Exchange Students’ Trip Ends in Tragedy : Far From Home, Journey Is Ended

Shy and petite, Kumi Matsumoto carried herself with the awkward innocence of the small-town girl on her first trip away from home.

She knew little English and was uneasy around strangers, and only in the confidence of friends did she speak of the dreams that brought her to the United States. There was the study of art and music, the piano, the chance of seeing the country that had always seemed so immense and intriguing.

On Tuesday, less than three months after she left her family in Japan to study English at UC Irvine, Matsumoto and three other young women were heading east on a lonely stretch of Interstate 40 in San Bernardino County when the car swerved off the road and plunged into a ditch.

Matsumoto and Yumiko Ochi, an Irvine resident, were killed when they were thrown from the car as it rolled down a 25-foot embankment. The two others in the car--Masae Kajimura, the 20-year-old driver, and 25-year-old Yumiko Miyazaki--were injured and listed in stable condition at Barstow Community Hospital.

Heading for Grand Canyon

With the exception of Ochi, all were enrolled in UCI’s English as a Second Language exchange program and had been in the United States only a few months. Accompanied by two male Japanese exchange students in a second car, the girls had been heading for the Grand Canyon and then on to San Francisco. It was Matsumoto’s first trip outside the Los Angeles area.

Don Lowery, an accident investigation officer with the California Highway Patrol, said it appeared that the two cars were traveling side by side on the interstate when the girls’ 1982 Nissan 200 SX, driven by Kajimura in the slow lane, drifted toward the other car.

“She jerked the wheel back to the right and went off the road,” Lowery said. “They went down an embankment and overturned. It turned over at least once, and probably several times.”

The accident happened at 6:30 p.m. Monday about 17 miles east of the small desert town of Ludlow. Lowery said there were no indications that either car was speeding.

“It was just something that happened,” Lowery said. “It’s a real tragedy.”

Lowery said the three passengers were thrown from the car as it rolled down the hill. It is likely, he said, that Matsumoto and Ochi would have survived had they been wearing seat belts.

“They would probably have lived because it would have kept them inside the car,” he said.

The two Japanese students accompanying the girls, Shinichi Matsumoto (no relation to Kumi) and Masashi Watanabe, both 20, alerted police and tried to assist the injured before help arrived. One of the girls died at the scene, the other on the way to the hospital.

Strangers on a Plane

Kumi Matsumoto and Watanabe met on the plane to Los Angeles, both of them bound for UCI’s English-language program. Neither had been to the United States before, and both knew only broken English.

As it turned out, these two strangers who met on the plane would end up dating, Watanabe the more outgoing of the two and Matsumoto the soft and retiring one.

Both arrived at UCI near the end of March to start the spring quarter. The transition, particularly for Matsumoto, was not easy.

Shortly after arriving, Kumi wrote an essay about being lonely and homesick. She seemed to especially miss her mother, with whom friends said she enjoyed an especially close relationship.

“Now I am lonely very much because I can’t meet my family,” she wrote. “But I would like to study English very hard in USA.”

“Mother is loved by everyone,” she continued. “My father loves her very well too. She is a teacher of the piano. She is good at the piano very well. I like to play the piano too. I want to play the piano with her.”

Michelle Ryan, a coordinator of UCI’s foreign exchange program, said Matsumoto became one of her favorite students because of her gentleness and spark for life. She was a good student, not exceptional, but good enough to continue the program for as long as she wished, Ryan said.

“She was a very brave person and had a lot of life, energy and spunk,” Ryan said. “I worked very closely with her. She was very petite and mild-mannered, but she had a very strong inner core.”

Matsumoto had to draw on that strength less than three weeks ago when, Ryan said, she was attacked by a man in broad daylight.

“It was an attempted assault and she fought back,” Ryan said. “She was not sexually assaulted but it could have turned into that. I saw her last Monday. I told her how proud I was of her, on behalf of all women, that she was so internally strong to protect herself and not give in.”

‘Looking Forward’

Ryan said Matsumoto had been frightened over the attempted molestation but was nevertheless excited about the trip to the Grand Canyon.

“They were traveling in a group and she was looking forward to seeing everything,” Ryan said. “She had that inner strength that made us all respect her so.”

Carolyn Sharpe, an executive secretary from Irvine who rents a room to Watanabe, the boyfriend, said the trip to the Grand Canyon had been planned since last weekend and “they were all excited.”

“Kumi was sweet, so sweet,” said Sharpe, who met her on several occasions. “And she was quiet. The Japanese are reserved people, but Kumi was more quiet than most. It will be very hard for Masashi (Watanabe) to deal with this.”

On the way to the Grand Canyon, Sharpe said the boys traveled in one car and the girls in another. Sharpe said the boys were staying in Barstow to lend moral support to the injured girls.

Kathy Blake, a UCI administrative employee who rents a room to Masae Kajimura, the injured driver, said all four girls were part of a close-knit group whose members tended to hang out by themselves, perhaps because of the language barrier.

‘Worst Yet to Come’

Speaking from her Irvine home late Wednesday, Blake said she had spoken with Kajimura on the phone Wednesday morning and was not sure if the girl had been told of her friend’s death.

“She was just crying and crying,” Blake said. “I asked her if she needed anything, any clothes. I sent a bathrobe and a gift” with a UCI official who went to the hospital in Barstow.

“I think the worst is yet to come,” Blake added. “Knowing what I know about their culture, the Japanese don’t like to seek emotional help, and knowing what has happened here, I think this is going to be a really hard thing for them to deal with.”

Ryan, the UCI English-language program counselor, echoed those fears.

“They are really expected to be pretty independent when they get here,” she said. “That can be difficult with the Japanese because they are taught to be passive, or more group-oriented. Dependence on the family is something that is encouraged and these kids are alone over here.”