George Takei to judge: stay-at-home orders don’t compare to WW2 Japanese internment camps

“Star Trek” actor George Takei, whose family was detained in a Japanese interment camp during WWII, took issue with a Wisconsin supreme court justice comparing stay-at-home orders to control the spread of coronavirus to the cruelty his family and 120,000 other Japanese-Americans endured.

“Justice Rebecca Bradley of the WI Supreme Ct compared WI’s stay-at-home order to 'assembling together and placing under guard all those of Japanese ancestry in assembly centers during World War II,” the 83-year-old actor wrote on Twitter Thursday. “I’m in my own home watching Netflix. It’s not an internment camp. Trust me.”

Bradley made her comments last week during a virtual hearing of the Wisconsin State Legislature.

According to CNN, the justice further asked, “Could the (state’s) secretary under this broad delegation of legislative power or legislative-like power order people out of their homes into centers where are they are properly social distanced in order to combat the pandemic? The point of my question is what are the limits, constitutional or statutory?"

Bradley called government orders to restrain movement by citizens as “tyranny.”

Takei documented his experiences in a 2019 graphic book titled “They Called Us the Enemy.” He and his family were moved from their Los Angeles homes and put into guarded camps in 1942, where they remained until 1945. Tekai wrote that after being released, his family lived on the streets and he experienced racial discrimination in school.

More than 10,600 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Wisconsin, where 418 COVID-19 deaths have been reported. On Wednesday, Wisconsin’s supreme court ruled against the governor’s order to keep businesses closed and limit gatherings.