Shot, itainly a long think there are republicans out there may be including tom cole who are hoping for this to end up in a contested convention with paul ryan is the dark horse nominee. Prospects arethe as good as he is seen them in as many years in politics. He suggested donald trump does not have the requisite number of delegates, anything could happen. Host it will be interesting to watch over the next couple of months. Thank you for being our guest this week. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] the need for horses on the farm began to decline radically in the 1930s. Thats not until the 1930s they figured out how to make a rubber tire big enough to fit on a tractor. Andting in the 19 30s 1940s, you had an almost complete replacement of horses as the work animals on farms. I read that in the decade after world war ii, we had Something Like a horse holocaust that the horses were no longer needed and we did not get rid of them in a very pretty way. Gordon,ht, robert professor of economics at northwestern university, discusses his book. Of thes at the growth American Standard of living between 18701970 and questions its future. One thing that often is the impactle of Superstorm Sandy on the east coast back in 2012. That wiped out the 20th century for many people. The elevators no longer worked in new york area the electricity stopped. You cannot charge her cell phone. You could not pump gas into your car because it required electricity. The power of electricity and the internal Combustion Engine to make modern life was is something people take for granted. Tonight at 8 00 eastern. Both tv is in prime time on cspan2 starting monday night at 8 00 eastern. We will feature a series of programs on topics from politics and education to medical care and national security. Plus, encore presentations from recent book festivals. Tune in for book tv in prime time, all next week on cspan2. Takei talks george tw ofut the imprisonment japaneseamericans during world war ii. He is currently the star of the Broadway Musical, of allegiance, which is based on his experience of living in a japanese internment camp. Welcome to a special event, barbed wire to broadway. I will moderate the discussion tonight and tonight we are fortunate to have george takei joining us for a discussion about an unfortunate chapter in our nations history, the over 120tion of thousand persons of japanese descent, most of them birthright american citizens, during the second world war. George was a part of that. His own childhood experiences in informed the currently running Broadway Musical allegiance. s acting career has spanned five decades includes many roles , the first one in which i became aware was his eye comic and unforgettable portrayal of the helmsman of star trek, mr. Sulu. It includes many others. He is not just an actor. He is also an unprecedented social media presence. He is an activist for many causes speaking out for the people and Asian Americans and many others. In recognition of his contribution to the relationship between the United States and japan, he was awarded the order of the rising sun, gold raise with rosette, by his majesty the emperor of japan. Please join me in welcoming george takei. [applause] thats what they told me. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for the invitation to be here and to the ambassador in the japan society. Its a pleasure to be here and to have a discussion with you titled written a novel allegiance. I am halfway through that now so dont reveal any spoilers. [laughter] but youl try not to probably know a fair amount of it already. Your own allegiances based in part on your experiences and inspired by them. My book is as well and i read your autobiography as part of my research for that book. I found it very inspiring and touching. Perhaps you would like to start by setting the Historical Context for the audience. The detention of japaneseamericans is, i think, not covered in our schools as well as it should be. Its not a subject as well known as it should be because i think there are so much to learn from it. Perhaps you can start by telling us a little about the historical background before we go on to your own personal experiences. I am an actor and i know the power of stereotypes. There is a long history of the stereotype depiction of asians and Asian Americans in the media in the United States. Backdrop for the bombing of pearl harbor to trigger this hysteria. That swept the country. We looked like the people who bombed pearl harbor. All the stereotype images promoted by the media fed into that war hysteria. There was also racial prejudice. From the very beginning, when immigrants started coming asia, they were denied naturalized american citizenship. Immigrants coming from anywhere in the world could ultimately look forward to become naturalized americans accept immigrants from asia. There was that racial discriminatory background as well. Used to denyas land rights to asian immigrants. From asia, naturally [laughter] were denied the right to buy land but there was no language to that effect in the law. All it said was aliens ineligible to citizenship were denied landownership in california. That was first passed in california and then later by oregon and washington state. Subterfuge had to be used by asian immigrants. My grandfather was a wily guy. He developed land that was wasteland into a productive farmland in the Sacramento Delta area. He wanted to own it but he couldnt because of that aliens land law. He bought it in the name of his , because son, my uncle he was a native born american. Used his young son who owned the property you work so there was all sorts of discrimination based on race. Started, there were ambitious politicians who used that existing racial prejudice combined with war hysteria. In california, we had an attorney general who obviously knew the law and the constitution. But he was also an ambitious politician. Elected governor of california and he saw that the single most popular political issue in california was to get rid of the jabs issue. This attorney general who knew the constitution became an outspoken advocate, a leader, in the get rid of the japs movement. He made an amazing statement. He said there have been no reports of spying or several times by japaneseamericans. And that is ominous. [laughter] because the japanese are inscrutable. [laughter] you dont know what they are thinking and so we better lock them up before they do anything ,o for this attorney general the absence of evidence was the evidence. That kind of Political Leadership fed into the existing prejudice and war hysteria. We were incarcerated. That attorney general won the election for governor and he was reelected and reelected again. It was a record. He became a very popular governor of california. And then he was appointed to of thethe chief Justice Supreme Court of the United States. I think many of you may have guessed who he is. His name is earl warren, the great liberal Supreme Court justice. All the background led to the incarceration of innocent citizens who happened to be of japanese ancestry. Its an interesting question how things like this happen. There are several factors that come together. Back round of racism and some people you can identify opportunists and to get their own economic advantages. Then i think you also have to resign have to assign responsibility to the people who are not willing to stand up and say this is wrong. Episodes like this happen when bad actors but widespread indifference. I hope thats maybe something we can learn from the past and a lesson we can take lowered for the future. Take forward for the future. In this climate of fear with some people stoking the fire of racial prejudice and war hysteria, president roosevelt issues executive order 9066 authorizing excluding such people as he deems necessary for the west coast. This did not say anything about japanese and trust ancestry but everybody knew thats what it was about. That man, general john dewitt, begin issuing orders requiring japanese and japanese americans to leave the west coast. There was no place they could go. Order laters, the said you cannot leave until your order to when we order you to leave, you will only be allowed to go to one of these camps. Could you tell us more about your personal experience in that program . Age was incarcerated from five to 8. 5. It was the duration of the war. I remember the tension and anxiety on the part of my parents. I just celebrated my fifth birthday. A few weeks after that, my got my younger brother and her baby sister, not yet a got a veryd they early one morning and dressed us a my brother and i were told to wait in the living room. While they were packing in the bedroom. We were gazing out the front window and we saw two soldiers with a an its on their rifles marching up our driveway. They stopped at the front porch and banged on the door. Scary thatember how bang was, very loud. My father answered it and we were ordered out of our home. My father gave us little packages to carry. And my father i stood on the driveway waiting for my mother to come out. When she finally emerged, she had her baby sister in one arm and a huge duffel bag and the other and tears were streaming down her face. Happened to me at five years , the terror morning of that morning is still embedded in my memory. That was the beginning of it. We were taken to the san anita racetrack with other families and herded to the horse stalls, the stable area. We were each assigned a horse stall to live in. For my parents, it was degrading, humiliating, anguishing experience to go from a twobedroom home to a narrow, smelly horse stall. Another memory i have as a five euro here, i thought it was fun to sleep where the horses sleep. [laughter] my real memories are quite different. They are quite unrepresentative of the real experience that my parents had. Father told us we were going on a long vacation. It was that for me. It was a fun experience to ride on the train for the first time. We were taken to the swamps of arkansas but the first winter it snowed. I remember how magical that morning was to wake up in the morning and see everything covered in white. I remember we had snow fights with my father. He showed us that the snowball could be rolled and made into great big huge snowballs and we could build a snow fort. Those are the memories i cherish. I also have the memory of black tarchool in a paper baric. At the end of the school day, every morning, was the pledge of allegiance to the flag. I could see the barbed wire fence and the Century Tower outside the window as i recited the words with liberty and justice for all. How this very touching closeness of your family and that intimate circle could transform what was a terrible injustice and an experience that was actually pleasant in some ways. I suppose many of the children did not understand what was going on. Of course your parents did. Do you know how that made them feel about the country . Your mother was a birthright american citizen. Yes, born in sacramento. , i would have to explanation how that was a farm area near sacramento and got absorbed into sacramento so i just say sacramento. For my parents, it was the most anguishing period of their lives. As a teenager, i became very curious about my childhood incarceration which i experienced with the innocence of a child. I wanted to know more about it because i read civics books. I was 14 or 15 by this time. I was also inspired by dr. Martin luther king and his ideals. I was active in the Civil Rights Movement. I could not really quite why thatd how and incarceration happened. I had many long discussions with my father after dinner. I must say my father was an unusual japaneseamerican of his generation. So many japaneseamericans who experienced the internment as adults and felt the pain did not want to inflict that pain and her anguish on to their children. So they didnt talk about it. Surprise, i talked to many younger japaneseamericans who saw our musical, allegiance told me backstage and they knew that grandma and grandpa were in camp at thats all i knew because the it not share. Because they did not share. I learned my familys history and why my parents did not want to talk about it for the first time by seeing allegiance and particularly the loyalty questionnaire. They knew nothing about the loyalty questionnaire. To give you some background, right after the bombing of pearl harbor, young japaneseamericans, like all young americans, rest to their Recruitment Centers and volunteered to serve in the military. This act of patriotism was answered with a slap in the face. They were denied military as enemynd categorized aliens. They were american citizens and they were called enemy aliens. Some protein it if some protested, that was revised to enemy nonaliens. They could not put down enemy citizen. They took the word citizen away from us and we became nonaliens. A year into imprisonment, the government had a wartime manpower shortage. There was all these young people they could have had that they denied military service to that we need now. How to get them . They came down with a loyalty questionnaire to establish whether they would be loyal and serving military. Question inrageous that loyalty questionnaire was one sentence question 28 which asks in that one sentence, 2 conflicting ideas. It asked will you swear your loyalty to the United States of america and for swear your loyalty to the emperor of japan . We are americans. We had no loyalty to the emperor. We never even taught of loyalty to the emperor. For the government to assume that there is a racial loyalty to the emperor when we are american, american born an american educated, it was outrageous. No i dont have a loyalty to the emperor, that same no applied to the first part of the same sentence will you swear your loyalty to the United States . If you answered yes meaning i do swear my loyalty to the United States, then you were confessing that you had been loyal to the are ready to for swear and set aside that he to the emperor. Pledge loyalty0United States it was outrageous and at became one of the two most controversial questions. My father was anguished by that. He shared that with me as well as a lot of other parts of the internment we discussed after dinner. Me our explained to american democracy. He said its a people democracy. It can be as great as the people make it but its as fallible as human beings are. Drivele, earl warrens was ambition at any cost and he told me that story about earl warren. Our democracy is dependent on people who cherish the highest ideals of our democracy and actively engage in the process. He took me downtown to the attlee stephenson headquarters. He said we volunteered that he volunteered me. I just tagged along. There i was working together with other passionate people dedicated to getting this great stevensone adlai who was the personification of the test of democracy elected. Thats what got me to be active and active in the social justice movement. The administrative and loyalty questionnaire is one of the point of moments in allegiance. It had this paradoxical contradictory nature in almost the same way that the absence of access seven ties being claimed as evidence of intent to make some concerted move is paradoxical. Paradox another sort of coour title allegiance or its about loyalty to the country and yet the whole program and what you describe is really an example of the country betraying its people. The japaneseamericans were betrayed by the u. S. Government and this great injustice was done to them. In act, the Supreme Court was not willing to say it at the time but later on, most people agree it was a constitutional violation. A very hard question is how to respond to that. Does a good job dramatizing this choice. Within the japanese american communities, there were different responses and some people wanted to do everything they could to prove their loyalty by complying with the program and volunteering for the armed forces and by answering the call to the draft when the government began drafting people out of the camps. Were other people who said whats truly patriotic is to resist his violation of the constitution and defend american ideals by actually challenging it. I was wondering if you could talk about that choice and the way that it comes up in allegiance. Those that bit the bullet and swallow the bitter taste and went to fight for this country were put through another outrage, segregated japaneseamerican units and sent out on the most Dangerous Missions and they sustained the highest combat casualties of any other unit. But they also fought with amazing courage and literally heroism and they did come back decoratedand the most unit of the entire second world war. That record still lasted until present times in the American Military history. And they fought with amazing, unbelievable courage and patriotism. , thoseder the resistors that you described as standing on principles and resisting the draft within a prison camp their position was a very american position. They paid a high price as well. They did hard time in federal penitentiaries for standing for american principles. I consider them just as heroic. We worked in a love story where the sister of the young man who goes to fight for this country falls in love with a resistor. She works with a resistor, marries him, and they build a family. When the young man comes home, that splits the family. That is a symbolic split of this the fracturebolize of the society. We see that today. People who were on opposite sides and because of that, paid a heavy price particularly the resistors particularly the resir families, there were many tragedies in those families, suicides were committed because of the vilification that they got from the veterans that , anrned and the j a. C. L. Organization that plays a part our drama, that is a Real Organization that exists today. I am a member of that organization because it became a change organization after the war changed organization after