This episode was finally rerun in the United States, on the Syfy channel, during a complete Twilight Zone marathon on January 3rd, 2016.
Taro "Arthur" Takamori says he was four years old when the Pearl Harbor attack happened, just like George Takei who plays him.
Actor George Takei was imprisoned with his family in a United States internment camp after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He went on to write a Broadway play about the experience.
This episode sparked some intense controversy for CBS after it was first aired in 1964. Due to strong critical blow-back for its overt racism and revisionist history, CBS pulled this episode out of syndication and it was not rebroadcast again on any network in the U.S. until 2016; although it did air in other countries and was also not removed from streaming services or home video/DVD sets. The Encounter triggered audience and reviewer criticism of the episode as antithetical to the series' normally positive treatment of otherwise sensitive social, religious, and racial subject matter.
One of only four The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes to exclusively use, aside from Rod Serling, only 2 onscreen actors. The others are Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room (1960) starring Joe Mantell and William D. Gordon, Two (1961) starring Elizabeth Montgomery and Charles Bronson, and A Game of Pool (1961) starring Jack Klugman and Jonathan Winters.