Japanese-Americans Urged to Take Leading Role in Easing Racial Strife

The Japanese-American community in Los Angeles and elsewhere should take an active role in U.S.-Japan relations to help ease tension and misunderstanding on both sides of the Pacific, experts said at two national conferences in Los Angeles this weekend.

Japanese-Americans can play “an important role” by educating Japanese businesses about the ethnic diversity of the United States and by helping them adapt to cultural differences, said Los Angeles attorney Henry Ota, who represents many Japanese corporate clients.

Ota was one of dozens of experts to address the first National Japanese American Conference at the Biltmore Hotel, which concludes Monday after four days. The conference, along with the “Future of the Nikkei Conference,” which ended Saturday, drew hundreds of Japanese-Americans from around the country to consider issues facing the community.

Helping Japanese firms that do a lot of business in the United States become better corporate citizens would also benefit the Japanese-American community by improving the corporate image, Ota said.

At the same time, Japanese-Americans can educate Americans of diverse backgrounds about Japan, he said. Ota also said community-based Japanese-American organizations should work together to formulate a curriculum that could be used nationally to teach schoolchildren about the role of Japanese-Americans in the nation’s history.

No group is more affected by relations between the two countries than Japanese-Americans, said Robert Takeuchi, a Los Angeles attorney and specialist on Japan.

When Japan and the United States get along, Japanese-American communities thrive, as was the case in the 1980s when Japanese investment boomed in California and elsewhere, Takeuchi said. However, when relations between the countries sour, Japanese-Americans bear the brunt of ill feelings, he added.

Experts pointed to the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission’s action in January, when it rescinded a decision to accept a Japanese corporation’s bid for Metro Green Line cars as an example of how Japan-bashing affects public policy decisions. The commission voted last week to award Sumitomo Corp. a new contract to build the cars.

Ron Wakabayashi, executive director of the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission and a frequent consultant to Japanese companies, noted that the LACTC’s January decision came in the wake of President Bush’s unproductive trade mission to Japan.

“U.S.-Japan relations has to do with how Asians are perceived in the United States,” Wakabayashi said. From the turn of the century to 1970, Japanese-Americans were the largest Asian-American group in the United States. But with a new wave of immigration, the majority of Asians living in the United States are foreign born.

Because of its powerful economic position in the world, negative feelings toward Japan can adversely affect all Asians, he said.

The negative feelings sometimes translate into hate crimes against Japanese and other Asians.

Wakabayashi said there is a “frightening” development in violence against Asians. Until this year, most crimes against Asians and Asian-Americans were random and occurred mostly in the Midwest, he said.

But since January, 1992, the pattern has shifted to the West Coast. “Now anti-Asian crimes are targeted--an arson of a home or vandalizing of a community center,” he said.

He said even gang graffiti is changing, with the scrawls more likely to contain racial slurs against Koreans and Japanese.