“I was shocked … I didn’t know what to do … and it slowly escalated in a way that he got close to me and he kept yelling at me for no reason,” Sakura Kokumai, a Team USA Karate Olympian, said. ABC7 in an interview.
“You are so small,” says the man in the images. “I f — your boyfriend up.”
“At first there were no racist remarks,” said Kokumai, “but when he got into his car, he shouted ‘Chinese’ and ‘Sashimi’ and then I thought it was okay.”
Sakura Kokumai says she was training at Grijalva Park – just like she does every day as she prepares for the Olympics. She will represent the US at the Tokyo Games this summer – as the first American to qualify for the Olympics in karate.
Doormen fired after failing to intervene in a brutal attack on Asian women in NYC
That’s why she says she was so calm: she knew if she had to, she could fight back. She said that out of nowhere the man started bothering her for nearly 20 minutes.
“You know what? If this was my mom … what if this was my grandmother … it got scary because I knew I could cope with the situation by being calm,” Kokumai said. ‘You don’t want to be aggressive. But I was worried: what if this was someone else? ‘
In 2020, there were 10 times more hate incidents and crimes against Asian Americans in Orange County. According to the Orange County Human Relations Commission, the majority of those crimes were public.
Last month, an 82-year-old Asian-American woman from the Leisure World retirement community in Seal Beach received a letter on the day of her husband’s funeral – he said his death was a good thing because it meant ‘one Asian less for treaties. . “
Copyright © 2021 KABC-TV. All rights reserved.