FUJITA HAS OWN IDENTITY.

Byline: BILLY WITZ Staff Writer

NEW ORLEANS - When Scott Fujita, propelled by the electricity coursing through the Superdome in late September, chased down Michael Vick and knocked the ball loose and out of bounds, he picked himself up and, turning toward his bench, covered his right fist with his left palm and bowed.

The gesture, symbolizing the yin and yang of power and restraint, was quickly being mimicked on high school fields all over the city.

Adults have also found different ways to pay homage to the linebacker, a little-known free agent who has played a key role in the Saints' surprising season.

Teammate Mike McKenzie introduced Fujita to a national television audience as ``The Asian Assassin.'' A sushi bar in the hip Warehouse District soon had a Mt. Fujita Roll atop its blackboard list of specials.

If the Saints, who play Philadelphia in a divisional playoff today, continue to win, a much broader audience may be turning Japanese.

Before that happens, there is one thing that the object of this affection thinks you should know.

He's not Japanese.

``I'm not trying to deceive anybody,'' said Fujita, whose sandy hair, green eyes and 6-foot-5, 250-pound frame would make that a chore. ``I do realize I don't have any Japanese blood running through my body.''

That's not to say he doesn't feel Japanese. Fujita and his older brother Jason were adopted as infants by Rod and Helen Fujita, he a third-generation Japanese-American schoolteacher and she a white secretary of Jewish European heritage living in Camarillo.

Scott grew up hanging around mostly Spanish-speaking kids, but became imbued in Japanese-American culture -- the history, traditions, art and food -- through his father's family, who were pillars in Ventura County's sizeable Japanese-American community.

After being raised in a home where steamed rice and a pair of chopsticks accompanied dinner most nights, he remembers going to eat at a friend's house when he was 8 years old and being served a baked potato. He looked at it, unsure how to proceed -- as his friend might have looked at a Sudoku puzzle for the first time.

On the other hand, a more existential subject -- Who am I? 7/8 is one that Fujita says he's rarely spent much time pondering.

``For me and my brother, when you're raised by a great family and have spent your whole life with them, the idea of having a blood bond is superceded by the relationships you build,'' said Fujita, who doesn't know the identity of his biological mother. ``It's not as if I'm trying to be something I'm not. I tell people I actually do feel I'm half-Japanese, but at the same time, my brother and I always grew up knowing we were adopted.

``It wasn't like we were living this ultra-authentic Japanese lifestyle. There were definitely shades of authentic Japanese culture, but for the most part my brother and I were normal everyday kids with two parents who loved and adored us. That's about as complicated as it is.''

At times, Fujita grows weary of those who want to read more into it than that. There was a reporter from an Asian-American magazine who pressed him to comment on how he felt playing for Bill Parcells, who before Fujita arrived in Dallas last year joked with reporters that the team was working on a few ``Jap plays.''

Or a right-to-life group asking him to be a spokesman after he said he was lucky he wasn't ``an abortion statistic.'' He's pro-choice, but appreciates that his mother -- 18 and single at the time -- made the choice she did.

No, he says, his loft in the Warehouse District is not furnished with Japanese decor. And, yes, he and his wife, Jaclyn, whom he grew up with, eat most meals with forks and spoons.

But there's a reason he bows like a Samurai. Or why he's pleased to get fan mail from Japanese-Americans.

Or why he's more than happy to share his story.

As much as his head may tell him otherwise, Fujita can't shake the feeling that his family's history is his history. Of course, it is. If you're an American, it's your history, too.

A hard beginning

Shikata ga nai is a Japanese expression that means there's nothing you can do about it, so just live with it. It's an expression that many Japanese- Americans used to describe their experiences during World War II.

``I'd ask my folks and my grandparents, but I never sensed any resentment, great bitterness or anger,'' said Rod Fujita. ``It was the Japanese way.''

Nagao and Lillie, Scott's grandparents, were students at UC Berkeley when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. Two months later, President Roosevelt ordered 120,000 residents of Japanese descent relocated to internment camps.

Nagao and Lillie, to avoid being separated, married and were sent with their families to a camp in Gila River, Ariz. Unable to pay the mortgage, Nagao's parents, like many other Japanese farmers, lost their Ventura County land.

The government allowed some people to leave the camps to attend college, but only at places it approved -- most far from the coast or population centers. For Nagao, that meant BYU.

As he was finishing school, Nagao received draft papers from the Army. He had a choice: take a loyalty oath and enlist, or relinquish his citizenship. So, after 90 days in officer training school, second Lt. Fujita was shipped to Italy with the all-Japanese 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the war's most decorated battalion.

While he was there, Lillie gave birth to Rod at the camp.

They remained at Gila River until Rod was 2 1/2. The extended family then moved to Seabrook, N.J., where a frozen foods distributor offered housing and jobs to Japanese. Back on his feet, Nagao enrolled at Berkeley's Bolt Law School under the GI Bill. Upon graduating, Nagao, who spoke five languages fluently, returned to Oxnard and set up shop as one of Ventura County's first Spanish-speaking attorneys.

Rod, who taught world history at Thousand Oaks and Westlake high schools, says he occasionally had Holocaust survivors speak to his class, but never Japanese-Americans.

Shikata ga nai.

It's the same reason, he figures, that he's rarely spoken with his sons about his experiences as an Army medic in Vietnam. Not just about the fighting and the results of it, but the several trips to Vietnamese villages where only the young Vietnamese would come to his table for treatment, no matter how long the line was at the others.

``The elders knew I was Japanese -- and they hated the Japanese,'' he said. ``It was uncomfortable and I wasn't helping very many people, so I started to decline when I was asked to go.''

Learning culture

Scott was born with a natural curiosity. When he latched onto a subject, he wanted to consume it. He had no interest in riding a bicycle until one day he saw twins riding in the neighborhood and he pestered his father to teach him how. It was the same when it came to learning to play basketball and football -- is this the right way?

So, when he began to ask questions about his family heritage, shikata ga nai wasn't good enough.

Nagao and Lillie did their best to pass on tales of Japanese culture, regaling the boys with stories of samurai warriors -- from whom Lillie is a direct descendent -- and mystic places like Mt. Fuji.

But Scott was just nine when Nagao died, a year before Lillie was issued a $20,000 check for reparations and a letter of apology from the first President Bush. By the time he was a teenager, Fujita yearned to learn more about Japanese-Americans during the war.

``I always had a great interest in the internment,'' Fujita said of a subject that is barely touched on in schools, even in Ventura County, where there remains a sizeable Japanese-American population. ``People don't realize it ever happened. Kids don't learn about it in schools. It's not in any of our textbooks or it's brushed aside. To me, it's one of the biggest shames in American history.''

Not only that, Fujita says, but the lessons to be learned are particularly relevant today in the wake of another distant war.

``The same kind of panic and paranoia and prejudice that swept across the United States -- especially on the West Coast -- that kind of stuff can recur,'' he said. `` Especially in this day and age, where there are so many people from the Middle East who are in the United States who are hard- working American citizens, or perhaps of Muslim faith. For them to be shown the least bit of prejudice would be an absolute shame.

``Obviously, I'd like to think that something like (the internment) would never happen again, but people just forget about that part of our history. Actually, it's not that they forgot about it -- they never knew about it in the first place.''

Fujita, who speaks rapidly enough in regular conversation, is clearly agitated by the subject. As he sits in a T-shirt, flip-flops and shorts at a hotel bar across the street from his loft, the motor on his mouth kicks into overdrive.

``To think my grandparents and great-grandparents can lose their land, all their possessions except for what they can pack into a couple of suitcases, and have to relocate to the high desert for a few years,'' he said, pausing for a moment. ``As upsetting and angry as that makes me, my grandmother has no bitterness at all in her voice. She even finds good out of it.''

It's a lesson that Fujita has often taken to heart. He graduated from Rio Mesa High with honors, but without a scholarship offer. So he walked-on at Cal with no complaints, earned a scholarship, became a four-year starter and flourished academically -- earning a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's in education.

When Fujita was drawing up a list of destinations as he entered free agency last March, New Orleans was his first visit.

Never mind that the city was in tatters after Hurricane Katrina, the team was one of the worst in football and its return to New Orleans was tenuous, this is where Scott -- and Jaclyn -- wanted to come. He knew the coaches, but he also came for the city.

After spending their first four years in Kansas City and Dallas, the Fujitas longed to return to a place with culture and diversity. And if they could be part of the recovery, all the better.

``I liked the idea of being part of the rebuilding process for the team, and for me it was kind of a rebuilding point in my own career,'' said Fujita, who was rewarded with a four-year, $12 million contract. ``Symbolically, to be part of the rebuilding process, all those things made this the perfect fit.''

Brand new start

When Fujita reported for his first workout with the Saints last spring, it raised a few eyebrows -- just as it usually does the first time he walks into a room.

``When they brought him in I figured he was Chinese, Japanese,'' said Saints defensive end Charles Grant. ``I just looked at him like, `Who's this skinny white guy?'''

Fujita smiles when this is related. A substitute teacher once asked to see his I.D. when she was taking roll, and he remembers the look of befuddlement last year when he was traded to Dallas and introduced himself to Vietnamese-born Dat Nguyen.

``I'm like, `Hey, man, sorry to disappoint you,''' Fujita said.

If there was any disappointment in New Orleans, it quickly vanished. Fujita was chosen as a captain before he played his first game and has helped a defense improve from 28th in the NFL in scoring to a modest 13th.

``He's been everything we thought and more,'' Saints general manager Mickey Loomis said. ``We liked his character and intelligence, but he's had a bigger impact than we expected.''

Funny, but Fujita says the same thing about landing in New Orleans.

``Never before have I felt like the community and the team was in something like this together,'' he said. ``I fell in love with it right away, and the community has embraced me right back.

``It's kind of a cathartic thing for people who were here before. For me, I'm just happy to be here,'' he added, knowing all too well the importance of finding a good home.

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CAPTION(S):

3 photos, box

Photo:

(1) Former Rio Mesa High standout Scott Fujita is second on the Saints with 96 tackles.

Andy Lyons/Getty Images

(2) Fujita and the Saints beat Michael Vick and the Falcons in September in the first game in the Superdome since Hurricane Katrina.

Chris Graythen/Getty Images

(3 -- color) FUJITA

Box

Eagles at Saints

AP