U.S. Rushes to Reassure Japan After Carjacking

As the weekend slayings of two Marymount College students sent shock waves through Japan and Japanese American communities, U.S. dignitaries rushed Monday to reassure frantic parents and to counter charges in the Japanese media that Southern California is a gun-infested danger zone.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Mike McCurry said the U.S. government is very concerned that the carjacking killings of Takuma Ito and Go Matsuura, both 19, will create “a very distorted and one-sided view of the United States abroad.”

President Clinton expressed condolences to Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa during a telephone conversation about Japan’s new economic plan.

In Orange County, Gov. Pete Wilson called on the state Legislature to impose the death penalty on those who commit murder during a carjacking.

As headlines in the Japanese press decried America’s fascination with guns, Japanese exchange students throughout the Southland were suddenly more cautious and fearful about this foreign land.

Yoshimoto Hirakawa, 20, a business student at Chapman University in Orange, said he was lucky to have friends who told him about the dangers of crime when he arrived here from Japan.

“When I first came to the United States, my friends told me what to worry about,” he said. “Now I share these things with newcomers, like never walk alone after midnight. Never drive alone into a bad neighborhood, especially at night. And, listen to the local guys about where you should and where you shouldn’t go.

“In Japan, it’s so safe you don’t have to worry about anything,” he continued. “That’s why we take it easy when we come here. We just don’t think it can happen to us.”

Ito, a Japanese citizen, and Matsuura, who was born in the United States but grew up in Japan, were shot in the head late Friday night in a carjacking in the parking lot of a San Pedro supermarket. Police--who remained close-mouthed on Monday about the case--recovered their white 1994 Honda Civic on Sunday not far from the scene of the crime, but not before the two young men died after being taken off life-support at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

Seiko Kagami, an English student at Cal State Fullerton, said she, for one, will not be going to her local supermarket after dark anymore.

“We are very scared,” Kagami, 22, said. “This problem never happens in Japan.”

Ako Kasahara, 34, who is studying English at UC Irvine, said she hopes the tragedy will not make people in Japan think America is a “terrible country.”

“I like this country, I like California, the weather and the people,” she said. “But you need to know you’re not in Japan anymore.”

Meanwhile, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan called a news conference in Los Angeles with the Japanese consul general, Seiichiro Noboru, hoping to assuage the alarm of tourism officials in Japan.

“Los Angeles is not a place where this or any other type of violence should be tolerated,” Riordan said, vowing not to rest as mayor “until Los Angeles is safe.”

And Noboru refrained from making generalizations about violence in the United States, promising instead that the incident “should not and will not have any effect upon the friendly relationship between this country and Japan (or) . . . change the love of the Japanese people toward sunny and warm Southern California.”

But those promises faced an uphill battle against a growing impression in Japan that the United States is a dangerous and violent society that, unlike Japan, has done little to control the use and ownership of guns.

“Gun Society . . . Another Tragedy in Los Angeles,” trumpeted one headline in the newspaper Sankei Sports. “For a Car?” Added an editorial in the Japan Times: “A beginning must be made to combat the American gun culture, which is getting out of control.”

Meanwhile, Japanese students in Southern California reported that parents have been calling frantically from abroad, hoping to persuade their children to return home.

Morikazu Sano, a communications student at Cal State Fullerton, said he also had a call from his worried family, who more than ever want him to come home to Japan once he graduates this summer.

Sano, 23, said he has been more aware of crime problems since his own car was burglarized two years ago in downtown Los Angeles.

“That shocked me so much,” he said. “After that, I couldn’t trust anyone. That woke me up. I don’t go out alone at night. I don’t even go to Ralph’s or other supermarkets at night.”

Takayuki Nishio, a 23-year-old exchange student studying English at Cal State Fullerton, said he believes colleges could do more to inform foreign students of crime problems.

“Cal State Fullerton is pretty safe,” he said. “But we cannot be too careful.”

More than 3 million Japanese tourists and students visit the United States each year, about one in six of them bound for Los Angeles County.

Aside from the damage the slayings could do to Los Angeles’ international reputation, officials said, the deaths could cause financial repercussions. Some smaller colleges have become increasingly dependent on Japanese enrollment, and even before the killings, many students had trouble convincing their parents that the United States--and Los Angeles in particular--was a safe place to attend school.

Such concerns have helped dampen the flow of students from Japan to the United States in recent years, although the slumping Japanese economy and the increasing popularity of European destinations have also been factors.

The number of Japanese students in the United States jumped from 17,000 in 1983 to a peak of nearly 58,000 in 1990, aided by the strong yen, but slipped to about 40,000 last year, according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles-area tourism officials expressed concerns about the impact the slayings will have on the flow of nearly 500,000 Japanese who visit Los Angeles County annually.

“The Japanese tourist market is much more volatile and problematic than most,” said Stanley Plog, a travel and tourism research specialist.

“There have been no cancellations, but I think it will affect tourism, not dramatically or immediately, but gradually,” said Shiro Monden, the Los Angeles general manager of Japan Travel Bureau International, a large Japanese tour operator that sends about 100,000 customers a year to Southern California.

The killings in Los Angeles, which have sparked outrage locally and abroad and which have been widely covered by the Japanese news media, have fed a longstanding Japanese perception that the United States is a dangerous place. Shooting deaths of Japanese students in Baton Rouge, La., in 1992 and in Northern California in 1993 were covered by the Japanese press as continuing evidence of the ruthlessness of America’s “gun society.”

“After the (Baton Rouge) killing, of course we were worried sick to have a child go to the U.S.,” said Rumiko Ito, mother of Takuma Ito, on a Japanese television broadcast. “We said: ‘Why would you even think of going to that country?’ But this was his dream, to go to college there.”

Some Southland colleges and universities on Monday were planning special safety presentations to make international students more aware of crime problems.

“I can only hope that from a tragedy of this magnitude, we can somehow find an opportunity in this to make everyone a little bit more aware,” said Bob Ericksen, director of international education and exchange at Cal State Fullerton.

It is too early to know whether the incident will have any impact on enrollment of Japanese students at local colleges. Southern California is the most popular foreign destination in the world for Japanese students, according to Japanese education sources. A significant part of the 40,000 Japanese who come to study in the United States each year head for Los Angeles, attracted by its reputation for beaches, good weather and easygoing atmosphere.

But Masaru Yamada, president of ICS, a Japanese company that facilitates foreign study programs, said the impact of the slayings could be significant. The news, he noted, hit just as students are preparing their applications for summer study-abroad programs. He said he expects some students to change their destinations from Los Angeles to smaller towns in the United States or to Australia, Canada or Britain, which are perceived as safer.

* TOUGH STANCE: Governor visits Orange County to push anti-crime agenda. A25