Ethnic Fights Spur Gardena Proposal to Annex School

To its north, east and west, Gardena High School is completely surrounded by the City of Gardena, but the school itself is in the City of Los Angeles.

“Literally, Gardena High School is a notch of Los Angeles carved out of Gardena,” said Los Angeles school board member Warren Furutani, who represents the 7th District. “Everything around it is the City of Gardena.”

After fights earlier this year between Korean-American and Japanese-American students on the campus, the City Council is considering annexing the school’s land to Gardena to decrease the response time when police are needed to aid the two on-campus guards.

Under the present system, Los Angeles police from the Southeast Division or Los Angeles Unified School District security officers answer calls from the school, said Gardena Principal Tamotsu Ikeda.

Stay in School District

Under the proposed annexation, the school would remain in the Los Angeles Unified School District, but if the two school guards who regularly patrol the campus need assistance, the Gardena Police Department would respond, said Gardena City Manager Kenneth W. Landau.

Annexation would also mean that fire and paramedic help would come from the City of Gardena rather than from Los Angeles, he said.

City staff is studying the proposal and will present its findings to the City Council in 30 days, Landau said.

The school, at 177th Street and Normandie Avenue, is closer to the Gardena police station, at 162nd Street near Western Avenue, than to the LAPD’s Southeast Division, on West 108th and Main streets.

There were about five fights among Asian students two months ago, Ikeda said. As a precautionary measure during those incidents, the two campus security guards called the school district security system, which sent help, he said.

“We met with students, and the problem was solved immediately,” Ikeda said, adding that the school has not had many problems involving fights among different ethnic groups.

“We identified that the problems involved a small group, and we’re not even sure that some of them went to Gardena High School,” Furutani said.

Led by Furutani, Korean-Americans and Japanese-Americans in the area are forming a task force of community leaders, parents and students to help ease relations between the two groups.

“Gardena has been a longtime Japanese-American community, and the growing Korean-American community is rather new,” Furutani said.

Jai Lee Wong, a consultant with the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, said that although immediate tensions appear to have eased, there are still “underlying currents” between the two groups, which she will discuss in a mediation session at the school.

“At this point, we decided what to do is to meet with students who were involved and find out what the issues are,” said Wong, who will be on the task force.

Assimilation problems could be contributing to the tensions, she said, because “Korean-Americans tend to be newcomers, and Japanese-Americans tend to have been here for some generations.”

Grant Hagiya, pastor of the North Gardena United Methodist Church, will also be on the task force. He pointed out that the two Asian subgroups historically have not gotten along.

“It stems from way back, to the occupation of Korea by Japan. We still have some historical problems to work out,” he said.