Councilman’s Remark About Japanese Brings Calls for an Apology

Mayor Peter M. Green and a representative from the city’s Sister City Committee on Friday chastised City Councilman Jack Kelly for a remark he made about a group of Japanese visitors during this week’s council meeting.

Kelly’s comment came during Monday’s meeting as a delegation from Anjo, Japan, Huntington Beach’s sister city, was presenting Green with a $93,000 check to assist the Municipal Pier reconstruction project.

Kelly--watching as Green, Anjo Mayor Shuji Iwatsuki and others in the group exchanged bows--remarked to fellow Councilman Earle Robitaille: “How could guys who bow that much ever bomb the (Pearl) Harbor?”

No one reported hearing the comment in the council chambers, but the off-camera remark was audible in the cable TV broadcast of the meeting.

Kelly, who frequently makes off-the-cuff jokes and other remarks during public meetings, downplayed the furor over Monday’s comment. “It was just another cheap, smart Kellyism, and it’s backfired on me,” he said. “And that’s as far as it goes.”

Green on Friday called for Kelly to apologize for the remark, which he characterized as “very unfortunate and very regrettable.”

Don Nielsen, a Sister City Committee member who was host for a gathering with the Anjo delegation before the meeting, called Kelly’s comment “a disgrace to the city of Huntington Beach.”

Kelly--a former TV and movie actor who was also on the council in 1980-88, was mayor for two years and has returned to the council since being elected again in November--said he does not plan to apologize.

When told that Green had suggested that he publicly make amends for the comment, however, Kelly said he would discuss the matter with the mayor.

“He was elected by 20,000 people who (supported) him, and I think he needs to be responsive to them,” Green said Friday about Kelly.

“But I can’t reprimand Jack Kelly for being Jack Kelly. . . . That’s the person Jack is, and voters should know who he is and expect Jack to be Jack.”

Green added that he found Kelly’s statement particularly bothersome, because it came as Anjo officials were extending generosity toward the city.

“They came in a gesture of friendship that was overwhelming,” he said. “And then to be treated that way shows . . . really poor taste. And it lowers the respect that people have for the City Council.”

Like Green, Nielsen said he did not hear the remark during the meeting. But upon reviewing a videocassette recording of the meeting, which Nielsen was preparing to send as a gift to the Anjo officials, he noticed Kelly’s comment.

“And I thought, did I hear that right?” Nielsen recalled Friday. “I couldn’t believe it. There’s no way I could make a presentation to Japan with that comment in there. . . . I was thoroughly embarrassed. Fortunately, I don’t think anyone in the delegation heard it.”

He said he plans to have Kelly’s remark electronically omitted from the videotape before he mails it to Anjo.

Nielsen said he has taken particular care not to offend the Japanese officials during his dealings with them, partly because of a previous blunder in protocol between Huntington Beach and Anjo officials.

When an Anjo delegation visited last fall, then-Mayor Thomas J. Mays was unable to greet the group, Nielsen said. Councilman Don MacAllister was the only city official who met them.

After the officials returned to Japan, “they recommended they not make the gift to the city for the pier, because they didn’t believe they had been properly welcomed here,” Nielsen said. “Protocol is so important for them.”