Pacific Currents

Evelyn Iritani Humanizes Business News
The Los Angeles Times Business section reporter finds ways to cover culture in business stories.

By Carol Chung

Rafu Contributor

A recent addition to the Los Angeles Times Business section, Evelyn Iritani, adds a human interest flavor to the articles. The former features writer and now Pacific Rim reporter, attempts to report beyond the superficial in news stories.

"You can find ways to cover culture in business stories," she said.

A 17-year veteran reporter, Iritani, has covered everything from lifestyles to courts, education, social issues, business and the Pacific Rim for the Seattle-Post Inelligencer.

During the early 1980's, Iritani was sent to the Philippines to write travel stories during the anti-Marcos movement. This experience sparked her interest in covering Asian countries. The reporting on increasingly visible Asian countries in economics, should be balanced with reporting grounded in Asian history, believes Iritiani.

Iritani made careful calculations to ensure that she'd land the pacific Rim reporter position. She started writing more business stories and won a Gannett fellowship to enter the Asian American Studies program at the University of Hawaii.

Twice a week, she starts her Japanese language tutorials at 7:30 a.m. Iritani admits that she is not yet fluent, after one year of study in school. "I have decided that learning Japanese will be my lifetime hobby," she joked.

During recessions when companies downsize, reporting of trade wars and foreign investment is noticeably pro-U.S. with little sensitivity to the perspectives of other countries involved, criticized Iritani. During the 1980's there were strong fears about Japan buying up America.

"Real estate seemed to catch a lot of atteintion," recalled Iritani. "There were Americans getting very rich off of inflated prices, selling buildings that were going to stay there."

In 1982, Vincent Chin died of beatings he recieved from American auto workers who confused him for Japanese. Anti-Japanese sentiments were not addressed in many business stories of that period, according to Iritani. Likewise, she found that two days were hardly enough to investigate the prejudices that the Port Angelus community had developed towards Japan when she covered a story about $75 million investment by Daishowa Paper Manufacturing Company in a local paper mill.

Iritani got the chance to express her concerns, when a book publisher approaher her with the open question, "Do you have any ideas for a book?" She returned to Port Angelus and asked the locals questions like, " What do you feel about Japan?" to understand their feelings towards the buying of the paper mill. What she uncovered, was a complex history of Japanese American relations dating back to 1834, when three Japanese American relations dating back to 1834, when three Japanese shipwreck survivors washed onto shores inhabited by Native Americans. In "An Ocean Between Us," ( William Morrow & Co., 1994) Iritani tells personal stories from the perspectives of the earliest Japanese sailors to America, to a Japanese American camp internee, Port Angeles residents' fears during World War II, and four American millworkers under Daishowa employment. The book is expected for release in Japan this month.

While the research process for the book, made Iritani feel like a historian, she sees herself more as a "chronicler of daily life." She enjoys the career that started out "as a kind of fluke" because of the chance to ask a broad array of people "questions that might otherwise be rude," said Iritani. "You can ask anything because as a journalist, you have license to."

In the future, Iritani hopes to author another book because of the impact that her first book had on reshaping ideas about U.S. and Japan relations.

"I came to develop a profound respect for history. I don't think we appreciate that enough in this country," said iritani. "There are pieces of U.S.-Japanese history that are fascinating. People of that repository are dying."

As a former vice president of the Asian American Journalists Association Seattle chapter, Iritani helped establish educational programs for professional development as well as high school journalism opportunities.

Iritani remembers starting her work during the Watergate era when there was a sense among journalists of being able to correct injustices in the government.

"I still feel that way, if I quit, it'd be time to leave," said Iritani with tempered optimism. "I am more realistic about what I can achieve. Five years later, the same problem may exist but that doesn't mean don't do the story.