Anti-Japanese Threat Is Only Lead in Killing : Crime: Deputies say they have little to go on in stabbing of Camarillo businessman. The murder fuels concern among Japanese-Americans.

A Japanese businessman stabbed to death in his Camarillo home had told sheriff’s deputies 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 Feb. 9 confrontation is the only firm lead 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.

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

France said he was interviewed by at least a dozen Japanese reporters, including three from U.S.-based Japanese television outlets.

The slaying also fueled concern among Japanese-Americans about the consequences of escalating tensions 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-foot-8--died without any signs of having defended himself.

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

According to the earlier incident report the senior Kato filed with sheriff’s deputies, two men on a motorcycle came to his home on Feb. 9. One of the men, described by Kato as a 6-foot-2 white man with light brown hair, knocked on the front door.

The man reportedly demanded money, claiming that he was entitled because Kato was well-off and the Japanese were responsible for America’s economic slump, Kato told deputies at the time.

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 like “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 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 was noticeably frightened by his dog’s barking between 9 and 10 p.m. for a week straight, 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.”

He said his father called the Sheriff’s Department the next day but did not arrange to meet deputies to file a report until a few days before his death.

France said deputies took the report mainly to have it on record and no investigation was launched. But the victim’s son said deputies told the father that they would increase patrols in the neighborhood.

Kato, whose body will be returned to Japan, moved to California in 1988 without his wife 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, 25, said his father had owned a precision tool-machining company that once had plants in Taiwan, Korea and Italy. He said his father 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.

Here, he had established his own investment and development company to buy land in the Antelope Valley for residential and commercial projects.

While the firm’s five projects were moving slowly because of the real estate market’s collapse, the 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 any hate crime against a Japanese national.

“We’re leaving it up the Sheriff’s Department at the moment, since we really don’t know what happened,” said James Aoki, a consulate staff representative.