Is ugly chapter in US history going to repeat? Actor George Takei worries it will.

One of actor George Takei's earliest memories was the day two soldiers turned up, pointed their bayonets at his father and told the family they had five minutes to vacate their Los Angeles home.

Takei, who was 5-years-old, stood in the driveway with his younger brother and watched one of the soldiers escort his mother out of the house. She carried his baby sister in one arm and a giant duffel of their belongings in the other. Tears streamed down her face.

"That terror is seared into my brain," Takei, 87, told USA TODAY.

Now, former President Donald Trump has vowed to invoke the same law as part of his efforts to toughen border controls.

Some experts on this historical time period say Trump's mass deportation plans have echoes of the widespread internments during World War II, in which more than 100,000 Japanese Americans, many of them U.S. citizens like Takei's family, were forcibly detained in prison camps.

German-Americans and Italian-Americans ? whose ancestral homelands were also at war with the U.S. ? were taken into custody, too, though not in the same numbers.

The whole chapter is widely considered a stain on American history, spurred by "racial prejudice wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership," by Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt and others, according to the U.S. Congress, which apologized for the events in 1988 and authorized payments of $20,000 to each interned individual in reparation.

But now, some experts on this period in history are worried that the United States is heading toward another chapter it may someday regret. And it is personal for Takei, who is most famous for playing the role of Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu in the series "Star Trek."

"We're trying to erase that stain by reminding Americans that we are a government 'of the people, by the people and for the people.'" said Takei, a vocal civil rights activist, including on social media. Now, "we have a former president behaving in the very same way as Roosevelt did."

Former president Donald Trump, a Republican, who is running in a too-close-to-call race against Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, has said repeatedly ? though sometimes he suggests it is a joke ? that he would be a "dictator for one day" if he resumes the presidency. He has said he would go after people he considers enemies, require personal loyalty from government workers, and deport upwards of 11 million immigrants, who he has said are "poisoning the blood of our country."

Trump variously describes his comments – at times using language reminiscent of Adolf Hitler's ? as humorous or unserious. He says Democrats are the "autocrats" because they want to silence what they see as "hate" speech or because they've launched a "witch hunt" against him with criminal trials that have resulted in 34 felony convictions against him.

Trump, who recently said "I am not a Nazi, I'm the opposite of a Nazi," has promised to use the Alien Enemies Act to round up certain groups of immigrants, which is the same law used to detain Japanese-Americans, like Takei's family.

The law, passed in 1798, says foreign-born people in the United States “shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies" if they hail from a country with which the U.S. is at war.

Political labels and talking points

Trump's talking points have prompted some Democrats and even some Republicans, including members of Trump's last Cabinet, to call him a "fascist" and an "autocrat" – terms that refer to a style of leadership in which the executive has total control, and the people are essentially powerless.

In World War II, America's War Department told service members they were fighting fascism and warned against the dangers of fascism at home, saying it was often hard to identify but would come in the guise of a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.” Fascist leaders often target minority groups and blame them for the country's ills, the War Department cautioned.

Going further: Trump's former chief of staff says he fits the definition of 'fascist.' What that means

And fascists, it warned, would divide the world into two groups: “The world has but two choices – either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”

Trump and his allies have repeatedly labeled Harris a "communist," though her stated policies and beliefs do not match that ideology.

The rule of law

The Takei family spent the first night after their arrest squeezed into a horse stall at a local racetrack, with flies buzzing overhead, overwhelmed by the stench of horse manure.

"There were no charges, no trial, no due process," Takei said. "They didn't tell us anything … We had no trial, just soldiers pointing their bayonets at us."

That's the part that's considered the most "un-American" about what happened to the descendants of Japanese and other Americans, who were assumed without evidence to be enemies of the country where they were born, simply because of the way they looked or where their grandparents had come from.

Later, Takei's family was shipped by train to an internment camp in Arkansas, one of 10 such camps in the U.S. He said it was truly a "concentration camp," and the places Jews and others were sent in Germany, which have been described by that name, were really "death camps."

"It's an ironic word to use: We were 'lucky,'" Takei said. "The United States government at that time behaved in the same way as the Nazis did in Europe."

After the war, the family ended up back in Los Angeles, living on Skid Row. The government had frozen the bank accounts of all those it interned, so the Takeis lost everything, including their home and his father's high-end dry-cleaning business across the street from Bullocks Wilshire department store. He eventually ended up in real estate.

What happened to his family, Takei said, "is an important chapter in American history."

That's why he became a political activist, as well as an actor, helping among other things, to start the Japanese American Citizens League. "We're strong believers in the rule of law."

Trump's supporters say rule of law is a prime reason they support his plan to use the Alien Enemies Act to massively deport immigrants who are living in the country unlawfully.

Related: Trump and his soldiers: How some defense leaders expect him to use the military

Immigration experts have questioned the feasibility of mass deportation, given the federal government's limited staffing and detention capacity.

But former Trump administration officials – including the architects of his immigration policy, Stephen Miller and Tom Homan – have said Trump would leverage the U.S. military and National Guard to accomplish the task.

"I hear a lot of people say, you know, the talk of a mass deportation is racist," Homan told CBS' 60 Minutes in October. "It's threatening to the immigrant community. It's not threatening to the immigrant community. It should be threatening to the illegal immigrant community."

He added that families wouldn't have to be separated: "Families can be deported together," he said.

More: Trump's deportation plan: A cost to taxpayers, billions for big business

William Wei, a historian and Asian-American history expert at the University of Colorado Boulder, said the Alien Enemies Act was misused to round up people of Japanese descent back in 1941 because two-thirds of those arrested were American citizens.

The FBI and Naval Intelligence later determined that Japanese-Americans did not constitute a threat to the United States. The law, which puts people under arrest merely because of who they are, goes against American values, Wei said.

"The moment you begin holding groups of people collectively responsible for crimes," he said, "it's a violation of our ideals of individualism."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Actor George Takei worries Trump will force US to repeat dark past