Testimony : ONE PERSON’S STORY ABOUT THE IMAGE OF JAPANESE-AMERICANS : ‘For Years, Asians Have Been Seen as the Enemy’

At an early age I was aware that the public image of Japanese-Americans as having no problems--and that most have “made it”--went totally against the experience of my family and anybody else I knew. I wouldn’t say we were poverty-stricken, but we would certainly qualify as poor under economic guidelines.

I sympathize with young people coming up now who don’t fit the stereotype. The majority of (Japanese-Americans) are just regular working people who have 9-to-5 jobs, yet we are all made to feel as though we missed the boat somehow, that we were not the successful Asians that everyone talks about. This untrue image makes you go through a lot of unnecessary shame. The poverty in the Latino community is acknowledged, for African-Americans also. In the Japanese-American community, you are mistakenly led to believe that you are all alone. It is not the case.

In general, there is very little knowledge about the Asian-American community anyway. If you broaden it to the Southeast Asian immigrants and Asian Pacific Islanders, they have a very high poverty rate and, in fact, among Samoan-Americans the deaths, violent deaths, are greater proportionately than in the African-American community.

The problems that we do have are not of the same intensity as the problems that affect the African-American or Latino communities. This is just the difference of our historical development of our respective communities as opposed to a score card on who suffers more.

Among people who are immigrants, there is a big problem of language accessibility to social services. Along with that, there are immigration and visa problems. Among those who have entered the country illegally or who came to be workers here and have no other skills and have a language problem, some of these people are on general relief. And now that that is cut, they could wind up homeless.

Another kind of phenomenon that we are witnessing is growing domestic violence against Japanese-American women. And the spouses, the perpetrators, many times happen to be non-Asian--either white or African-American--but obviously this is not to say that Japanese males do not do this.

Hate crimes are something that Japanese-Americans--and all Asians--are affected by. Statistically, it is a rising problem. I’m upset at the amount of these types of crimes and the lack of response to them.

One case involved two young Japanese-American males on a Saturday night cruising down Edinger Avenue in Orange County, and two guys, skinheads, carrying one of those clubs that you lock your car wheel up with. They jumped out of a truck and started bashing the Japanese-American males over the head and bashed in their cars with it.

Four Japanese women in Huntington Beach at the Red Onion nightclub were surrounded by (about 20) individuals who started yelling, “Speak English!” And they were pushed around and shoved around. Luckily, they did not suffer any major injuries, but they were knocked to the ground.

In Sacramento, a Japanese-American Citizens’ League office was bombed along with the local Jewish groups and NAACP. There are quite a few examples like that going on. I think many people feel outraged by it but feel kind of helpless as to what to do. Unfortunately, some of the agencies that we have confronted in Orange County and other locations are very hesitant about admitting and acknowledging that there are hate crimes in their cities. And they tend to classify them as some other type of misdemeanor or whatever, but not hate crimes.

Japanese-Americans are now being scapegoated. But it is not any different from what we’ve had in history. I hate to say it, but you get kind of used to it because that is what happened right before we were all interned in concentration camps. The claim then was that “Japanese-Americans have taken away our jobs, Japanese-Americans may be a threat to our national security.”

That happened with Mexican-Americans and with Arabs during the ‘80s and ‘70s when the hostage crisis was going on. That has always been the case. I think all immigrant peoples have been scapegoated for taking away American jobs in the past. What is just as important as acknowledging some of these crimes is that we need to defend ourselves when local law-enforcement agencies do not. And we need to organize at the neighborhood level in the same way that women have organized to defend against rapists.

(The stereotyping) starts in textbooks and other things. For a hundred years Asians have been seen as the enemy. First it’s the Philippines and then World War II and Japan; after that it was Korea; after that Vietnam. People have been seeing Asians on television being “the other side” for quite some time. And that is on top of the economic problems--the recession--the Japan bashing and the perception that Japanese corporations are taking over everything.

The worst part of it is that we are often used as a way to keep other people in line--African-Americans, Latinos and whoever. Many times the implication is, “Why can’t you behave like Japanese-Americans?” They should not (act like Japanese-Americans) and it is not even true that Japanese-Americans don’t have problems and Japanese-Americans are passive or we’re not vocal. Those things are not true. What is true is that we all suffer the same types of things and we need to unite against the powers that be who prevent us from being able to get the types of jobs that we need or housing in the community and what have you.

It creates a tremendous amount of conflict between many different minority groups when one group like Japanese-Americans or Asians as a whole are touted as being successful and well-educated and have no problems. It breaks apart any type of unity that can be felt among minority people.