Cross Burned at Japanese High School in Tennessee

Community leaders apologized Thursday for a cross burning at the nation’s only high school for the children of Japanese business executives, and police stepped up patrols to prevent another “sick prank.”

The crude 6 1/2-foot wooden cross was set ablaze Tuesday night at the stone entrance gate to the Japanese government’s Tennessee Meiji Gakuin High School, eight days after it opened with 24 students.

No arrests have been made.

Sweetwater Police Commissioner Jim Burris and Police Chief Mike Jenkins went to the school to apologize on behalf of the city of 5,310 in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.

“We went up and told them: ‘That’s not the sentiments of the community,’ ” Burris said. “Most of the community is tickled to death that they’re there. It’s something to be proud of if you’ve got the only Japanese high school in the nation. They thought enough of the city of Sweetwater to move in with us.

“I thought cross burning went out 20 years ago,” Burris said. “I think it was just someone playing a prank--a sick prank. It’s a shame. It really is. I’ll tell you one thing: It won’t be tolerated.”

Jenkins said the gate where the cross was burned is a quarter-mile from the school buildings. Students live on the 144-acre campus but probably did not see the cross, he said.

The director of an organization that monitors the activities of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups said racists often target Asians as well as blacks for acts of intimidation.

The circumstances frequently are similar to those in Sweetwater “where you have a group coming in and doing their own thing in a very visual way,” said Pat Clark, the director of Klanwatch.

The nation’s only Japanese-accredited high school was established for children of Japanese business executives who are on assignment in the United States.