HUNTINGTON BEACH : Racism Alleged in Fight at Restaurant

A Japanese-American woman said Thursday that she was shocked by an incident in June at the Huntington Beach Red Onion, where she and two female friends allegedly were verbally and physically assaulted by a group of white women in the bar and told to speak English.

The woman, who asked not to be named, said she suffered a split lip after a group of five or six white women pushed, kicked and hit her and the other two women.

The woman said employees at the bar did not come to their aid and made the three women wait for an hour before calling a manager to handle the situation. The employees also allegedly discouraged the woman from reporting the incident to police.

An attorney for the Red Onion disputed the woman’s account.

“I think someone is taking a fight between three to five people and classifying it as a racial incident,” said the attorney, Stephen Warren Solomon. He said the incident was a shoving match broken up by employees, who promptly offered to call the police, and a spokesman for Red Onion said one of the alleged assailants claimed that the other women started the fight.

Lt. Ed McErlain, a spokesman for the Huntington Beach Police Department, said no charges have been filed in the incident. The investigation is continuing, but progress has been slow because there were no names available for the alleged attackers, he said.

The incident prompted the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to call this week for a joint investigation by the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission, its Orange County counterpart and the Orange County district attorney’s office. Supervisor Kenneth Hahn made the motion because one of the Japanese-American women lives in his Los Angeles district.

The incident has also angered leaders of the Asian-American community.

In a letter to the Red Onion, Jimmy Tokeshi, regional director of the Japanese-American Citizens League, and Kathryn K. Imahara, an attorney for the Asian Pacific-American Legal Center of Southern California, said they were “appalled that such violent and racial hatred is allowed to fester.”

“As long as the management and staff of the Huntington Beach Red Onion will tolerate this crime of racial hate, their patrons will not terminate such violent behavior and the discrimination will persist,” they wrote.

Red Onion has not yet responded to the letter, sent more than a month ago, but Gene Salas, vice president of the Carson-based company, said it is unreasonable to expect the company to be responsible for alleged discriminatory acts by its patrons.

“Give me a break,” Salas said. “Should the L.A. Times be responsible for curbing racial discrimination in Orange County?”

Red Onion has been hit with several discrimination charges in the past. The chain has paid several hundred thousand dollars to settle claims of discrimination, including $450,000 to two former college football players thrown out of a Santa Ana restaurant allegedly because they are black. But Salas denied all charges of discriminatory practices.

“Our company is 40% minority, so to say that Red Onion is fostering such racial hatred is absurd,” he said.

Bob Kawahara, a Los Angeles attorney for the Japanese women, said he is looking into filing a legal claim against either the restaurant or the alleged assailants, if they can be identified.