Japanese-Americans

George Takei understands the evolution of his popularity. As Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek TV series, he made fans of his own generation and they "raised their kids right" to form the next generation of Trekkies. Now, having made himself something of a social media rock star, Takei reaches all demographics.

Robert Emmett "Bob" Fletcher, who died on May 23 at age 101 in the Sacramento area, fought heroically to defend his fellow Americans during World War II, though he never put on a uniform or fired a shot. His struggle, though, was not against the Axis powers. Rather, it was  against an injustice perpetrated by the U.S. government itself: the 1942 forced relocation of 122,000 Japanese-Americans, most of them citizens, to internment camps, where they were held without charges out of a misguided suspicion that they might be disloyal. In addition to losing their liberty, the Japanese-American internees often lost the homes and businesses that they had to leave behind. In particular, Japanese-American farmers, who had to leave their crops untended, risked ruin.