Slaying Victim Had Reported Racial Threat : Camarillo: The Japanese businessman had said he was confronted by a man who claimed to have lost his job to international competition.

A Japanese businessman stabbed to death in his Camarillo home told sheriff’s deputies four days earlier that a motorcyclist, claiming to be “an unemployed American worker who lost his job because of the Japanese,” threatened his life, authorities said Tuesday.

The confrontation, which took place Feb. 9, is the only firm lead that the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department has in the killing Sunday of Yasuo Kato, said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Vincent W. France.

“There is nothing I would rather do than dispel that it was a racially motivated crime, but at this point, we can’t eliminate anything,” France said.

Kato was stabbed twice in the chest with an eight-inch hunting knife while unloading groceries in his garage. The possibility that Kato was the victim of a hate crime attracted extensive attention from the Japanese national media Tuesday.

It also fueled concern in the Japanese-American community about escalating tension between Japan and the United States.

“During the last period of major tension like this, in the early 1980s, Vincent Chin was beaten to death with baseball bats by two unemployed auto workers in Detroit who thought he was Japanese and blamed him for their predicament,” said Dennis Hayashi, national director of the San Francisco-based Japanese American Citizens League. “We’ve felt all along the atmosphere we’re in would result in another death.”

While detectives said they were working with few leads Tuesday, France speculated that whoever killed Kato either knew him well or caught him by surprise.

Toshiyuki Kato, the victim’s son, disclosed that his 49-year-old father was a collegiate martial-arts champion who later instructed Japanese police cadets in judo techniques. The victim--a husky 185-pound man who stood 5 feet, 8 inches tall--died without any signs of having defended himself.

“He looked so peaceful lying there on the garage floor,” said Toshiyuki Kato, 25. “He did not even have time to cover where he hurt because there was no blood on his hands.”

Given the victim’s reported martial arts skills and the absence of a struggle, France said it is likely that he was either killed by an acquaintance “or was taken by complete surprise.”

According to the incident report that Yasuo Kato filed with sheriff’s deputies about the threat on his life, two men on a motorcycle came to his Arabian Place home and one of them--described by Kato only as a 6-foot-2 white man with light brown hair--knocked on Kato’s front door.

After Kato answered, the man reportedly demanded money, claiming that he was entitled because Kato was well-off and that the Japanese were responsible for America’s economic slump, Kato said.

Though Kato spoke little English, friends said he learned to understand much of what was said to him in the last three years, particularly business phrases such as “unemployed” and “recession.”

“No matter what language someone is speaking, you get the point when you’re being threatened,” Sheriff’s Detective Will Hammer said.

Shoved out of the house by Kato, the suspect reportedly began kicking the front door and threatening to kill him, according to the incident report. Kato’s housekeeper said he became extremely unnerved after the incident, fearing that the man might come back.

Kato, who lived alone, was noticeably frightened by his dog’s barking between 9 and 10 p.m. for a week after the threat, his son added.

“My father was very strong, never showed fear or tears,” Toshiyuki Kato said. “But he told me he was really scared and felt like he was being watched.”

Toshiyuki Kato said his father called the Sheriff’s Department the day after the incident to describe the threat, but did not arrange to meet with deputies to file a report until a few days before his death.

France said deputies took the incident report mainly to have it on record, and no investigation was launched. But Toshiyuki Kato said deputies told his father that they would increase patrols in the neighborhood.

In moving to California in 1988, Yasuo Kato left his wife behind in Japan to be with his two sons, who chose to remain in the United States after attending high school and living with a host family in Ventura, Toshiyuki Kato said. His father’s body will be returned to Japan for burial.

The son said his father had owned a precision tool-machining company that once had plants in Taiwan, Korea and Italy. Yasuo Kato gave the 22-year-old company and its $5-million annual revenues to his 330 employees as a gesture of gratitude before coming to the United States, his son said.

Toshiyuki Kato said his father set him up in the luxury car import-export business, while also establishing his own investment and development company to buy land in Antelope Valley for residential and commercial projects.

The younger Kato said the investors were six Japanese businessmen who put up about $4 million for his father to purchase land on which basic improvements could be made and building permits attained before resale to construction contractors.

While the five projects were moving slowly because of the real estate slump, Kato’s son said his father had no more than $30,000 in debts and would not have been killed because of business dealings.

Officials at the Japanese Consulate in Los Angeles said Tuesday that they would see where the local investigation led before contacting the FBI or the U. S. State Department to investigate the possibility that it was a hate crime.

“We’re leaving it up to the Sheriff’s Department at the moment, since we really don’t know what happened,” said James Aoki, a consulate staff representative. “We don’t want to say this is a racial issue against the Japanese.”

While members of the Japanese American Citizens League’s Ventura County chapter also reacted to the news cautiously, they said the reported confrontation alone suggests that Asian-Americans should take care not to “irritate or aggravate the public.”

“I’m really concerned these two men blamed Mr. Kato for the economic problems that the U. S. is in right now,” said Stanley Mukai, a past president of the county chapter and a member of the league’s regional board. “If they singled him out just because of his race, that’s a hate crime.”

The victim himself had been distressed at the rising tension between his native countrymen and Americans, his son said. As frightened as Yasuo Kato was by the threats on his life, he was equally angry that a strain in international relations could produce such ignorance.

“It was my father’s attitude that Japanese and Americans were both overreacting” to tough economic times, Toshiyuki Kato said. “But he was calm about things. He believed time will cure.”