Theater Company’s Name, Embodying a Racial Slur, Is Offensive

When an employee of East West Players told J.A.P. Director Ross MacKenzie how offensive she though the name of his theater company was, he smiled and told her, “Got your attention, didn’t it?”

I have to ask something of a man who would name his business after a racial slur: Would you call your theater by an African American slur to get people’s attention? Because that is just how ugly and how hurtful the term “Jap” is to the Japanese Americans whose families were rounded up and placed in concentration camps, to the tune of Gen. John DeWitt’s infamous quote, “A Jap is a Jap.” That’s how painful it is to those people of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations who were denied service by signs reading “No Japs Allowed.”

In the Valley Edition article of June 8, MacKenzie says that he knew the term was highly charged but, “It’s nice sometimes to stir the pot.” Would he have chosen to “stir the pot” by calling his theater company by an anti-Semitic epithet?

MacKenzie, whose company’s full name is Japanese American Players, says, “We purposely chose the initials J.A.P. to expose any derogatory meaning stemming from the World War II era.” Is the fact that the word “Jap” is derogatory a secret? Certainly not to those of us who have heard it all of our lives and hoped our children would never have to hear it.

He says, “We are looking forward to bringing our cultures together for a common goal.” What common goal would that be, and how is naming yourself after hate speech going to do that?

Of those who have protested this cavalier use of “Jap,” he says, “We sent out a letter to appease them,” demonstrating just how insensitive he is to the anguish that people feel about a white man profiting from the use of this epithet.

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Sixty years ago, the word “Jap” was constantly in the headlines. It was a lot easier to imprison 120,000 “Japs” than it was to imprison 120,000 men, women and children.

On the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the word “Jap” was again being used a lot, as newspapers and TV documentaries and specials recalled the era. And guess what? On Dec. 7, 1991, a brick sailed through the window of my home. Actually, it was the window of my then-infant daughter’s bedroom. I’m sure it was easier to throw a brick through the window of a “Jap” than the window of a baby girl. Luckily, she was sleeping with us that night and the only harm done, besides a couple of hundred dollars in damage, was to our psyches.

To Ross MacKenzie, “Jap” is an abstraction to be manipulated. To anyone who has been victimized by a hate crime or refused service or stripped of his or her civil rights while being called “Jap,” it carries more weight than he can ever understand. He says, “I want them to realize there is no us and them. There’s only we.” To which I can only quote Tonto’s infamous punch line: “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”