wfn.org | Wen Ho Lee case troubles Japanese-American United Methodists

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

Sept. 15, 2000  News media contact: Tim Tanton·(615)742-5470·Nashville,
Tenn.     10-33-71B{415}

By United Methodist News Service

For Phil Shigekuni and Paul Tsuneishi, the U.S. government's case against
nuclear weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee amounted to out-and-out racial
profiling.

The two United Methodists experienced racial profiling firsthand during
World War II, when they and more than 120,000 other Japanese Americans were
confined in internment camps in the United States.

"We in this country haven't learned very much if we continue to look at
people in terms of their race and be suspicious of them," said Shigekuni, a
lay member at West Valley United Methodist Church in Chatsworth, Calif.,
near Los Angeles. "And neither has the media learned anything," he added,
noting that news organizations were quick to accept federal investigators'
claims that Lee was a spy.

Shigekuni and Tsuneishi were among a group of United Methodists who had been
calling for Wen Ho Lee's release. They succeeded in getting the
California-Pacific Annual Conference to adopt a resolution, "Justice for Wen
Ho Lee," at its June 13-18 meeting. The resolution was sent to President
Clinton, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and members of Congress.

The 60-year-old Lee was freed Sept. 14 after striking a plea agreement with
the government, ending nine months of solitary confinement. Lee had been
arrested on charges of copying nuclear weapons secrets at Los Alamos
National Laboratory in New Mexico, where he worked. Though born in Taiwan,
he was depicted by federal investigators as a spy for China, but no formal
espionage charge was ever made. He pled guilty to one felony count of
downloading nuclear weapons design secrets to a non-secure computer.

"Clearly, the charges from the very beginning were fabricated, and clearly
it was a pure case of racial profiling," said Tsuneishi, also a lay member
at West Valley Church. "There's absolutely no doubt about that."

Shigekuni initiated the resolution on Lee's behalf at the Cal-Pac
Conference, and Tsuneishi and 16 others joined him in sponsoring it.

"This was purely a justice issue," Shigekuni said of the resolution, "and I
think it was important for all Methodists to feel a sense of outrage and to
not just sit back passively and accept this kind of treatment on the part of
the government."

"We need to speak out because it's that kind of thinking that put us in the
concentration camps in World War II, and it's that kind of issue that other
people are faced with today," Tsuneishi said.

Racial profiling is "contrary to the spirit of Methodism," he said.

Shigekuni and Tsuneishi, along with their wives and another couple, were
also critical of the case in a letter to the editor of Circuit West, the
Cal-Pac Conference newspaper. All six - including Marion Shigekuni, Aiko
Tsuneishi, and Robert and Betty Kobata - had been interned during the war.

In a Sept. 14 news briefing, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno denied that
racism was involved in Lee's case.

After Lee's release, Shigekuni told United Methodist News Service that he
felt "a sense of great joy and happiness that the man finally got justice." 

"I just thought it was so sad, however, that so many people have suffered
over the nine months, not only Lee but his family," he added.

He was encouraged that President Clinton had voiced doubt about the case and
that U.S. District Judge James Parker criticized the Justice Department over
it.

"If anything can be said that is positive, I think it was a signal to the
Asian-American community that we have to stand together to resist this kind
of racism that exists even at the highest levels of government."

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United Methodist News Service
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