Despite his imprisonment during his youth, George Takei continues to love America and firmly believes and argues that American democracy is great. Through his experience, he learns that democracy in America is just as flawed as the people that comprise it. In his TED talk “Why I Love a Country That Once Betrayed Me,” Takei uses his emotions and life experiences to convey his message and thoughts about America’s democracy and a youth that was spent behind barbed wire in the country of his birth and citizenship. Takei takes the image of the barbed wire confining them and soldiers with bayonets and juxtaposes that with his ideas of freedom and pride in a country that provides its citizens with inalienable rights. Gaining the listener’s sympathy
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Takei uses pathos and his emotions to bring his story to life and personal anecdotes to explain the camps and life further afterward. Revealing how much his family struggled inside and out after going back to Los Angeles, he states “When the war ended, we were released, and given a one-way ticket to anywhere in the United States.Los Angeles was not a welcoming place. We are penniless. Everything had been taken from us, and the hostility was intense.” (par.5). When they were forced to leave their home, they had to leave their home and many possessions behind; possessions were then lost and their house had been sold. Along with that, the family had to completely rebuild themselves financially since the family business was also lost. They were still met with resentment and suspicion of plotting with the Japanese military, and at that point, the camps seemed more like home than Los Angeles did. He recalls a moment soon after they were released: “Once a drunkard came staggering down, fell right in front of us, and threw up. My baby sister said, ‘Mama, let’s go back home,’ because behind barbed wires was for us home.”
Takei uses pathos and his emotions to bring his story to life and personal anecdotes to explain the camps and life further afterward. Revealing how much his family struggled inside and out after going back to Los Angeles, he states “When the war ended, we were released, and given a one-way ticket to anywhere in the United States.Los Angeles was not a welcoming place. We are penniless. Everything had been taken from us, and the hostility was intense.” (par.5). When they were forced to leave their home, they had to leave their home and many possessions behind; possessions were then lost and their house had been sold. Along with that, the family had to completely rebuild themselves financially since the family business was also lost. They were still met with resentment and suspicion of plotting with the Japanese military, and at that point, the camps seemed more like home than Los Angeles did. He recalls a moment soon after they were released: “Once a drunkard came staggering down, fell right in front of us, and threw up. My baby sister said, ‘Mama, let’s go back home,’ because behind barbed wires was for us home.”