Hello and thank you for downloading the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service

with me for Hannah Heither and today I'm taking you back 40 years to June 1982 and the murder

of a Chinese American man Vincent Chin who was beaten to death by two white men in Detroit.

His death and the lenient sentences the killers received sparked an Asian American civil rights

movement with protests across the U.S. On June the 19th, 1982, Vincent Chin, a 27-year-old

engineer, was at his bachelor party at a bar in Detroit when he got into a fight with Ronald

Ebens, an auto worker and his stepson, Michael Nitz.

Mr. Evens and Mrs. Nitz jumped out from behind the truck, attempted to grab Vincent Chin who they

cornered up in the fumble here. Mr. Ebens swung a bat repeatedly striking Mr. Chin.

Witnesses who'd seen the original argument in the bar said the men had been using racial slurs

against Vincent and they're said to have shouted it's because of you we are out of work.

When we pulled up we found there was a Oriental gentleman, his skull was obviously fractured.

Identify myself as a police officer, I had my weapon drawn, I asked him to drop the baseball back.

He hesitated at which time he eventually dropped the baseball back.

He wasn't dead yet, there's so many conscious but you know from my experience of being on the street

for so long the man was gone.

Vincent was in a coma for four days and died on the 23rd of June 1982.

His funeral took place on what should have been his wedding day.

As the investigation into his death got underway it became clear that his killers had thought

he was Japanese. Asian Americans were seen as foreign invaders as though we were there to do

harm to America. 1982 was also a time of intense hatred against Japan, Japanese and anybody who

looked Japanese. In the early 1980s the US economy was in sharp decline. The unemployment rate was

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