Corporate Racism Blamed for Suicide
Japanese company sued for wrongful death
By Janet Dang

A Korean American man’s suicide has led his wife to file a wrongful death suit against the company he had worked for, claiming that workplace discrimination and harassment led him to turn against himself.

Myungsub “Mike” Lee had been an employee of Japanese-owned Nippon Express USA, in Los Angeles, an American subsidiary of Nippon Express Co., Ltd., since 1995. Working as an export agent, Lee allegedly endured years of torment and harassment by his Japanese supervisors, according to his family. Last October Lee committed suicide by hanging himself in his garage.

Lee’s wife, Junko Matsubara Lee, filed the lawsuit in a U.S. District Court on April 27, accusing the company of discriminating against her husband simply because he was Korean.

After his death, diary accounts indicated Japanese supervisors taunted and harassed Lee—about his national origin, mocking his Korean accent while speaking Japanese, and commenting about his breath after eating kimchi, saying that the company’s Japanese customers didn’t like that. The lawsuit also charges that Lee’s supervisors made disparaging sexual comments about his wife, a Japanese American, for marrying someone of Korean descent.

According to attorney Howard Halm, after Lee’s death, his family made several demands and had set an April 7 deadline for Nippon Express Co., Ltd., to respond, saying that otherwise they would sue. Those demands were that the company make a public apology and discipline the supervisors and co-workers who were involved in discriminating against Lee. The family also asked for the company to provide education and training on discrimination and multiculturalism, increase promotion and hiring of non-Japanese employees and compensenate them for his death.

But on Mar. 30, Nippon Express sued the family instead, saying that a discrimination settlement between Lee and the company made earlier precluded the family from taking legal action.

Nippon Express could not be contacted for comment.

According to Halm, Lee tried to build camaraderie with his Japanese supervisors during his term of employment, often times socializing with them at bars and during golf rounds. Still, he was harassed, and in April of 1998, Lee along with the only other Korean American employee, Jun Ho Chang, sent a letter to the headquarters regarding the insults. The named supervisors were subsequently reprimanded.

According to Halm, Lee continued his employment because he believed his Japanese in-laws would be proud that he worked for a well-known Japanese company, and he thought his dedication would ultimately lead to advancement.

On May 3, 1999, Lee was, in fact, promoted to senior export agent. But less than a month later, he was asked to testify in a racial discrimination action against Nippon Express filed by Chang and a Latino American worker, and his testimony against the company led to retaliatory treatment by management, Halm said.

Soon after, Lee filed his own discrimination suit against Nippon Express. A month later, he was instructed by a company official to meet with human resources manager, John Gibbons, who is also named in the suit, with whom Lee had confided about the workplace treatment and the lawsuit.

During the session, according to the lawsuit, Gibbons twice offered Lee payment for voluntary resignation, of which Lee refused. Gibbons later reported to management that Lee had made threats to kill his manager during those sessions.

On July 9, 1999, Lee was fired and arrested for making threats, though he never went to jail.

According to the complaint, three days before Lee’s death last fall, the company had settled Lee’s lawsuit issuing him $50,000 but without admitting any wrongdoing. By the time he killed himself, Lee was unemployed, and in debt with legal fees over the criminal charges. “The family has sought legal action to do everything it can to ensure that this does not happen again,” Halm said. “The conduct of Nippon Express was despicable and unconscionable.”

Now, the Lee family is asking the court to de-validate that settlement agreement Lee allegedly signed on Oct 26, 1999, which waives the right to sue. Lee was not in the right mental state when he signed that agreement, states the lawsuit.

It also asks the court not to apply a preliminary injunction order finding that Lee had made a “credible threat of violence,” which justified the company decision to report Lee to the police and fire him. With the lawsuit, the family is seeking an unspecified amount in compensatory damages as well.

“Mike never got a trial and now Nippon Express wants to stop his family from pursuing his right,” said Halm.

Junko Matsubara Lee vowed to fight the company. Her children, Amanda, 10 and Sky,1 are also on the lawsuit.

“This cannot happen again,” she said. “When I look into the eyes of my children I must be able to tell both of them that I did everything I could to make this right.”

News of Lee’s death has reverberated through the Korean American and Japanese American communities in Los Angeles.

The Committee for Justice for M.S. Lee, a community-based group comprised of Los Angeles-based civic, community and religious leaders, rallied behind the Lee family, offering their united support. The committee, through community outreach, has already raised over $10,000 to help the family with funeral expenses.

“This case has been watched very closely by our community from the very first day when the story broke about Lee taking his own life,” said Roy Hong, the committee’s campaign coordinator and staffer at the Korean Immigrant Worker Advocates in Los Angeles.

“The community has been waiting quite anxiously for the lawsuit to be filed for some time. There is tremendous interest in the outcome,” he said.

Lee’s death highlights long-standing animosity between ethnic Japanese and Koreans, rooted from Japanese colonization of Korea, in particular during the early 20th century. Lee’s supporters accuse some of the Japanese company officials of exacerbating those racial tensions.

But Hong pointed out that, “as far as we know, the perpetrators of the discrimination and harassment are mostly people from Japan and there is no tension what so ever [among the Korean American and Japanese American communities in Los Angeles.]

In fact, he said, religious and community leaders within the Japanese American community have drummed up support for the Lee family. And the press conference at which the Lee family announced the lawsuit was held at Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo.

That kind of cooperation, however, is still absent in Asian nations, say community leaders.

“For many generations, a sizeable population of Koreans has resided in Japan. Historically, Korean outsiders had to endure discrimination and humiliation brought on by their Japanese neighbors who treated them as lower class,” said Rev. Hyun Seung Yang, Chair of the Committee for Justice for M.S. Lee.

“Although many Japanese currently hold multicultural views, the stereotype of Koreans has remained ingrained in some Japanese. The stereotype persisted at Nippon Express, where Myung Lee’s bosses subjected him to deep humiliation and ridicule. For Myungsub Lee, a Korean born man, this outcasting by his Japanese bosses was deeply unbearable and detrimental toward his view of life,” added Yang.