Protests and Toasts Greet Royal Visitors : Diversity: The Japanese imperial couple meet a rich variety of local leaders. Asian American marchers demand reparations for war crimes.

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko have been working hard in their United States visit to pay tribute to the diversity of America. But in Los Angeles, the Japanese royal couple have been encountering even more of it than was scheduled.

At City Hall, hundreds of people of Chinese, Korean, Filipino and Vietnamese descent demanded an apology for Japanese war crimes.

In Little Tokyo, Latino workers at a Japanese-owned hotel appealed for the emperor to support their union, holding up a sign in Japanese and trying to present a letter to him.

And nearby, young men from Japan shouted a tribute of banzai --in American gangsta-style baggy pants and baseball caps.

None of the protesters--or well-wishers, for that matter--got near the imperial couple. Their close encounters with the diversity of the city were entirely over the clink of fine crystal. There was, for example, a luncheon with the mayor atop the Transamerica building Tuesday. The guest list of 100 was designed to let the emperor see the rich variety of leaders here.

At one typical table, Latina businesswoman Ana Barbosa, Bruce Ramer of the American Jewish Committee and Joe Hicks of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference sat together. “I’m delighted to meet with leaders from a cross-section . . . of Los Angeles,” said the emperor in a toast. “I (hear) with much interest that Los Angeles’ community is made of people with various and diverse cultural backgrounds.”

The task of the unfailingly statesmanlike emperor has been to mend fences torn apart by the clumsy personnel management of Japanese corporations in the United States, by boorish Japanese politicians who blame minorities for American social problems, and by Japanese intellectuals churning out bestsellers spouting anti-Semitic conspiracies.

And to some degree, it’s working.

“The wounds are still deep (from past insults),” Hicks told a reporter. “(But) I’m encouraged by these remarks. The more interaction there can be between highly placed Japanese officials and African Americans who are clearly in the mainstream and influential people, the better.”

Japanese doing business in Los Angeles could tell the emperor a few things about the influence of powerful African Americans.

It was an African American--former mayor Tom Bradley--who aggressively forged ties with Japan that helped build Los Angeles over the last two decades into an international trading giant. He focused so much on Asia, in fact, that some of his constituents accused him of ignoring his own back yard.

Bradley was among the guests at a gala black-tie dinner for 650 at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel on Monday night, as well as at Riordan’s lunch. At the dinner, the emperor and empress were welcomed in speeches by Gov. Pete Wilson and Arco Chairman Lodwrick M. Cook.

But it was Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, chairwoman of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors--and an African American woman--who gave the most personal welcome, noting the long history of Japanese Americans in her district and the sister city ties between her district and Ibaraki, Japan.

Many other Angelenos, however, feel far less friendly toward Japan because of its lack of apology for its aggression and atrocities in Asia during World War II. About 400 Asian Americans marched from Chinatown to City Hall to the Japanese Consulate to demand that Japan pay reparations to victims of crimes against humanity during World War II.

At the head of the protest march, which snaked for an entire city block, white-clad Korean musicians played ceremonial drums. Their protests were addressed to the emperor, but they didn’t try to approach him, instead focusing on the consulate.

“I want you to come down and get on your knees and apologize for what you’ve done,” yelled 70-year-old Jom Jo Lee, aiming her bullhorn at the Bunker Hill skyscraper where the consulate is ensconced. Lee, who said he was forced into slave labor in Japan during World War II, waved a placard that said “Japan Is the Asian Nazis.”

Many of the protesters said they had firsthand experience with Japanese atrocities. Yuh Fan Sung, 75, carried a handmade ink drawing that showed the scene in his hometown of Shen-yang in northeast China on the day that the Japanese invaded. Sun was 19 years old and witnessed Chinese civilians lining up to be shot by Japanese soldiers. Heads of decapitated Chinese hung from walls. Sung’s black-and-gray drawing was carefully inked with red to show blood dripping from severed heads. “I can’t forgive what the Japanese did to my city,” Sung said Tuesday.

But other protesters, too young to remember the war directly, said the issue still burns in their hearts.

“My parents told me a lot about the war,” said Daniel Wang, 30, who skipped out from his Downtown job to join the demonstration. “These are things no one can forget, even my children and their children.”

Akihito was a child during World War II, but the protesters are asking him to take responsibility for making peace among the next generation by apologizing and making reparations. It was during the reign of Akihito’s father, Hirohito, that the atrocities occurred, but ironically, when Hirohito visited in 1975, demands for apologies and reparation were not reported by the press. There were protests, to be sure. But they were by Japanese Americans upset at Japanese investment in Little Tokyo displacing local people, and by Koreans focusing on Japanese and U.S. support for the military government in South Korea.

The Asian American population in 1975 was far smaller and less diverse than today--and less politically sophisticated. Today, a new generation of Asian Americans--who speak English, are media-savvy and well-organized--are overcoming their differences to press demands. Japanese American groups, with a long history in the United States, have helped lead the politicization of Asian Americans through their fight for U.S. government reparations for the internment camps of World War II. David Monkawa, an organizer of that effort, said it’s only natural that Japanese Americans support Asians seeking redress from another government.

Japanese Americans are also active in pressing Japanese corporations to act responsibly in the United States--in part because anger against Japanese companies often is taken out on Americans of Japanese descent.

Glenn Omatsu, a staff member of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, was marching with Latino workers trying to unionize the Japanese-owned New Otani hotel. “The owners of the New Otani are certainly not promoting the image of Japan, and they’re certainly not promoting inter-ethnic harmony,” Omatsu said.

“Maybe the emperor can intercede on our behalf,” said Argelia Ortiz, a cashier and union backer.

Despite all the activity on the street, the emperor and empress sailed serenely through the day, she in a beige kimono, he in a dark gray suit. At the Japanese American Culture and Community Center, they met with Japanese Americans bringing not labor demands but expressions of friendship and shared cultural ties.

And perhaps the most relaxing part of the day came at the beginning, when they visited an exhibition on Abraham Lincoln and the lush gardens of the Huntington Library in San Marino. Even here, the painful roots of America’s diversity were on display, in historic posters advertising slaves for sale. But the imperial couple seemed fascinated by the material, lingering over an original manuscript of the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation.

*

Times staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell contributed to this story.