Idaho Falls Business Owners, JACL Come Together to Fight Hate
Law officials say the bomb threats were just random prank calls.
The anonymous calls started in early February, continued for almost three days and ended in a bomb threat. The callers used thick, stereotypical Asian accents to terrorize the owners of an Idaho Falls, Idaho coffee shop with six phone calls that were eventually tracked by the police.
They also left two recorded messages that ranged from disparaging to hostile.
"Herroo?" said the caller in one message. "I like dog ... I bomb your restaurant."
Police traced the calls to two adolescent boys in northeast Idaho near the Montana border, said Gordon Venable, the owner of the Dancing Dogs coffee shop targeted in the phone calls. Because the perpetrators are minors, their identities have not been released.
Venable, 56, does not know why they chose his business - a coffee shop and gallery space for local artists he owns with his wife Denise Glore located off of Highway 20 en route to Yellowstone National Park. He and his wife are not of Asian descent nor do they employ any Asian Pacific American workers.
What Venable does know is the difference between right and wrong, and that these boys messed with the wrong people. Both he and Glore are lawyers with backgrounds in civil rights and law enforcement. So in addition to calling the police, he also reached out to the local JACL chapter.
A few days before the phone calls started, Idaho Falls JACL President Gail Ochi dropped by Dancing Dogs for coffee to include in a gift to the visiting counsel general of Japan. Ochi chatted with Venable, who agreed to support their upcoming bento box fundraiser by displaying a poster in his shop.
"He has a Buddhist background," said Ochi, 54, a Shin Nisei.
Venable was also involved with the Tri-Cities Taiko group in Pocatello where he met Sherry Randolph, a past president of the Idaho Falls JACL. Randolph had already read an article about the incident in their local newspaper, which omitted information about the bomb threats' racial overtones.
"So when Gordon called me, I was shocked when he told me the details of how these juveniles were using heavy Asian accents to make these threats ..." said Randolph, a Sansei who was born and raised in Idaho Falls.
"Gordon proceeded to tell me that he was asked what he thought the punishment should be and he strongly felt that a public apology needed to be made to the Asian American community for the slanderous way these juveniles acted," said Randolph. "He then asked me if I knew any one person or organization that he could contact to further discuss this incident. I knew this was something that the JACL would be able to get involved in."
Venable attended the Idaho Falls JACL February meeting where he told his story.
"The JACL was shocked," said Ochi. "We were thrilled that he was willing to come forward and identify harassment."
Venable wants to proceed with pressing charges - even as a hate crime - but admits that there is not enough information at this time. So he's pushing for family home studies and a more culturally sensitive investigation.
But police officials say this case is a far cry from a hate crime. Det. Karl Noah of the Bonneville County sheriff's office simply called it phone harassment. Although the case is still being investigated, he does not know why the juveniles used the mock Asian accent, but said the calls were random prank calls.
"Random prank? ... [There is] too little data to offer an opinion regarding random prank potential," said Venable, who also pointed out that the persistent and increasingly violent nature of the calls is unusual to be just pranks.
Many involved say it's important to pursue the case because of the Gem State's history with racial prejudice.
Idaho was home to a large population of Japanese Americans before World War II. Most of the Issei who settled in the area were farmers who even started their own Japanese school. During WWII, relative peace gave way to racism and imprisonment behind barbwire at the Minidoka Relocation Center, located on unused federal land in Jerome County.
JAs during WWII were confronted with devastating harassment, said Ochi. "We are still sensitive to this issue."
If this case is not addressed immediately - with an apology to the APA community and to Venable - young people like the two involved will never realize they are doing wrong, she added.
Ochi also pointed out the state's reputation as the former headquarters for the Aryan Nations, a white-supremacist group located near Hayden Lake. In the past Gail, who was born in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin and moved to Idaho Falls in 1999, was advised not to even exit the highway in that area.
In 2000, the Aryan Nations lost their compound after they were successfully sued and bankrupted for violently attacking a family. Today, the former Aryan compound is a peace park with exhibits on tolerance.
"We have some good things going for our community these days," said Ochi.
Ethnic heritage festivals and other cultural events have helped transform the state's image and reflect the area's growing diversity.
But hate, like anywhere else in the United States, continues to simmer below the surface.
"Yes, these types of incidents do occur and many of them go unnoticed or unreported," said Randolph about the bomb threats. "Gordon himself felt that the authorities handling this situation in the jurisdiction where his business is located didn't understand that this was a hate crime."
Since this was a bomb threat, it's much more serious than just calling someone a denigrating name, said John Ochi, vice president of the Idaho Falls JACL. "We as a society need to say something if someone makes a threat like this. Otherwise, what keeps them from taking it a step further next time?"
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