They Called Us Enemy

Summary: A memoir of George Takei's time in the Japanese Internment camps during World War II with some discussion about how they shaped his life after that time.

I do not read a lot of graphic novels, but I have found they work really well for history and memoir especially for discussion of eras where the visualization really matters. The March Trilogy by John Lewis is a very good example of this type of visual history that would communicate very differently in a straight narrative.

George Takei has been most known for his role as Sulu in Star Trek. But he has deftly used that fame to draw attention to gay rights, immigration and most especially, the history of the Japanese Interment camps. A graphic novel of that time is a natural outgrowth of his other work.

I always like to include a piece of art when I talk about graphic novels because art matters so much to the experience of reading a graphic novel. This is a frame from toward the end of the book when George Takei is processing what it meant to be in the internment camps with his father.



I read this on my new Onyx Boox Nova 2 with a 7.8-inch screen. It is an eink device, so black and white screen. It was very sharp and the art and text were very readable, but at times I did have to look at individual frames and not the whole page. It was easier to read on the Nova 2 than a 6-inch kindle, but still not quite large enough to always read without zooming into particular frames.