Right Decision--but It Got a Bit Out of Hand : Issue is building an appropriate transit system--not Japan

The decision Wednesday to start from scratch on the Metro Green Line was logical and proper--common sense in a sprawling city struggling through hard times.

But in these tough times, when more and more people are out of work and economic uncertainty reigns, it’s important to keep complex issues in perspective and it’s imperative that politicians avoid stirring up emotions. Canceling a contract with a Japanese firm because of second thoughts about its wisdom and because of concerns about American jobs is fair enough.

What’s wrong is confusing the issue by stirring up anti-Japanese sentiment. One L.A. politician set up a protest hot line that many callers used to phone in overtly racist messages and references to Pearl Harbor. Another drew cheers from a crowd of unemployed union workers protesting the Sumitomo contract when he yelled, “Never again! Never again!”--a bit much, really.

How much did the Green Line episode damage U.S.-Japan relations? Perhaps less than the angry outbursts of Lee Iacocca, chairman of Chrysler Corp., during and after his trip to Japan with President Bush. Even so, it will not help relations, despite denials by Los Angeles City Council members and others that they were engaged in Japan-bashing.

As for the decision itself, it was farsighted and custom-made for a region with tight public-service budgets and a desperate need for more commuter rail lines than it might be able to afford in the next several years. The commission move will cut costs of the Green Line by shifting to less expensive cars than the driverless ones that Sumitomo would have built. It was the reaction, with its whiff of racism, that was dangerously shortsighted, working directly against the duty of Japan and the United States jointly to maintain stability around the Pacific.

One element of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission’s cancellation of its agreement with Sumitomo paves the way for more of the Green Line work to be done in California. In a state whose share of a fast-shrinking Pentagon budget is larger than that of any other, searching for jobs to replace vanishing defense jobs is not a racist endeavor.

It was of some help that Councilman Richard Alatorre called the harshest of the criticisms of Sumitomo “despicable,” although that alone cannot undo the damage.

It helped also, for example, to hear one speaker say that the workers of Southern California can fashion high technology with the best of them, having crafted the space shuttle Discovery that was launched that morning.

Ultimately, what would help most would be following through on plans to find ways to build all of the commuter trains the region needs in Southern California. The commission’s 30-year plan calls for enough light rail lines to justify as many as 600 cars.

Following through would do more than create welcome jobs. It also would help persuade Japan that what really was involved in the contract recision was a matter of Southern California’s pulling itself up by its bootstraps. That, of course, is something the Japanese understand at least as well as anyone in the world.