Kato Slaying Raises Fears of Hate Crime : Racism: Japanese community worries that economic resentment is being expressed through violence.

On the morning of his stabbing death, Japanese businessman Yasuo Kato played a round of golf at the Montecito Country Club with Masahiro Kitazumi, who owns a restaurant in Oxnard.

“He was very worried,” Kitazumi said. Kato was killed in his Camarillo home last Sunday night, two weeks after allegedly being threatened by a suspect who blamed the Japanese man for the U.S. recession.

“Mr. Kato said he was thinking about buying a gun. I told him to be careful. He said, ‘You be careful, too,’ ” Kitazumi said.

While detectives have yet to find a definite motive for the killing, let alone a suspect, Kitazumi said he no longer feels safe in his Japanese restaurant on Gonzales Road in Oxnard.

“I am a bit nervous. This is not such a good area. Homeless people sometimes stay in the outside. I think about how to protect myself,” said Kitazumi of Oxnard, a Japanese citizen who immigrated 18 years ago.

“I usually close by 9:30 or 10,” he said. “Now I try to close early. I always watch the people outside before I leave.”

Kitazumi said Kato’s report of a death threat came as a surprise, because the restaurant owner had never heard racial slurs aimed at him or any of his friends.

Kato’s mysterious death, amid growing tensions between the United States and Japan, has also provoked suspicions by some law-enforcement officials of a possible contract killing by Japanese gangsters. Nonetheless, the initial disclosures that Kato had spoken of receiving anti-Japanese threats brought surprise and concern to members of the Japanese and Japanese-American communities in Ventura County.

While Japan-bashing is apparently on the rise nationwide, just as U.S.-bashing seems to be increasing in Japan, Japanese--American leaders said last week that Ventura County has been free of such events for a long time.

For that reason, some members of the community said they are skeptical that the slaying could be linked to racial hatred.

“I was surprised because I feel it’s a calm place, a peaceful place,” said Nobuji Hamada, a Japanese citizen who manages a health-food processing company in Oxnard.”I’ve never had any bad treatment.”

But others said they fear that Kato’s death could be a hate crime reflecting increased anti-Japanese feelings.

“People are blaming Japan, ‘the Japanese economic invaders,’ ” said nursery manager Tsuji Tomoko, a Japanese citizen who lives in Oxnard.

Tomoko said she has never had serious trouble with discrimination.

“But I notice little things,” she said. “The other day I went to the department store. The salesperson would tend to other people that come after me and make me wait.”

About 5,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans live in the county, most of them in Oxnard, Camarillo, and Saticoy. Many said they are closely following news about the police investigation.

They said they hope Kato’s death was anything but a hate crime against a Japanese--even a contract hit by the so-called Japanese Mafia, as some investigators suspect, would be preferable.

“When I heard on the news what happened, I was very sad,” said Masanabu Yeto, owner of Yeto’s Market, a Saticoy grocery store.

“I don’t know him personally, but some people said he had business dealings that went bad. I hope that’s what happened,” said Yeto, who was born in Saticoy and placed in a Japanese internment camp during World War II.

Yeto said he is not worried about his safety. “I’m not involved in politics, and I don’t have a big business,” he said. “If I had too much money, then I would be worried.”

Yeto does worry, however, about an escalation in anti-Japanese rhetoric.

“As far as racial slurs, it’s not as bad as when we came back from camp,” he said. “But there are a lot of economic slurs with racial overtones, like Japan has a lot of the economy in America. You can sense a resentment feeling.”

But Yeto, whose grocery store is in a heavily Latino neighborhood, said the resentment is nowhere near what some Korean grocers experience in South-Central Los Angeles. “Ventura County is not too bad as far as racial problems. It’s nothing like Los Angeles.”

Strawberry farmer Suzuka Ito said she is not surprised that police suspect the Yakuza, or Japanese crime syndicate, may be involved in Kato’s death. Two knife wounds to Kato’s heart resemble a trademark Yakuza killing.

“When I was living in Japan we were in different worlds, and they didn’t worry me,” she said. “I would be more worried if they are here, because Mr. Kato was living in a residential area just like where I live.”

But it is the possibility of a hate crime that frightens her the most.

“I’m feeling uncomfortable because we live in Ventura, and that’s a short distance from Camarillo,” Ito said. “I just don’t go out.”

Ito said that while she has never been defamed or threatened, she is fearful about the future. The tough talk between the United States and Japan, she said, reminds her of the prewar tensions of the 1930s.

“I’ve been talking to a couple of people, and we all have this funny feeling. It does seem that things are getting worse. It’s kind of hard to explain.”

The Oxnard Buddhist Church on H Street has anchored Japanese immigrant families in Ventura County for 60 years. With more than 300 members, its influence extends well beyond religion.

The temple’s Sunday school and Japanese-language school--founded by Yeto’s grandparents and four other families in 1927--teach immigrant children about their cultural heritage.

During World War II, the Rev. Taiken Masunaga was sent to an internment camp, along with most of his congregation. His home was rented to a Latino family, and the temple became a storage facility for the property of internees.

Last August, President Bush signed a bill that extends an official apology and a $20,000 reparation payment to 60,000 former internees. Days later, anti-Japanese leaflets appeared on the windshields of cars parked by the Oxnard temple.

“The leaflets said there should be no apology because American soldiers were detained in Japanese prison camps,” said the Rev. Masami Fujitami, the temple’s minister for 29 years. But that was the only racially tinged incident involving his temple in recent years, Fujitami said.

He said Kato’s death came as “a great shock” but has not altered his life in any significant way. “I continue to go out and work, and maintain the same association with American people,” Fujitami said.

The temple’s gates are usually unlocked. And no special precautions have been taken to guard the property, he said.

“We have no fear or ill feelings, we enjoy a normal life,” the minister said. “We are very sad about what happened to Mr. Kato, but I don’t see any sudden change of atmosphere.” But Fujitami said he now cautions his congregation: “Be very careful, do not exaggerate your normal lifestyle. Don’t go out in the nighttime all by yourself.”

Fujitami said he can’t forget that threats against Kato allegedly were made by a Japan-hater two weeks before he was killed. “It’s not hard to make the connection,” he said. But the minister won’t rule out other possibilities.

“I wonder if somebody is using the threats as a cover,” he said. “Maybe the person that killed Mr. Kato just wanted money.”

Others are quicker to accept that anti-Japanese feeling could have been the motive for the killing, however.

Dennis Hayashi, national director of the Japanese-American Citizens League in San Francisco, said Kato’s death unnerved many members because it appeared to be “the most extreme example of the fallout from the rising tensions between us and Japan.”

He blames a lot of the problems on the national “Buy America” campaign. “Now, we’re getting three or four hate-crimes reports a week, ranging from the usual ‘Go back to where you came from’ to threats of violence or planting bombs.”

Oxnard Mayor Nao Takasugi, who is running for a state Assembly seat, has received dozens of phone calls from reporters around the nation interested in his reaction to Kato’s death.

Takasugi finds the interest puzzling.

“Just because of our ancestry or physical characteristics doesn’t mean we aren’t Americans,” Takasugi said. “When we go to Japan, they spot us right off that we are Americans by the way we dress and the way we talk.”

Takasugi said he’d never heard of Kato before the slaying. Most Japanese--Americans he knows have little contact with native Japanese, he said.

“We don’t really socialize with them,” he said. “We have differences in culture, customs and language.”

The treatment of Asian-Americans in Ventura County has improved vastly over the decades, Takasugi added. “When my parents first came here, they were not allowed to own property, to apply for citizenship or vote,” he said.

He is unaware of any racial incidents involving his family or friends in recent years.

“I was fearful something would happen during the Pearl Harbor anniversary, but nothing happened,” he said.

But, he said, he notices a growing tendency to blame Japan for America’s economic problems. “I think it’s the recession. People keep talking about cars and how Japanese companies are taking over.”

The mayor’s wife, Judy, said she identifies with Olympic figure-skating gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi, a fourth-generation Japanese-American who was recently told by a sports reporter that “she speaks good English.”

She added that she is concerned because ethnic tensions can flare up quickly when two nations move to confrontation.

“I remember during Desert Storm, people were saying, ‘We should send all the Iranians to camp,’ and I thought, ‘That sounds familiar.’ ”

Correspondent Christopher Pummer contributed to this story.