George Takei will share the story of his time while incarcerated in a World War II internment camp as a child during a one-night event to launch a new exhibition at the Alphawood Gallery.
The gallery will present the event, An Evening with George Takei, at the Athenaeum Theater (2936 N. Southport Ave.) in conjunction with the opening of Alphawood’s first original exhibit, “Then They Came for Me: Incarceration of Japanese-Americans during WWII and the Demise of Civil Liberties,” organized with the Japanese American Service Committee. The event will take place on Sept. 7 at 7 p.m.
Takei was held in an internment camp alongside his family and thousands of other U.S. citizens after being forcefully removed from their homes under Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942. Decades later, he would go on to star as Hikaru Sulu, the helmsman of the Starship Enterprise, in “Star Trek,” and become a lifelong social activist and leader in the LGBTQ community—and a hilarious social media personality.
The exhibit at the Alphawood Gallery features artwork by photographers Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams, as well as artwork by Toyo Miyatake and Mine Okubo. The gallery is open Wednesday and Thursday 11 a.m.-8 p.m. and Friday through Sunday 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
Tickets for the event are $15, with $10 of each ticket being donated to the Japanese American Service Committee, and can be purchased at www.alphawoodgallery.org.
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