Olympic Shop owner Rumi Fujimoto looks on as workmen cover a window of her store that was smashed Sunday night, following Downtown demonstrations against ongoing federal immigration raids.
Business owners and residents deal with the aftermath of vandalism and thefts. More demonstrations are expected for the weekend.
By MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS
RAFU STAFF WRITER
Holding on to an eight-foot slab of plywood being bolted into where her store window once was, Rumi Fujimoto made little effort to conceal her disgust on June 9.
“I’m exhausted,” she said, letting out an exasperated sigh.
On June 8 at around 9 p.m., as protests against immigration enforcement devolved into chaos Downtown, Fujimoto said a pane glass window at her Olympic Shop on First Street was smashed and an estimated $1,000 worth of Dodgers apparel and merchandise was stolen.
From her apartment above the store, Fujimoto said she had been keeping an eye on the activities of the scores of people in the street, watching some ignite dumpster fires and spray-paint angry messages about President Trump and the current Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles.
She said she left her vantage point to check on the area behind her building, and in that time, her window was shattered. She said among the items stolen were several limited-edition Dodgers caps and jerseys designed by Japanese fashion star Takashi Murakami.
“We’re supposed to let LAPD know if something is happening, but there’s nothing they can do with all these idiots out here,” she said.
As of late Monday afternoon, damage around Little Tokyo appeared to be limited mainly to extensive graffiti on walls and buildings around the neighborhood. The facade of the Japanese American National Museum was marred particularly badly, with vulgar messages scrawled across a large area outside its main hall.
Vandalism and theft was not immediately evident at stores other than Olympic Shop. However, Fujimoto’s ire was tempered by unexpected support from the community almost immediately.
“A neighbor I don’t really know that well, who comes in to buy Lotto sometimes, showed up all of a sudden to help me clean up the broken glass,” she said. “He was apologizing to me, saying, ‘I’m sorry this happened to you. It’s not fair how the U.S. is treating immigrants.’”
After assisting with the cleanup, Fujimoto said he left $100 to help repair the damage. That wasn’t the only financial support, as she reported another longtime customer and Dodgers fan who frequents Olympic Shop arrived later to drop off $500 after hearing about the looting and vandalism.
Fujimoto said she would share the funds with Nellita’s Craft, a small arts shop next door, to help with repairs and also to prepare for possible damage in the days ahead.
“Last night was the worst,” said Ray Mochizuki, who lives in the same building as Fujimoto. “There was fire, looting, vandalism… after seeing what they were doing, I’m trying to separate that from the goals of the people correctly protesting.”
Across the intersection at the Little Tokyo Koban, Brian Kito offered a historic perspective on the targeting of Japanese American businesses.
Graffiti scrawled on the First Street side of the Japanese American National Museum was soon removed by a group of volunteers.
“We’ve been through this before,” he said. “We’re sympathetic to what’s happening to immigrants and peoples’ rights being violated, but we shouldn’t be the ones who suffer from it.”
Susan “Purple” Jekarl, who has been a JANM docent and volunteered within several community projects such as the Tanabata Festival, took it upon herself to clean up the extensive graffiti on the exterior of the museum.
“When I saw it, my heart just sank,” said Jekarl, who spotted the vandalism while taking part in protests on Sunday. “This is the last place on Earth they should be targeting. Japanese Americans were already the victims of this kind of government overreach, so these are not the people to victimize again.”
Early Tuesday, Jekarl was already outside JANM, with a half-dozen or so others, doing their best to remove the spray paint and other markings from the windows and block walls on the First Street side of the building. She said a woman suddenly arrived, pulled a power washer out of her car and assisted with the removal.
“She was adamant about this,” Jekarl said. “‘I want to tell the young people that this is absolutely wrong,’ she was saying.”
Jekarl said she and others planned to return on Thursday, to tackle the tagging on the Alameda Street side. Kito applauded her efforts, citing this as a model for constructive civic involvement.
“We need to get the word out as much as we can about people like this, to show how we care about our neighborhood and our town, and how it’s not cool to do that kind of stuff,” he said, insisting that the damage was not being committed by responsible protesters exercising their First Amendment rights, but rather by what he called angry, uneducated youth.
“We hope to get some more legitimate protesters to join in the cleanup,” he said. “I’m hoping that will set a needed example and help enlighten the community.”
With the constant chopping whirr of police and news helicopters overhead, notably fewer people were walking through Japanese Village Plaza on Monday, though most stores were open.
The mood on the street changed considerably as night fell, as groups of agitators again gathered, this time more within the heart of Little Tokyo. As in the two previous nights, objects and fireworks were lobbed at police and sheriffs personnel, who responded with rubber bullets and other nonlethal methods.
Live TV coverage showed dozens of police cars and officers lined up for blocks on Second Street, starting at San Pedro Street next to Weller Court and going west, while protesters milled around on San Pedro.
Near the intersection of Third Street and Alameda, dozens of protesters defied orders to disperse and were arrested, with many being handcuffed up against the windows of The Rafu Shimpo offices before being loaded onto jail buses. Two staff members were unable to leave the building until the situation settled down later that evening.
By Tuesday morning, there were reports of more graffiti and vandalism, notably at Otoro Sushi on First Street. A window was said to have been smashed and items possibly stolen.
Kito, who is the president of the Little Tokyo Public Safety Association, said in a radio interview Wednesday that business in Little Tokyo has dropped sharply, perhaps as much as 50 percent. With more demonstrations expected for Saturday – Trump’s 79th birthday – many businesses were seen boarding up their windows as a precaution.
–Staff writer J.K. Yamamoto contributed to this report.