A Timeline of Hate

For 20 years, we have chronicled the myriad developments that have affected Asian Americans, including the litany of hate crimes that still unfortunately plague us. Here are some of the cases that have made the news:

1982
• After a bachelor party, Chinese American Vincent Chin is beaten to death with a baseball bat in Highland Park, Mich., by Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz, two white, laid-off autoworkers who think Chin is Japanese. Nitz and Ebens get probation and a $3,000 fine in state court. They are later tried in federal court for having violated Chin’s civil rights. Ebens is convicted, but the decision is overturned on appeal in 1986. He pleads guilty in a wrongful death settlement in 1987. The tragedy galvanizes Asian Americans, including magazine editor Helen Zia and Mabel Teng, now a San Francisco supervisor.

1983
• Vietnamese high school student Thong Huynh is stabbed to death in Davis, Calif., by a white student after being taunted by a group of whites. The defendant, a minor, is convicted of manslaughter.

1987
• In Lowell, Mass., a Cambodian American teenager is drowned, reportedly by a youth shouting racial slurs.

1989
• Patrick Purdy fires 105 rounds from an assault rifle at students in an elementary schoolyard in Stockton, Calif. in January, killing five Southeast Asian children before shooting himself. Purdy reportedly blamed all minorities for his failings.

•Ming Hai “Jim” Loo, a Chinese American, is shot outside a pool hall in Raleigh, N.C. on July 29. His two white assailants, Lloyd and Robert Piche, allegedly shouted: “We shouldn’t put up with Vietnamese in our country.” Robert Piche is sentenced to 37 years behind bars; Lloyd’s sentence is 4 years.

1990
• Xan Than Ly, a Laotian American restaurant employee in Yuba City, Calif., and two white female co-workers who had asked for a ride are attacked with a hammer by two white suspects.

• Congress passes the Hate Crimes Statistics Act on April 23.

1991
• As payments under the 1988 redress act get under way and as the U.S. falls deeper into a recession, at least 15 hate letters are sent to a Japanese American Citizen League office in L.A. They carry sentiments like, “You birds should move back to Tokyo instead of lobbying constantly for Jap ideas in America.”

1992
• After a suburban Los Angeles jury finds four white officers not guilty in the videotaped 1991 beating of black motorist Rodney King , protests erupt in the south- central and Koreatown areas of the city. From April 29 to May 1, more than 50 people die, including one Korean; damage exceeds $1 billion. According to the Korean American Coalition, 1,867 Korean-owned stores are burned or looted. More than two-thirds are not insured.

• Luyen Phan Nguyen a 19-year-old Vietnamese American pre-med student in Coral Springs, Fla., is beaten to death Aug. 15 by a mob of white youths who call him “Chink” and “Viet Cong.” In that case, Bradley Mills is sentenced to 50 years in prison. In 1994, William Madalone, Terry Jamerson and Christopher Anderson are convicted of second-degree murder.

1993
• Cambodian Americans Sophy Soeung and Sam Nhang Nhem are attacked outside their apartment Aug. 14 by several white men who call them “gooks.” Nhem dies shortly afterward. Harold Latour is found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Two others are also charged in Soeung’s beating.

• The Sacramento office of the Japanese American Citizens League is firebombed Oct. 2. No one is injured, but the blast causes $20,000 in damage. The Aryan Liberation Front claims responsibility.

1994
• Vietnamese American Tuong Phan is outside his home in Westminster, Calif., in May when a man yelling racial slurs beats him with a four-foot long stick. Juan Jimenez is later charged with assault as a hate crime.

1995
• The Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium’s study shows that anti-Asian violence in Southern California has increased from 63 incidents in 1994 to 113 incidents in 1995. A quarter of the 458 anti-Asian incidents reported nationwide that year occur in Southern California alone.

• Vietnamese American Thanh Mai and two Vietnamese American friends are in a nightclub in Alpine Township, Mich., on June 18 when three white men accost Mai, allegedly calling him a “gook.” One knocks him down, causing his skull to split. Michael Hallman is charged in the death, but prosecutors decline to invoke hate crimes laws. He gets 2 to 15 years in prison for manslaughter.

• Eddy Wu, a Chinese American, is attacked Nov. 8 outside a supermarket in Novato, Calif., by an attacker who reportedly tells police that he wanted to “kill a Chinaman.” Robert Page pleads guilty to attempted murder as a hate crime and is sentenced to 11 years in prison.

1996
• In San Francisco, Vietnamese American families in housing projects tell of race-targeted threats and beatings.There are 188 hate crimes against Asians in California in 1996, according to the state attorney general’s office.

• Vietnamese American Thien Minh Ly, a 24-year-old master degree graduate of Georgetown University and a former student at UCLA, is stabbed to death March 3 by two “white supremacist types,” as described by police. Investigators say one suspect, Gunner J. Lindberg, bragged to a friend, “Oh, I killed a Jap a while ago.”

• UC Irvine undergraduate Richard Machado, himself a newly naturalized citizen from El Salvador, in September circulates an e-mail to about 60 Asian American students, blaming them for crime, filth and what he says is the unpopularity of the school. “I personally will make it my life career to find and kill every one of you personally,” says the message. The incident leads to the first prosecution of a hate crime committed through the Internet. Machado is sentenced to serve one year in jail and one year probation. After not complying with the terms of the latter, he is ordered to spend four months in a halfway house.

1997
• The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium’s hate crime audit cites 534 suspected and confirmed anti-Asian incidents in 1996, up from 458 in 1995. California’s attorney general counts 226 hate crimes against Asian Americans.

• Six Asian American students and their white companions say they are denied service at a Denny’s in Syracuse, N.Y., on April 11 and are later beaten up by white patrons. Prosecutors eventually decline to pursue the case; a civil suit is still pending.

• In May, Takashi Yasuhara, 57, is charged under the federal hate crime law in connection with threats made to a white woman married to an African American. Police say he told the 26-year-old woman that her husband would be killed and his sexual organs cut off and sent to her.

• The fatal shooting of Kwan Chung Kao in April by Rohnert Park police galvanizes Asian Americans in Sonoma County and elsewhere. Officer Jack Shields and Mike Lynch claim that Kao, who was drunk and waving a broomstick, was shot because they thought he was a martial arts expert.

• Although community activism helps pressure Sonoma County authorities to investigate, District Attorney Mike Mullins in June clears officers of criminal charges. On the Chinese New Year, Jan. 28, 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice announces that it will not file charges due to insufficient evidence.

1999
• Chinese American Kingman Quon, 22, is sentenced to two years at a federal “boot camp” for young offenders in June after sending threatening e-mail messages to Latinos. The messages have statements like “Kill all wetbacks.”

• Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, 21, goes on a shooting spree over the July 4 weekend, targeting Jews, Asians and African Americans. He wounds six Orthodox Jews and kills Korean student Won-Joon Yoon, 26; and African American Ricky Byrdsong before shooting himself.

• On Aug. 10, white supremacist Buford Furrow wounds five people at a Jewish Community Center before gunning down Filipino American postman Joseph Ileto. If convicted, Furrow could face the death penalty.