‘Junko Owaki. An American girl who happened to be born in Japan.’ : Girl Pays With Her Life to Taste Freedom in U.S.

Families growing up in this city of families used to count the years summer to summer, holiday to holiday, birthday to birthday.

That was before Junko Owaki. Now, some mark time from the date the sweet-faced Japanese girl first arrived to the day she disappeared, from the day her mutilated body was found to the day two teen-agers were charged in her death. On Monday, their defense attorneys will request a witness gag order. Their preliminary hearing is set for July 30.

The brief, intense Americanization of Japanese exchange student Junko Owaki ended in a rainy-night murder that made headlines in Japan and shook the sturdy foundations of this city of 132,000.

Her story is one of assimilation gone awry, of a shy Japanese girl eagerly emerging from her cultural cocoon a sort of fragile American butterfly, living freely, trusting openly, dying violently.

“Junko Owaki,” she had doodled in a notebook that Hal Cole found in her desk. “An American girl who happened to be born in Japan.”

One of three children born to a doctor and an artist, Junko arrived from her native Tokyo to live with Hal and Char Cole and their two teen-age sons in 1984. Char Cole remembers how they picked her out of the airport crowd in her jeans and red high-top sneakers, how she looked up at them, big brown eyes through bangs, and said, “My name is Junko. In America, please call me Jane.”

Friendly, Outgoing, Eager

The Coles, who had been host family to earlier exchange students, were delighted by the friendliness of their new charge, but they knew from experience the difficulties young Japanese have adjusting to American life. On the one hand, they are used to mobility, moving freely and fearlessly on Tokyo’s excellent public transportation, a luxury foreign to Fremont’s suburban sprawl. At the same time, they are accustomed to having adults plan their lives.

“Their maturation levels are really different than our kids’. They’re a couple of years behind, especially the girls,” Char Cole said. “They’re not allowed to make any decisions for themselves at all.”

But the outgoing Junko was eager to make choices, and she fit well into the close-knit Cole family. She called the Coles Mom and Dad. The family, including sons Lance, 15, and Scott, 14, took frequent trips; color photos show a smiling Junko at Disneyland and at half a dozen other amusement parks.

She became involved in church youth groups, played drums alongside Scott in the Irvington High School band and worked hard at her studies and her art--painting, sketching and ceramics.

“When she came, she was rather shy, anxious to learn about America, anxious to fit in, to be successful in her language and her classes,” said Dr. Dan Meyer, her counselor at Irvington, where she earned A’s and Bs. As success came and her self-confidence grew, so did her love for all things American. Candy and junk food became a passion; Junko once ate so much ice cream that she became sick, and she was thrilled by a case of peanut M&M;’s the Coles gave her for Christmas.

Her real addiction, though, was to sweet freedom. The more she tasted, the more she craved.

“She was a free spirit,” said John Landers, a teacher at a neighboring high school who later rented a room to Junko. “She loved it here. I’m sure she intended to stay.”

Japanese youth “see America as representing freedom,” said Shelley Hyde, assistant director of the Cultural Homestay Institute, which sponsored Junko’s visit the first year.

“Everything’s so big, and that means freedom to them because they’re used to such a confining life style,” she said. “But sometimes, they think they can come here and be totally free to do whatever they want without realizing that most of the time, the only freedom you have is through a level of responsibility.”

In her year with them, the Coles refused to let her buy a car or to date out of a sense of responsibility to her parents, and they were disturbed by some of the changes they saw in her.

“Toward the end of the time she was here, she was a little rebellious, she would do a little talking back and stuff she had never done,” Cole said. “It was kind of normal for an American kid, but it was out of place for her. I felt she was too independent.”

Her independence showed on her hands: nail polish--green, purple and finally black; rings on every finger. When she returned to Tokyo after the school year, her hair was permed and she wore three earrings in each ear. She turned 18 that summer, and she made plans to return to Fremont on her own and graduate from Irvington.

Difficulties With Reality

“The magic of being 18 and a senior--it’s cars, it’s not having to do what you’re told,” Char Cole said. “I have a sense she was just excited about being free. . . . I think she had a hard time putting together what she dreamed it was going to be like and the reality of the situation.”

Junko lived with Hal Cole’s son, Brad Cole, and his wife until just after Christmas, but there was friction. She once stuffed her bed to make it appear she was there so she could sneak out late at night, and she tried to forge Brad Cole’s name to a school absentee excuse.

She left when she decided they had become too much like parents and moved in with the Landerses. She was out more than she was in, but she brought her friends around, and they impressed Landers as decent, relatively straight kids who lived for the pursuit of fun.

“Their big values were friendships and being with each other and going places,” he said. “They’d go to movies a lot or bowling or just be at somebody’s house, go from house to house--’Let’s all go over here; OK, now let’s all go over there.’

“Junko liked the freedom to change course, to do things when you wanted to. That was excitement.”

She had a string of boyfriends, all from the same crowd, and the relationships were on-again, off-again flings. But even after break-ups, they all hung out in the same group, bound together by a certain look and attitude.

‘Nail That Stands Up’

“In Japan, they have a saying: ‘The nail that stands up gets pounded down,’ ” Hyde said. “Japanese children are encouraged to fit into the group. At school, everyone wears the same winter uniform; and on the same day, they all change to the same summer uniform.”

Junko began wearing the uniform of her group: a black leather jacket, sometimes shiny stretch pants or Army fatigues, sometimes spiked hair. She began smoking and bought a car.

In many ways, Junko seemed savvy and street-wise, but those who knew her say she had become even more friendly and trusting. She was generous, too, always willing to treat friends to a hamburger or a movie.

Her social network rippled out to include friends of friends, people she didn’t know very well but apparently trusted anyway.

On Feb. 18, Junko left a friend’s home and disappeared. Earlier that day, she had withdrawn more than $2,000 for car repairs from the bank account constantly replenished by her parents, and she had talked openly about it.

On March 7, her fully clothed body was found on the banks of a muddy flood control channel in south Fremont. She had been stabbed 39 times in the back of the neck and head and 16 times in her hands.

Four Arrests

Within 24 hours, the police had made four arrests. Charged as accessories after the fact were Kevin McGuffey, 21, and a 16-year-old Irvington football player. Two 16-year-olds, Gina Florio, an Irvington dropout, and Corey Glassman, a former Irvington student who was then attending another high school, were charged with murder and sent to adult court.

Junko’s group splintered. One of her boyfriends transferred to another school. Friends who used to call each other a dozen times a day no longer speak. At a private memorial service, about 15 people, mostly teen-age girls, talked about Junko and cried.

“It made some really deep changes in some of the young people,” Landers said. “It was like something hitting them in the face.”

At a hearing to determine whether Gina and Corey should be tried as adults, an Alameda County probation officer testified that Gina told police she had hastily plotted the killing after Junko naively mentioned her money.

“She was open with everybody,” Junko’s mother, Chizuko Owaki, told San Francisco’s Japanese newspaper, Hokubei Mainichi. “My foolish Junko was too nice a person.”

There has been talk of drugs and devil worship: Gina reportedly told police she had used some of the $2,000 as seed money for a drug-dealing venture. Students and educators who knew Corey have said he was obsessed with satanism and loved knives.

‘Just Do It’

Gina told police the stabbing stopped briefly when Junko, dazed and bleeding, staggered to her feet, prosecutor John Pappas said. He said Gina encouraged Corey to finish the killing, saying, “That’s the only way we’re going to be able to get away with it at all. Just do it.”

Char Cole read that and remembered Junko’s low pain threshold, how the sniffles would put her in bed for a day or two. She keeps the clipping, and all the other words and photos from Junko’s American life, in the Japanese student’s bedroom. One of these days, when she can stand to face it, she says, she’ll fill a scrapbook.

“She just wanted to have the freedom to make whatever decision she wanted,” Char Cole said quietly. “Because she could have chosen to be with anybody, you know? What she wanted was to be free.”