On October 17, 1992, Yoshihiro Hattori, a Japanese exchange
student studying in Louisiana, drove with his homestay
brother to a Halloween party. They went to the wrong home,
that of Rodney and Bonnie Peairs. Rodney Peairs, a
supermarket butcher, stepped outside of his home, armed
with a .44 magnum revolver with a laser sight. Who knows
why Peairs felt threatened by a Japanese high school
student in a tuxedo. Peairs said, "Freeze." Hattori
apparently did not understand and walked toward Peairs.
Peairs shot and killed Hattori.
Newspapers and talk shows in Japan and America repeated
again and again that Hattori would have been alive if he
had understood the word "freeze," but the problem was not
linguistics. Hattori did not understand that you should
stop when you see someone with a gun. Do not walk toward
them. Language is not relevant. This, however, was
certainly no excuse for Peairs, a supermarket butcher, to
kill a high school student who had come to America to study
English. We certainly cannot blame Hattori for his death,
even though he made a fatal mistake. We cannot expect him
to think that ringing the wrong doorbell will result in a
butcher shooting him with a .44 magnum.
Peairs's .44 magnum revolver was the gun popularized by
Dirty Harry, who described the gun as "the most powerful
handgun in the world". Dirty Harry was holding this gun
when he said, "Make my day." A butcher working in a
supermarket has little need for such a gun. Few Americans
need such a gun, but they are easily available in America.
If they were not, Hattori might still be alive today.
Peairs had probably seen Dirty Harry in action. Perhaps he
fantasized about helping to rid America of crime. Hattori
paid the price.
Japan is not 100% free of guns, but it is very close. Some
hunters have guns and some of the yakuza, who are Japanese
gangsters, have guns, but the average citizen in Japan is
highly unlikely to see a gun or be injured by one. Japanese
live in much greater danger of choking to death on some
rice product, not exactly a death that strikes fear into
the Japanese heart. Japanese often imagine that all
Americans have guns. While this is obviously not true,
enough of the wrong people have guns.
The NRA says that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will
have guns. While Americans are divided on this statement,
Japanese are not. Japan does have its problems, but guns
are not one worth mentioning. The Japanese populace appears
perfectly happy with an almost gun free society. Still,
many Japanese are in love with America and the freedom and
individuality America represents to them. Some of them
travel to America and find death instead of freedom.
Hattori was neither the first nor the last Japanese to die
a violent death in America.
American movies are popular in Japan, including Clint
Eastwood movies. A generation of Japanese and Americans
watched Dirty Harry movies with fascination and applause,
entertained by Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry. Dirty Harry
may not have played by the rules, but he never shot the
wrong man. Peairs, a butcher in more ways than one, did.
Japan was outraged and couldn't understand. Many Americans
were outraged again over a needless gun death as they had
been before and would be again. Still, gun deaths continue
in America as guns are easy for anyone to buy legally or
illegally. The question is how much carnage is necessary
for the United States to have the desire and the will to
stop these gun deaths.
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You can find Aaron Language Services on the Web at
http://www.aaronlanguage.com/ . We provide translation from
Japanese to other European languages and back to Japanese,
edit English and other European languages, and offer online
English coaching to a primarily Japanese client base. If
you can't read Japanese, you can always reach us via our
personnel page.
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