George Takei fears Trump's proposed Muslim registry echoes Japanese American internment

Muslim Americans and activists from various groups are marching on the White House today (Decmber 12) to urge Barack Obama to dismantle a U.S. surveillance program for Arabs and Muslims that has been on hold since 2011.

Just as a filmed version of George Takei's internment musical is about to play in Canadian theatres, Takei has also express his fears of history repeating itself with Donald Trump as U.S. president.

The former Star Trek star and human-rights activist voiced his opposition to Donald Trump's proposed Muslim registry in America.

In an interview on MSNBC on December 8, Takei called Trump "uninformed".

Takei spoke about his own experience of his Japanese-American family being placed on a registry and then interned during the Second World War, despite the fact that all of them were born in the U.S.

"We were characterized as the enemy simply because we happened to look like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor," Takei said. "We are three generations here in this country, yet overnight, we became the enemy."

In November, Great America PAC spokesman Carl Higbie, a prominent Trump supporter, called the Japanese American internment a "precedent" for an immigrant registry.

“We’ve done it based on race, we’ve done it based on religion, we’ve done it based on region,” Higbie said. “We’ve done it with Iran back—back a while ago. We did it during World War II with Japanese.”

Takei called the registry a "prelude to internment" and urged American citizens to speak out against it.

"This is something that we cannot have happen again," he said. "It is dangerous and it is a moral bankruptcy. We've got to stand up and resist this."

Takei said he has devoted himself to preventing history and injustice from repeating itself with speaking engagements about the Japanese-American internment.

Takei transformed his internment experiences into the Broadway musical Allegiance, starring himself and Lea Salonga. The musical follows the Kimura family as they are forced to leave their homes after the bombing of Pearl Harbour.

A filmed version of the Broadway staging will screen for a special one-night presentation at select theatres across Canada on Tuesday (December 13), including Halifax, Toronto, Ottawa, and Calgary.

In Vancouver, it will screen at the Park Theatre (3440 Cambie Street) at 6:30 p.m. For information and tickets, visit the Cineplex website.