Therefore, when he speaks on such matters, he does so not with the frivolous air of celebrity like one of the Kardashian clan, but as someone with serious authority on such matters by virtue of his personal experience. And today, he's denounced the Trump administration's family separation policy in a blistering op-ed in Foreign Policy magazine:

"In one core, horrifying way this is worse. At least during the internment of Japanese-Americans, I and other children were not stripped from our parents. We were not pulled screaming from our mothers' arms. We were not left to change the diapers of younger children by ourselves."

[...]

"When a government acts capriciously, especially against a powerless and much-reviled group, it is hard to describe the terror and anxiety. There is nowhere to turn, because the only people with the power to help have trained their guns and dogs upon you. You are without rights, held without charge or trial. The world is upside down, information-less, and indifferent or even hostile to your plight. And yet, with hideous irony, I can still say, 'At least during the internment ...'

"At least during the internment, when I was just 5 years old, I was not taken from my parents. My family was sent to a racetrack for several weeks to live in a horse stall, but at least we had each other. At least during the internment, my parents were able to place themselves between the horror of what we were facing and my own childish understanding of our circumstances. They told us we were 'going on a vacation to live with the horsies.' And when we got to Rohwer camp, they again put themselves between us and the horror, so that we would never fully appreciate the grim reality of the mosquito-infested swamp into which we had been thrown. At least during the internment, we remained a family, and I credit that alone for keeping the scars of our unjust imprisonment from deepening on my soul.

"I cannot for a moment imagine what my childhood would have been like had I been thrown into a camp without my parents. That this is happening today fills me with both rage and grief: rage toward a failed political leadership who appear to have lost even their most basic humanity, and a profound grief for the families affected."

[...]

"But unless we act now, we will have failed to learn at all from our past mistakes. Once again, we are flinging ourselves into a world of camps and fences and racist imagery -- and lies just big enough to stick.

"I wish that those, like me, who lived through this nightmare before didn't have to sound the alarm again. But as my father once told me, America is a great nation but also a fallible one -- as prone to great mistakes as are the people who inhabit it. As a survivor of internment camps, I have made it my lifelong mission to work against them being built ever again within our borders.

"Although the first camps for border crossers have been built, and are now filling up with innocent children, we have a chance to ensure history does not repeat itself in full, to demonstrate that we have learned from our past and to stand firmly against our worse natures. The internment happened because of fear and hatred, but also because of a failure of political leadership. In 1941, there were few politicians who dared stand up to the internment order. I am hopeful that today there will, should be, must be, far more people who speak up, both among our leaders and the public, and that the future writes the history of our resistance -- not, yet again, of our compliance."