‘Pearl Harbor’ Making Its Marks

Fifteen-year-old Kacey Tanabe has never been to Japan and her family barely speaks Japanese. Still, she feels as though she’s been blamed for World War II.

“This kid told me Japanese people are stupid because we started the war,” said Tanabe, who goes to school in Montebello. “How do I have control of it? I can’t do anything about it. It’s not my fault.”

Japanese American teens and young adults do not remember the war that put many of their grandparents--branded as enemies of America--in concentration camps. But the release of Walt Disney Co.’s “Pearl Harbor” has forced them to confront that history--along with new and painful emotions.

It’s the awkwardness that Howard Jonokuchi, 20, a Cal State L.A. student, felt when he heard the word “Jap” used several times in the movie, as he watched it opening night.

It’s the annoyance that creeps up every time Evan Okamura, 21, passes a giant “Pearl Harbor” billboard on the UCLA campus, depicting Japanese enemy war planes.

It’s the fear that has prevented Kristy Ito, 14, from seeing the movie. “I think that if I go, there are people that are going to be racist there,” she said. “They might say, ‘Hey, there’s a Japanese girl.’ I’m scared people are going to hate us more now.”

Allison Nagata, 14, said her parents sat her down for a lecture two nights before the movie came out.

“They knew I was going to see the movie one day or another,” she said. “They didn’t want me to be mad at the Japanese. I think they sort of feel sad that this happened. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor sort of ruined their lives.”

The film is a love story about two fighter pilots during World War II who fall for the same girl--with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as the backdrop.

The story line itself is not offensive, said Roger Miyagishima, a 20-year-old student at Cal State Northridge who watched the movie Friday. But he worries the movie may cause Japanese Americans’ loyalty to once again be questioned.

Indeed, 60 years after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, many Japanese Americans still struggle to be regarded as Americans, said Don Nakanishi, 52, director of UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center.

Historically among the most likely to marry members of other ethnic groups, “The vast majority of Japanese Americans are U.S.-born,” he said. “They are not immigrants.”

Nakanishi worries that the movie will spark a resurgence in anti-Japanese sentiment.

He doesn’t want his 18-year-old son to relive the discrimination he faced growing up. Nakanishi remembered an incident in the 1960s, when a group of students came to his college dorm room and threw water balloons at him while chanting “Bomb Pearl Harbor!”

“I really didn’t know whether I should be laughing or crying,” he said.

Soji Kashiwagi, 38, has similar memories of his youth.

“Dec. 7, for me, was always an uncomfortable day to go to school,” he said. “Kids at school would remind me of that day by saying ‘You bombed Pearl Harbor,’ even though I didn’t have anything to do with it. I was not even around at that time.”

Bruce Sakamoto, 29, who attended a Japanese American U.S. veterans’ memorial service in the San Fernando Valley on Sunday, said he thinks non-Japanese Asian Americans will also feel discrimination.

Sakamoto used to volunteer at a veterans hospital and remembers being told: “Stay off the floor where the Vietnam veterans are” because they may be bitter toward Asians, he said.

“I’m just going to avoid the theater,” Sakamoto said. “There might be harsh feelings against Japanese in general, or anyone that looks Japanese.”

The racially motivated killings of Joseph Ileto, a Filipino postal worker who was shot in Chatsworth in 1999 and Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man who was murdered in 1982 in Detroit, are examples that anti-Asian sentiment is still alive and may be reignited at any time, Nakanishi said.

The movie is an unavoidable reminder to Wendy Harakuni, 33, of Aliso Viejo, that her 7-month-old daughter, Paige, may face prejudice as she grows up.

“We had nothing to do with [the bombing],” she said. But “the movie may bring back a few memories.”

Ito, who attends Schurr High School in Montebello, said people still lump Asians together, whether or not they are Americans.

“Sometimes they think we are all Chinese,” she said. “They call us ‘Nips’ or ‘Chino.’ ”

“People are still against Japan,” said Tiffany Ino, 15. “They treat us like we did something wrong at school, too.”

“I think when the Japanese bombed [the U.S.] they were evil people,” Tanabe said. “But people still associate us with them, and we aren’t like that. We are Japanese Americans.”