10 Times Star Trek Went Woke
4. A Japanese Pilot With A Pan-Asian Name
Including the character who would become Sulu proved a challenge for Gene Roddenberry. He wanted the character to represent all of Asia, yet as George Takei would note, Asian surnames were nationally specific. Roddenberry was inspired by the Sulu Sea, which sat to the west of the Phillippines. He reasoned that an ocean touches all shores, thus his pilot was named.
Takei and Roddenberry both viewed Sulu as a character who would serve to reverse Asian stereotypes of the time. Takei himself had played these kinds of characters before - villains, untrustworthy, alien to a certain extent. Here was an Asian man who not only was the best helmsman in the fleet, and part of the starship's leadership team but also spoke with an American accent.
As Takei has detailed in the years that followed, anti-Asian sentiments were high in the post-WW2 and Vietnam years. Takei's graphic novel - They Called Us Enemy - describes his internment during the war, simply for being of Asian descent. The Asian American Movement gained traction in the 60s, itself supporting a Pan-Asian message, not unlike the name Sulu.
As Sulu was being created, various college campuses saw protests against Asian discrimination in the US. If we look at the word 'Woke' as its co-opted version - what could be more 'Woke' than including a character that directly legitimizes the hopes for these college-aged activists, particularly when those hopes are for a more racially inclusive future?