Legacy

A Japanese man with shaggy black hair strides into a full classroom.

“FREEZE!” he yells.

With this shout, Yoshinori Kamo begins the first day of his Introduction to Sociology course.

“People probably find it shocking,” he explained, looking a little pleased with himself. “People go, ‘What’s going on?’” He glanced confusedly around his office, mimicking his bewildered students. “You know, it gets some attention.”

Kamo uses this word to shock his students because it tells a much larger story — one that’s relevant not only to sociology but to his own life. On October 17, 1992, the same word rang out in a Baton Rouge suburb, and a Japanese exchange student was left dead.

A little more than 16 years ago in Baton Rouge, 16-year-old Yoshihiro Hattori and his host “brother” were driving around trying to find the house for a Halloween party they were attending. The boys found what they thought was the right address, pulled over on the street and walked up to the porch. Dressed as John Travolta in a white tuxedo from Saturday Night Fever, Hattori rang the doorbell.

This was the home of Rodney and Bonnie Peairs, a white, middle-class couple. It was not the location of the party, but the numerous Halloween decorations on the porch convinced the boys they were in the right place.

Bonnie Peairs opened a side door a crack to see who was outside, then quickly slammed the door when she did not recognize the two people on her porch. She yelled for her husband Rodney to get his gun. Unaware of the commotion inside the house, Hattori and his friend had turned around and were walking back to their car.

At that moment, Rodney Peairs came out of the carport door. “FREEZE!” he yelled, pointing his .44 magnum handgun with a laser scope at the boys. Hattori turned around and began walking toward Peairs. “We’re here for the party,” he said. Peairs panicked and shot Hattori in the chest from about eight feet away, then ran back inside the house.

The ambulance and police swiftly arrived at the scene, but the Peairs couple remained inside the house for an additional 40 minutes. Hattori died on the way to the hospital. A Baton Rouge jury found Rodney Peairs not guilty of the charge of manslaughter. (Some analysts believe Peairs was acquitted because of Louisiana’s “Kill the Burglar” statute, which gives the homeowner the right to decide if deadly force is necessary to prevent entry or to compel the burglar to leave.)

Following the criminal trial, a civil court judge awarded $650,000 to the Hattori family — a record amount in Louisiana history for a wrongful death suit. Peairs’s homeowner’s insurance paid only $100,000 of the settlement, which the Hattoris used to establish Yoshi’s Gift, an award given to gun control organizations in the U.S.

Yoshinori Kamo was a volunteer interpreter for the Hattori family at both the criminal and civil trials. “I became involved in the case and became much more than a translator later,” he told me in his lightly accented, rapid-fire English. “I became more of an advisor-coordinator. I got real close [to the family].”

He later published a book — essentially a court record — written in Japanese and titled “A Japanese Boy Who Loved America: The Trial of the Yoshi Hattori Shooting in Baton Rouge.”

Kamo instructed me to grab the dark blue hardback book off the shelf next to me. I flipped through the book to the four pages he had marked. The first marked page showed a photograph of a grinning Hattori proudly holding a large fish. The second tab marked a court photo of Kamo sitting with the Hattori family behind the prosecutor’s bench at the trial. The third picture was of the murder weapon, a sinister-looking firearm. The fourth picture was of the grim-faced Rodney and Bonnie Peairs exiting the courtroom, flanked by camera crews and photographers. These images were the only things I understood among the tight rows of Japanese characters, but they spoke volumes.

Kamo said he felt the need to write the book because he found that a lot of the press coverage of the case was inaccurate; he wanted to set the record straight for the Japanese people. He believed it was important to provide the Japanese public with this information so they could try to make sense of a tragic event that took place almost 7,000 miles away.

“We had a lot of press coverage that was incorrect, so people [in Japan] read the book and they figured out what was going on in the [United States] with the case and everything … so I think they learned a lot of truth,” he explained.

For example, any stories that ran in the media said Hattori did not understand the word “freeze” when Rodney Peairs yelled it at him. This could explain why he turned and walked toward a man holding a gun. Kamo rejects these arguments.

“Hattori came [to the U.S.] two months before the incident, so he may not have understood the word, but he was a very smart kid and I believe that he understood what was going on. It was just unthinkable for him to get shot because he had nothing to hide. I think it was more of a misunderstanding than ignorance … he knew what was going on but he didn’t believe that someone was going to shoot him, so he basically tried to explain to them, ‘Don’t worry about it, don’t worry about it, I’m here for the party,’ that’s all.” As Kamo imitated Hattori, he raised his hands, palms out, in a placating gesture.

The majority of the objects decorating the walls of Kamo’s office are related to the trial. There is a photograph of the Hattori parents shaking hands with President Clinton, in which Kamo is visible in the background. To the left of his desk hangs a gun control poster that lists gun-related deaths by countries, ending in an overwhelmingly high number for the United States.

I asked Kamo what the Japanese people thought about gun use and gun control laws in the States. “They think they are horrible,” he said, frowning. “Which, I agree,” he added. “The handgun is illegal in Japan except for police officers, military and some sports shooters. Otherwise, nobody carries a handgun. They are not used to handguns and they find it hard to believe that in this country anyone can own a handgun. They think, [and] I think, it’s ridiculous.”

While many people in Louisiana have forgotten about the Hattori incident, many Japanese people have not. “If you go to Japan and you say ‘Louisiana’ people say ‘Hattori case,’” Kamo said. “If I say ‘I’m from Louisiana,’ they say ‘Oh God, how could you live there?’”

In the case of Yoshihiro Hattori, Japanese and American cultures were juxtaposed to a tragic end. Hattori, Kamo believes, could not fathom that someone would shoot him because guns were so foreign to him. Peairs, on the other hand, grew up in the “gun culture” of the South and had been around guns all of his life. However, since he was not well trained with firearms, instead of shooting the gun in the air or shooting the perceived attacker in the leg, he shot Hattori in the chest. “When the guy didn’t stop, he panicked, basically. After he shot [Hattori], he went back to the door, locked the door and started sobbing. He knew he screwed up,” Kamo explained.

The shooting sparked a drive for more stringent gun control laws in the U.S. The Hattori family collected 1.7 million Japanese signatures and 1 million American signatures on a petition demanding stricter gun laws.  Kamo is still in contact with the Hattori family. He is involved with several projects, including advocating for gun control and improving Japan-Louisiana relations.

Their main project is the Japan Louisiana Friendship Foundation. Hattori explained, “They send students … from Louisiana to Japan and Japan to Louisiana every spring, and they pick like three or four students each time [for] a two- or three-week trip.” The hope is that this organization will foster a greater sense of understanding between the two cultures.

Kamo spoke about the case matter-of-factly, but with a restrained passion. The years that have passed between the trial and now have mellowed his anger, even if the American system has remained the same. The need for change has given Kamo a purpose, something to help him make sense of what happened — something to fight for.