The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 22

Wo w. QOQu The accused: Bright, eager for attention E3M I Iff si V. 1 SO SORRY: Michiko Okuyama's parents are farewelled at Cairns airport. By GREG ABBOTT and JIM O'ROURKE HUNDREDS of well-wishers farewelled the family of slain Japanese tourist Michiko Okuyama when they flew home from Cairns airport yesterday. Local people and airport workers spent more than an hour hugging and quietly speaking with the dead girl's father Mikio, mother Toshie and brothers Hideo and Takeshi before they left for Yokohama.

In a sensitive public display of grief from the far north Queensland city, people with tears in their eyes apologised to the Okuyama family for the death of the 22-year-old woman. Through an interpreter the murdered woman's mother told the crowd the family did not blame the city for Michi-ko's death and thanked the citizens for making them welcome and assisting them. "Thank you very much for searching for Michiko, thank you very much," Mr Okuyama said. He carried a box containing his daughter's ashes. The family had already scattered some of her remains on the Great "The city council has a good crime prevention program but I believe the sense of aggression is so much bigger.

It has to be dealt with differently." Anti-crime campaigners say police and civic leaders are sweeping a political time bomb under the carpet. Mr Reid said: "If you speak publicly, you are labelled anti-Cairns or part of the bad southern press." "Local crimes, particularly assaults on Japanese tourists, have been played down for a long time. Yet for this murder, 15 detectives flew up from Brisbane, a police media spokesman was up here for a week, interpreters were hired, journalists came from Japan by the planeful and even the Federal Minister for Tourism came up. "The case made headlines everywhere. "It is because she was Japanese," Mr Reid said.

"Cairns is billed as paradise but it can be hell if you are not careful, especially at night" Accommodation agent Ross Humphrey said images of Cairns being the last wild west or redneck capital of north Queensland were hard to eradicate when a memor- bashed because he looked part Japanese. "I believe police are trying to put a lid on these assaults being publicised," he said. The increase in Japanese labour in the Cairns tourist workforce, the growth of Japanese backpacker "rabbit warrens" (old Queenslanders converted into small-room guesthouses for Japanese youth), Cairns houses bought outright by young Japanese as hostels, and the high level of Japanese investment were creating growing resentment "It would help if this all comes out into the open," he said. Mr Humphrey said people who found Japanese signs offensive or resented Japanese visitors taking Cairns jobs had to realise tourism was Cairns' most vital asset "Perhaps with this young lady's murder the bubble of innocence has burst Now might be the time to educate all Cairns residents to stand up against crime and to actively protect any young women. "We have a bright economical future, thanks to Japanese tourism.

Let's protect them, everyone else and Cairns." ial to Miss Okuyama's death was desecrated within days. "There are some sick people around," he said. Japanese staff from a nearby restaurant said, through an interpreter, they took the destruction as a sign that some Cairns residents were sympathetic towards her killer. They said: "This indicates to us people still think the guy who killed the girl was not completely wrong." Mr Humphrey said he was shocked at any lingering racist attitudes to Japanese business and tourism in Cairns. "I'm surprised people don't realise where our future lies." The Sun-Herald learnt first-hand of Cairns' ugly side.

On Thursday, a day after police revealed the circumstances of Miss Okuyama's death, a Cairns cafe proprietor told me a sick joke about a planeload of Japanese being diverted to Towns-ville because "Cairns didn't have enough wheelie A taxi driver cursed the proliferation of Japanese signage in the city, calling it the beginning of a "little Another cabbie said he felt his son was recently THE 1 6- ear-old boy accused of the murder of the Japanese tourist in Cairns seemed to crave attention. The caravan dweller is a fit and keen abseiler who joined three other young people last month to squat at an unused warehouse. He left school at 14 to look for work and seems to have become a street-wise drifter divorced from his family. Dressed in baggy designer jeans, he appeared alone in Cairns Children's Court last ednesday and entered no plea to the charge of murdering Michiko Okuyama. ho disappeared on the morning of September 20 after leaving her flat to go shopping.

An autopsy indicated she died from severe facial fractures and inhaling her blood. The youth was remanded in custody to a committal hearing on December 19. Recently he failed to get a job as a television cameraman's assistant. But that didn't Tcrrorsaurus Family Packages, 184. Roam the prehistoric world of the dinosaurs at Tcrrorsaurus, the latest exhibition at Quests con -The National Science and Technology Centre, then enjoy the thoroughly modern facilities at Parkroyal Canberra.

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RESOK1S- A MEMMJt OF 1HE SPHC GHOUP- IN COURT: Cairns boy. stop him from try ing to be in the public eye. He contacted a TV station with a story on street safety and featured in a newspaper story. Journalists said the story, on the youth finding seven used syringes in the street, seemed genuine. "He was so keen and energetic," said journalist Jane Williams.

"He was helpful, intelligent and to look at him you would even say in some ways angelic." Police said the boy-approached them during the murder investigation claiming to have seen the woman. -GREG ABBOTT based author and crime reporter Robert Reid. "You scratch the clean surface and Cairns reacts a bit too dirty." Leading criminologist Paul Wilson agreed. "Cairns is up there with the highest (for crime)," Mr Wilson said. "The evidence of harassment against Asians, harsh violence at pubs and other drinking places and the underlying sense of aggression is there for all to see." He has just returned to Bond University from a crime conference in Cairns.

Barrier Reef in recognition of her dream of becoming a scuba diving instructor. Although a 16-year-old youth has been charged with the murder of Ms Okuyama, police yesterday said investigations into her death were continuing. Tourists, many of them Japanese, are discovering an ugly, frightening side to the holiday capital a redneck, anti-Asian attitude that seethes with aggression. Tourists are increasingly subjected to physical assaults, heckling in the street or sullen rudeness. Some have disappeared.

Concerned residents fear the horrific death of Ms Okuyama, killed in a security vault then carted naked through city streets in a wheelie bin before being dumped in a swamp, was a murder the city had to have. They hope desperately that outrage at the killing will help stem the high rate of violent and property crime. "It's time for us to tackle crime and assaults against tourists more openly," said Cairns- Jiiif.i iiiii i-- it Pictures: USSELL FRANCIS TOURIST TRAP: The Esplanade in Cairns. You've worked hard for your inmooey, hut ds iH doing the same for you? 1 mi -HI. luU.mil I I.

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