Vincent Chin's Murderers Served No Jail Time

They killed him, but the legal system allowed them to literally get away with murder

Aside from the Toyota that my parents bought when we were new immigrants to the United States, they always selected American-made automobiles. Back then, Toyotas weren’t great cars. But they were relatively cheap, which is why my parents purchased one.

And in the 1980s, when American auto workers held demonstrations around the country blaming the Japanese auto industry for the lack of jobs for Americans, my father plastered his Pontiac and my mother’s Chevy with stickers of the U.S. flag. It wasn’t just patriotism that drove this, but an act of preservation. He had hoped that we wouldn’t be attacked for not being American enough — even though we weren’t in the auto industry, or Japanese.

Never mind that the reason Japanese cars were so popular in the United States was because … Americans were buying them. But when you’re racist and ignorant, it’s easier to blame strangers rather than your own kind. It’s never been a secret that racists can’t tell any of us apart — and they don’t particularly care to.

On June 19, 1982, Vincent Chin and his friends were enjoying his bachelor party at the Fancy Pants Club in suburban Detroit. Chin, who had been adopted by David and Lily Chin when he was six years old, had grown up in the area.

Most Asian-Americans of a certain age will remember that Ronald Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz — two white autoworkers who blamed the loss of American jobs and the recession on the Japanese — spotted the Chinese American man and unleashed their frustrations and hatred on him.

"It's because of you little motherfuckers that we're out of work!" Ebens said. He didn't know or care that Chin was of Chinese ethnicity, not Japanese. They didn’t know or care that Chin was a U.S. national, just like them. All they saw was a Jap.

Both parties were thrown out of the club. And that should've been the end of that.

But Ebens and Nitz took it one step further, offering a man $20 to help them hunt Chin down. Once they found him at a McDonald's parking lot, they beat him with a baseball bat so severely that they cracked his head open.

Chin's final words were, "It's not fair."

Chin, who had turned 27 a month ago, remained in a coma until he died on June 23 — five days before his wedding.

For their horrific crime, Ebens and Nitz were fined a little over $3,000. They spent no prison time. The presiding judge, Charles Kaufman, explained away the light sentencing based on the pair’s lack of criminal records and his opinion that the father-son duo weren’t “the kind of men you send to jail.”

Kaufman had been a POW in Japan during Word War II, but claimed that his past as a soldier had nothing to do with the criminally-light punishment he meted out to Ebens and Nitz.

And not that I’m making light of any of the following crimes, but none of the defendants had brutally killed a man:

• Lindsay Lohan spent 84 minutes in jail for driving under the influence.

• Actress Lori Loughlin spent two months in prison for her involvement in a college admissions scandal.

• Charged with conspiracy and lying to federal investigators, Martha Stewart spent five months in prison.

• Paul McCartney spent nine days in a Tokyo jail cell for bringing half a pound of marijuana into Japan.

I won’t ever forget the incendiary 2014 article published in the Detroit News, where Neal Rubin placed the burden of being murdered on Chin. Writer Jenn Fang, who does an incredible job of addressing Rubin's column in her post here, includes a link to a cached version of Rubin's piece prior to the newspaper’s multiple edits.

In his original piece, Rubin provided no new facts, just conjecture from another reporter who covered the case and seemed obsessively fixated that one of the witnesses was "wacky," because she apparently didn't wear undergarments. (Much of that content had been removed during the Detroit News' revisions of the piece.)

Rubin pointed out several times that Chin's blood alcohol level was 0.14. In other words, he was drunk. Imagine that. A man got drunk at his bachelor party. 

The columnist also implied that Ebens was made a scapegoat to appease the Asian-American community. Let me tell you a little something about the 1980s. Asian Americans had little to no power, political or otherwise.

Law professor Frank Wu wrote in detail about what happened to Chin in a Huffington Post piece that’s an articulate, well-written counterpoint to the Detroit News' shoddy attempt at revising history:

Other witnesses reported that Ebens and Nitz referenced another of Chin's friends after they weren't able to capture him, saying they should get the other motherfucker instead. They explained how Ebens and Nitz recruited a bystander and paid him to help catch the "Chinaman," saying they planned to "bust some heads."

No single incident involving an Asian American had aroused such anger before, and none has since. The community organized to form American Citizens for Justice. The name was deliberate. It was meant to signal these individuals, immigrant and native-born alike, were members of the body politic, equals within this diverse democracy.

It boggles my mind that there are people trying to claim that the Holocaust didn't happen. Or that the concentration camps that America set up for American citizens of Japanese ethnicity during World War II really weren't so bad. There are some who claim that the Japanese Imperial Army didn't kidnap, rape and torture Korean girls and force them into sexual slavery. With most of the victims dying off, who's to say that these revised versions of history won't one day be regarded as fact?

Let's not forget what really happened to Vincent Chin. He was killed by two men who literally walked away without serving a day in prison. And that is the sad truth.

Want to read more?

• Interview with Nicole Chung, author of “A Living Remedy” (Chicago Tribune)
• Epik High’s Tablo on Trauma, Triumph, and the Truth (Rolling Stone)
• “Ode To My Father” (review)
• As BTS Celebrates 10th Anniversary, Their Impact and Legacy Is Undeniable, Especially to Korean Diaspora (Teen Vogue)

What I’m currently watching

• Tale of the Nine Tailed 1938

Upcoming K-drama review

• Bloodhounds. I’ve finished the series and will share some of my thoughts in the (hopefully) near future.

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