Discover this award-winning masterpiece before the release of George Takei’s deeply personal follow-up, It Rhymes With Takei (June 2025).

The New York Times–bestselling graphic memoir from actor/author/activist George Takei returns in a deluxe hardcover edition—now with sixteen pages of bonus content!

Experience the forces that shaped an American icon—and America itself—in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love.

This expanded edition features a new afterword by Takei, plus a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of They Called Us Enemy, including historical documents, scripts, sketches, photos, and more.

George Takei has captured hearts and minds around the world with his magnetic performances, sharp wit, and outspoken advocacy for equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he was a four-year-old boy whose own country declared him an enemy.

In 1942, following orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the West Coast was rounded up and forcibly relocated to one of ten “relocation centers”—internment camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. Takei’s firsthand account reveals the terror and resilience of those years: the small joys of childhood behind fences, his mother’s impossible decisions, his father’s tested belief in democracy, and the seeds of an extraordinary future.

What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? And when the world is against you, what can one person do?

To answer these questions, George Takei teams up with co-writers Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott and artist Harmony Becker for the journey of a lifetime.