Little Tokyo Mourning Its Slain Doctor, Crime Fighter

Dr. Linda Morimoto dedicated her life to two causes: delivering babies--perhaps 2,000 during a 40-year career--and fighting crime.

So a mourning Japanese American community has had an especially difficult time coming to grips with the circumstances of her death. Morimoto, 75, was found bludgeoned Friday in her ransacked Westlake-area home.

“Everybody knows how much she fought against things like this happening,” said Frances Hashimoto, president of the Little Tokyo Business Assn. “She always was very active in anti-crime efforts. And even to some of the people in the Police Department she’d say, ‘I delivered you.’ ”

Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Officer Don Cox said: “The good doctor was an anti-crime person extraordinaire.”

One of the founders of the Greater Little Tokyo Anti-Crime Assn. in the early 1980s, the Los Angeles native helped initiate a host of innovative crime-fighting programs in the Japanese American section of downtown, where she kept an office until the time of her death. In one program she launched, neighboring businesses pay into a pool to hire roving security guards.

The always-feisty Morimoto also served on the boards of several other crime-fighting and business organizations, and received awards from the Japanese government honoring her work to improve relations between the United States and Japan.

Long before she became a crime fighter, however, Morimoto was delivering babies. She acquired her California medical license in 1955, when anti-Japanese sentiment from World War II was still common.

“Not only was it hard to be a [female] doctor at that time, but being Japanese American at that time was very difficult,” said Brian Kito, whose own birth was attended by Morimoto and who serves as vice president of the Greater Little Tokyo Anti-Crime Assn.

Nonetheless, Morimoto quickly gained reputation and clientele because of her ability to speak Japanese and English fluently. She was on the staffs of two area hospitals at the time of her death, police said.

As candles burned in front of Morimoto’s home, police continued to search for her killer over the weekend.

Detectives at the LAPD’s Rampart Division were trying to piece together Morimoto’s activities and whereabouts Thursday.