Ismael says his family had not seen hate crimes as a big threat. “It seems they’re not targeting us as much,” he said. “Then it hits you.”

As Furrow, 37, remained in custody on state and federal murder charges that could get him the death penalty, flags flew at half mast at Ileto’s post office.

On Saturday, mail trucks rolled into the Rose Hill Memorial Cemetery in Whittier, Calif. More than 350 family members, friends and co-workers gathered to bid Ileto farewell.

“You were shot because you were an easy target, an opportunity and non-white,” said Ileto’s great-aunt Adelaida Villanueva.

“Through your death, the world will remember that racial hatred is a terrible thing,” she said later.

Besides struggling with grief, family members say they also have had the feeling that they are invisible. President Bill Clinton “never acknowledged the Filipino Americans” during his initial address, recalled Ismael. Instead, he said, the president characterized the incident as an attack against Jews, saying only that “a postal worker” had also been killed. That really hurt his mother, Ismael said.

He stressed that the family isn’t trying to lessen the importance of the Jewish angle. Rather, he said, “it’s about equal time, equal acknowledgment of hate crimes.”

APIs, Jews and others should join together to speak out against the hate, he said. Otherwise, bigots might feel free “to push Asian Americans around. We need to show the nation we’re not second class,” he said. “We’re citizens.”

Still, Ismael admitted some fear exists. “My mom ... doesn’t want any more trouble,” he said. And while sitting with other family members at their mother’s Monterey Park house, he admitted: “I don’t want any threats after this from the group this person’s from.’’

The 1990 Hate Crime Statistics Act says a violent action may be a hate crime if victims are targeted because of their “race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” Since 1991, the FBI has reported more than 50,000 hate crimes, yet the Department of Justice has brought only 37 cases under the law.

Few doubt that far more cases exist than are reported. Advocates annually tally hundreds of cases of assault and harassment, and at least five Asian Americans have died at the hands of hate over the past year.

Last October in Maryland, Kanu Patel, 28, and Mukesh Patek, 35, were forced to the floor of the Dunkin’ Donuts where they worked, allegedly by an assailant who taunted them about their English-speaking ability. The attacker, identified as Trone Ashford, is accused of slaying the two, then dousing them with gasoline.

In April, Naoki Kamijima, 48, was fatally shot in his Crystal Lake, Ill., store by an assailant, identified as Douglas Vitaioli, who had reportedly gone into another store looking for minorities.

Over the Independence Day holiday, Indiana University student Won Joon Yoon, 26, was shot dead by white supremacist Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, and on Aug. 10, Ileto became the latest to die.

“For five people to get killed in a year is a phenomenal number; that’s what we have seen in a decade,” said Margaret Fung, executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Given that crime rates have generally dropped, she said, she and other advocates are especially perplexed. Perhaps, Fung said, the country’s growing Asian American and Latino populations may be sending more bigots over the edge. Or perhaps Asian Americans may have been secondary targets in some cases. Whatever the case, though, she stresses that anti-Asian incidents are “not at all on a lower pedestal in terms of national attention.” After all, she said, “the results are the same.”

Despite the recent bloodshed, Asian Americans are undoubtedly more aware of the threat hatred poses than they were in 1982, when Vincent Chin was killed, or in 1992, when intraminority rage left much of Koreatown in ruins.

Today, they face a new challenge on an old mission -- to shape the progress that must follow these tragedies of 1999.

Ileto’s family is working with community groups to organize symbolic memorials. Contact Glen Magpantay at 212-966-5932 or the Nat’l Federation of Filipino American Associations at 202-986-9330 for more information.