Japanese Family’s Luggage Recovered

Missing luggage containing documents that chronicle a Japanese family’s fight against black racism in their country has been recovered, Los Angeles officials said Friday.

Bags containing journals and videotapes detailing the campaign led by the family of Toshiji Arita were found in a trash bin near Los Angeles International Airport, a spokeswoman for Mayor Tom Bradley said.

The two bags disappeared last week after the family arrived to visit Bradley on the final stop of a 17-day American fact-finding trip. Materials in the bags documented the family’s earlier meetings with such black leaders as NAACP Director Benjamin Hooks, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young and Coretta Scott King.

The family’s trip was sponsored by this country’s Black Business Council, which had offered a $1,000 reward for return of the luggage.

Bradley aide Lydia Shayne said documents relating to the family’s Osaka-based Assn. to Stop Racism Against Blacks were apparently recovered inside the luggage. She said a scavenger who turned in the bags after reading a newspaper story about their loss will probably receive the reward.