Star of the original series, as well as the animated series and six movies, George Takei received an unsurprisingly warm welcome Saturday from Star Trek fans, and it is his work on the 53-year-old groundbreaking sci-fi series that he credits for the impact he has had on the social issues he has been addressing from the Civil Rights movement through today.

“You have amplified my voice,” Takei explains. “I can go out and speak out on issues I feel very strongly about, and this is what [fans of Star Trek] gave to me. Thank you so much for this gift.”

And it’s a gift he has used well. Starting in the late ’70s, Takei began working toward receiving an apology and redress from the U.S. government for the unconstitutional imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II. He testified at a congressional hearing about his experience as a 5-year-old child when American soldiers came and removed his family from their California home to a barbed wire prison camp in the swamps of Arkansas.

“I was categorized as an enemy alien at 5 years old,” recounts Takei, ignoring the on-stage chair and striding back and forth with a vigor that belies his 82 years. “We had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor, and yet, because of these faces, all Japanese Americans on the West Coast – 120,000 of us – were summarily rounded up, with no charges, no trial, no due process, in the most unconstitutional way, and imprisoned.”

It was in no small part due to his testimony that, 40 years later, President Ronald Reagan finally apologized on behalf of the United States for the wrongful imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Takei has continued to fight for the rights of others since then, drawing parallels between his experiences being persecuted as an innocent Japanese American during the war and the persecution of innocent gay men, many who were still in the closet, being wrongfully arrested in gay bars and having their photos taken simply to out them to their families and workplaces.

Though he continues to fight for “the equality and dignity of all human beings,” Takei clearly feels that the education of America on the atrocities of Japanese American imprisonment continues to be of vital importance, as it is the focus of two of his upcoming projects: the graphic novel They Called Us Enemy, releasing July 16, which recounts Takei’s childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II, and a 10-episode miniseries The Terror: Infamy, premiering August 12th, which tells of the horrors of life in the Japanese American prison camps.

You can listen to the entire panel below, which includes not only more details about Takei’s work with civil rights but humorous stories about his first meeting with Gene Roddenberry as well as why Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is really Star Trek VI: The Captain Sulu Movie.