REMEMBER VINCENT CHIN

by: Daren Rikio Mooko
July 5, 2002
taken from “Through the Fire” Column, Rafu Shimpo; posted with the permission of the author
photo from Mabel Chin courtesy of Asian Improv

“If Asian people in America don’t learn to stand up for themselves, these injustices will never cease.”

It’s ironic that these words were spoken by Minoru Yamasaki, architect of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, immediately following the ghastly murder of Vincent Chin. Some twenty years later, the Asian Pacific American community finds new meaning in these words in the wake of those very buildings being brought down by terrorists on September 11, 2001.

Exactly twenty years ago on June 19, 1982, Vincent Chin, a 27 year old Chinese American, was brutally murdered in Detroit, Michigan. It was during the decade when American car manufacturers were making inferior products to the Japanese car manufacturers, resulting in a depressed domestic automobile market. The anti-Japanese sentiment ran amok in the U.S. and nowhere more evident than in Detroit. Anyone who looked Japanese was personally blamed and held accountable for the predicament of the U.S. car manufacturers. That night, Vincent Chin paid dearly for the anti-Japanese and anti-Asian sentiment.

A week before his wedding, Vincent Chin and his buddies went to a local club in Detroit to celebrate, “bachelor party” style. At this club, Ron Ebens, a supervisor at a local automobile factory yelled “it’s because of motherfuckers like you that we’re out of work.” A fight ensued which resulted in Chin and his party, Ebens and his son-in-law Mike Nitz being thrown out of the club. Ebens and Nitz jumped in their pickup truck and hunted Chin down. They caught up to Chin, jumped out of the truck and while Nitz restrained him, Ebens took four full swings at Chin’s skull with a baseball bat. In his last moments of consciousness, Vincent Chin whispered “it’s not fair.”

Remember Vincent Chin 2: Deeper Questions; More Complicated Answers