On pages 30-44 of “They Called Us Enemy” by George Takei describe what we are learning about characters in the story(George Takei and/or his family)

In the brief interlude that takes place at President Roosevelt's house in 2017, the reader is asked to imagine what it must be like to visit such a site for Takei, as FDR was in some ways the author of his family's misery, having signed Executive Order 9066.

It is difficult to imagine a more literally dehumanizing experience than that faced by Takei and his family when they were sent to the Santa Anita racetrack and forced to live in stables like animals. (And upon leaving Santa Anita, they are given tags “like cattle” (36) to extend this cruel bestial metaphor.) The scenes depicting this venue evoke images of Auschwitz and the other concentration camps in Europe, and specifically may call to mind scenes from the Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman. The first panel is chaotic, as families arrive en masse with their belongings, and then the interned family is shown sleeping on cots and showering outdoors under a spigot. In these drawings, the adults are largely shown with worried and distressed facial expressions, while George is depicted smiling. As a child he is, to this point at least, sheltered from the reality of what is happening to him and his family. His father tells him they are on vacation to further protect him from the awful truth of the fact that they are being persecuted because of their ethnicity.

The scene on the train is disheartening, as it is punctuated with the sounds of people coughing, the result of illnesses contracted in the unhygienic conditions of the racetrack. Once more the adults are shown frowning and looking worried. One man holds his head in his hands. People cry and comfort one another. But George is depicted smiling with eyes aglow after his father tells him they are going on vacation. George believes this, because he does not know any better. “I thought everyone took vacations on a train with armed sentries at both ends of each car” (39), he recalls.