in a movie that seem to have resonance directly for one’s own life. Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront struck me profoundly.

  I knew nothing about the life of a longshoreman. The New Jersey waterfront was another country to me, and the drama of a power struggle in the labor movement was a totally new revelation. Yet, the movie was a shatteringly personal experience.

  The Brando character, Terry Malloy, had been a promising young prize fighter. He knew he was good. His dream was to win the title. But because of his brother Charlie’s ties to the mob-run labor organization, because he loved his brother, because he asked him to, Terry Malloy compromised himself and took a dive. He gave up a fight to an opponent he knew he could beat. And that one compromise became the turning point that haunted the rest of his life. He had a cushy position with the labor organization now. His brother became ensconced in a position of power. Life was good. Yet, somehow it was hollow.

  Brando’s famous scene in the backseat of the car with his brother Charlie was wrenching. Still remembering that long-ago event, Terry intones, “I did it for you, Charlie. I did it for you.” He gave up his dream for his brother, and life since had become blandly purposeless. Then the devastating lament, “I could’ve been a contender. I could’ve been somebody.” It was a powerful scene that resonated directly through to me. “I could’ve been a contender. I could’ve been somebody.” Those phrases haunted me long after the movie was over.

  * * *

  The clock tower’s mellifluous bells marked the hours, the days, and, before we knew it, the years at L.A. High. Soon, the carillon was pealing the ebbing days of our senior year.

  Tommy Wolver, a star basketball player, was student body president. I was Senior Board president. That fall, the L.A. High basketball team placed in the championship games, and Tommy was a leading player on our team. Our cross-country team ranked lowest in our league, and the best that could be said of me as a runner was that I was tenacious; I never gave up. Some people may read parallels between Tommy Wolver’s and my athletic exploits with our offices in student government. I prefer to think that Tommy ran for student body president and won. I ran for Senior Board president and I won.

  The big suspense, the most urgent concern of the senior year was our acceptance by the colleges of our choice. It was on everybody’s mind. The anxiety was palpable.

  I had decided to study architecture. It was an interest of mine that was acceptable to my parents. One of the great schools of architecture was at the University of California at Berkeley. Daddy was delighted and urged me to send my application there. The expectations now were becoming sharply focused. As it turned out, Tommy had applied for U.C. Berkeley as well. At least we had one anxiety that we could share—would we get in?

  When I got home from school one afternoon, Mama was waiting for me expectantly. An envelope had arrived from the University of California’s admissions office. I wanted to open it immediately. But Mama suggested that we wait until Daddy got home.

  “We open envelope together,” she said.

  “But,” I protested apprehensively, “we don’t know what it says. What if it’s a rejection?”

  “We open envelope together,” she repeated.

  Mama knew how to heighten suspense more keenly, more cruelly than even Alfred Hitchcock.

  It seemed an eternity before Daddy’s big, green Buick finally drove up the driveway. I opened the front door and waved the envelope at him.

  “The envelope from Berkeley’s arrived!” I yelled.

  “Did you get in?” he shouted back from the car.

  “I don’t know. We haven’t opened it yet. Hurry in so we can.”

  The second Daddy stepped through the door, I ripped open the envelope. I was in! I had been accepted. It was an indescribable joy—and great relief! I would be entering Berkeley for the spring semester of 1956.

  The next day, Mama went downtown to Little Tokyo and bought a large chunk of fresh tuna, white radishes, cucumbers, and all the necessary fixings for a sashimi dinner—one of my favorite dishes. “College cafeteria not serve sashimi. Boarding house not serve sashimi. Eat lots sashimi before you go Berkeley,” Mama insisted. She talked about Berkeley as if it were some foreign country that had never heard of Japanese restaurants.

  I had to admit, though, that Mama’s celebratory sashimi dinner was wonderful—the hot, steamy white rice with the cool, red meatiness of the raw tuna, perked up with a bit of wasabi, the pungent green mustard of Japan. It was delicious—and very special.

  Mama, in her singular way, was sending her first son off to be a student of architecture at a great school. Her son would become a designer of buildings that would soar up into the heavens. She was letting go of her child now. Her boy, no longer little, was going off to the famous academic institution—a goal for which she and Daddy had worked so hard and so long. This was their dream; their expectations and aspirations were about to be realized.

  I tasted that dream and their love in the warm, steaming bowl of rice. And I tasted it in the sting of the green wasabi as well. I was off to face newer, higher expectations.

  8

  Separate Dreams

  RISING TALL OV
ER THE WOODED hillside campus of the University of California at Berkeley, lean and austere like an obelisk of learning, loomed the tower of the Campanile. This classic column of gray marble was the dominant architectural presence over an eclectic collection of buildings, ranging from the vine-covered Victorian of North Hall in its immediate shadows, to the neoclassic pomposity of Wheeler Hall to its south, to the darkly aging shake-wood Craftsman of Wurster Hall on the far north side of the campus. This rustic structure was in distinct contrast to the formality of the rest of the campus architecture and was an incongruous home for the School of Architecture.

  Of all the structures on campus, the School of Architecture’s was the least impressive. Its low-lying frame structure was almost hidden in the embrace of a dense forest of spruce trees surrounding it. The well-worn wood floor of its corridors creaked as the students hurried from lecture halls to drafting rooms, with their fishing tackle boxes filled with drafting tools and other equipment. The surface of the corridor walls was pocked with scars from a long history of displaying student project renderings, posters, “roommate wanted” notices, and other such miscellanea. But it was also the most relaxed of all the buildings on campus—as comfortable and popular as a well-used common room in a dorm.

  The first few days were dizzyingly hectic. Moving into my dorm at Collegian Hall. Registering for classes. Buying the books and drafting tools. Opening a bank account.

  Occasionally, I bumped into friends from L.A. High, like Tommy Wolver. Yes, Tommy had made it here, too. It was good to see familiar faces in a bustling new environment, but they were quickly engulfed by the swirl of new people that came into my life. At Collegian Hall, my new friends were Joe Avakoff from faraway Alaska, unique also in that he was in the top scholastic percentile; Richard Clarke, who was on the G.I. Bill, a veteran of the Korean War with a full life experience behind him; and George Romero from Santa Rosa, working his way through school by “hashing” in the dorm dining room. Larry McCoy in my architectural design class told me he was “following in Dad’s and Grandpa’s footsteps,” the third generation in his family to be attending Berkeley. These people, each in their own way, were impressive. I knew the competition was going to be intense here. And I was determined to meet the challenges.