Katy Perry has set her sights on opposing President-elect Donald Trump by producing a new public service announcement about the possible ramifications of his proposed Muslim registry — with a twist.
Perry, who was one of Hillary Clinton’s most vocal celebrity supporters throughout the presidential campaign, made the short film to warn people of the slippery slope Trump’s anti-Muslim proposals could lead to, and used the former internment of Japanese Americans during World War II as an example.
Perry’s PSA tells the story of Haru Kuromiya, an 89-year-old Japanese American who was interned by the government as a young girl with her family in 1942.
“We were an American family now living in an internment camp, and our constitutional rights were taken away from us,” Kuromiya says in the video. “It all started with fear and rumors, then it bloomed into the registration of Japanese Americans. Then the labeling with physical tags and, eventually, internment.”
After she tells her story, the film features a plot twist: The woman who was presented to the viewers as Kuromiya then takes off her glasses and reveals herself as Hina Khan, a Muslim American actress of Pakistani descent.
“Don’t let history repeat itself,” Khan then says.
The PSA’s director, Aya Tanimura, told the Los Angeles Times that Perry helped finance the expensive materials needed to film the scene.
“I think like a lot of us who are terrified of Trump’s ideals and policies, she is too,” Tanimura said. “And this is one instance where she’s able to help educate someone — even one person — on the horrors of the past and what could potentially be repeated.”
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, between 110,000 to 120,000 Japanese Americans on the Pacific coast were rounded up by the U.S. government by order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and placed in camps, and denied due process.
Perry is not the only celebrity standing up to the idea of a Muslim registry. George Takei, the Japanese American actor and activist who was himself interned as a young boy, started a petition denouncing Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric. The petition has so far reached more than 92,000 signatures.
Perry also plans to attend the Million Women March in Washington on Jan. 21 to protest Trump’s election.
WATCH Perry’s PSA below:
