George Takei describing being sent to an internment camp during World War II

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I was a five-year-old. My parents told-my father told us that we were going on a long vacation to a place called Arkansas. It was an adventure. I thought everyone took vacations by leaving home in a railroad car with sentries, armed soldiers at both ends of the car, sitting on wooden benches. And whenever we approached a town, we were forced to draw the curtains, the shade. We were not supposed to be seen by the people out there. We thought that was the way things happened. We saw people crying, you know, and we thought, “Well, why are they crying? Daddy said we’re going on a vacation.”

- George Takei, describing being sent to an internment camp during World War II