" Hello, I'm-Japanese."
Scott Fujita is helping to bring the Saints back to life. And
that's the least surprising thing about him
by David Fleming
It's odd at first.
When you push open the massive mahogany door of Scott Fujita's
warehouse-style loft in New Orleans, there's a Mardi Gras-style
balcony up front and an exposed wall of burned-black bricks
near the back. Yet despite how much Fujita says his Japanese
heritage means to him, there's no Asian-influenced decor
anywhere to be seen. Then he leads you around a corner to his
den. And there, sitting on a white metal computer desk (next to
Barack Obama's new book) is a stunning blue ceramic recreation
of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.
Admiring the piece as he moves, Fujita seems too tall and fluid
to be a linebacker. Then he sits down, and his desk—now in the
visual frame with his massive shoulders, back and
forearms—suddenly looks like a TV tray. Fujita begins opening
files on his computer, and with each click he reveals the most
cherished artifacts of his remarkable journey, from adopted
child to college walk-on to discarded draft pick to centerpiece
of the resurgent Saints defense.
He opens a picture of his parents, reaches out to touch their
faces on the screen. Given up by his birth mother when he was 6
weeks old, Scott was adopted by Helen and Rod Fujita and raised
in Camarillo, Calif. Helen, a retired secretary, is white. Rod,
a retired high school teacher and coach, is a third generation
Japanese-American. He was born inside an Arizona internment
camp during World War II.
Fujita opens more photos. There's one of him holding hands with
his wife and college sweetheart, Jaclyn, on Senior Day at Cal;
this was a few months before the Chiefs took him in the fifth
round of the 2002 draft. There's another one of him playing Pee
Wee football, the chubby-cheeked, blond-haired, green-eyed kid
with the Japanese name on his jersey. There's another of his
paternal grandmother, Lillie, who once overheard him
introducing himself like this: "Hi! I'm Scott. I'm 4. And I'm
Japanese."
"I swear I'm not delusional," Fujita says, chuckling at the
memory. "I know I don't have a drop of Japanese blood in me.
But what is race? It's just a label. The way you're raised,
your family, the people you love—that means more than
everything else."
Many adopted kids grapple to come to terms with who they are
and where they came from, especially those raised by parents
who don't look like them. But Fujita says he doesn't struggle
with his identity, never has. First as a child and now as a
football player, his path to success has always been about the
same thing: defining for himself who he is. "That's the
connection point for Scott," Lillie says. "You choose to be
what you are. It's not your location, your obstacles or your
skin. You. You choose. He learned that from his family."
Not that he wasn't tested. When his parents took him and older
brother, Jason, who was also adopted, to stores, they got the
occasional odd looks. Sometimes Scott had to show his ID to
substitute teachers who didn't believe that his last name
belonged to him. And he ate so much rice with chopsticks that
he was 8 before he knew what to do with a baked potato. But he
shrugged off most of it, confident in thinking of himself as
half Japanese at heart. To his dad, it was even simpler:
"American, Japanese. To me he's always just been my son."
Every Jan. 1, the Fujitas celebrated Shogatsu, Japanese New
Year's. Every May 5, Rod would raise a koi flag on a bamboo
pole in the backyard in honor of the Japanese national holiday
of Kodomo-no-hi (Children's Day). But because Rod had become,
as he says, "Americanized," most of Scott's knowledge of
Japanese culture came from Lillie and Nagao, Scott's
grandfather.
The two were extremely strict with Rod when he was a kid, but
they spoiled their grandchildren. Nagao often showed up
unannounced at school to take Scott and Jason out for ice cream
and to go toy shopping. During these field trips, Scott would
sit in the backseat of Nagao's car, gazing at the California
coast while listening to tales of great samurai warriors,
Japanese art and history, and majestic places like Mount Fuji.
"When you've never met a single blood relative in your life,"
Scott says, "the idea of ethnicity and blood relations takes on
a different meaning. I found a very beautiful and interesting
culture filled with dignity, respect and honor, and it became
mine."
He also connected to his ancestors through his anger about, and
empathy for, Japanese-American residents who were interned
during World War II. His grandparents had a wrenching story to
tell. In 1941, Lillie and Nagao were students at Cal, planning
to get married. A few days after the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, Lillie was crossing the street in Berkeley when another
female student ran up to her, screaming in her face, "You
little Jap, why don't you go back home!?" Lillie is a tiny,
demure woman. At his wedding reception, Scott got down on his
knees to dance with his grandma, only to discover he was still
too tall. But that day in 1941, she roared back: "I'm an
American too. And a better one than you are!"
Two months later, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order
9066: the forcible evacuation of 120,000 American residents of
Japanese descent to 10 internment camps. To avoid being
separated, Nagao and Lillie married before the order was
carried out. Shortly after, they were forced, along with their
families, to relocate to an Army barracks in Gila River, Ariz.
Unable to pay their mortgage, Nagao's parents lost their
farmland in Ventura County.
The government did allow Nagao to leave camp and return to
college, but only at a school it approved: BYU. Lillie had to
stay behind. Amazingly, after Nagao graduated, he enlisted to
fight for the very country that was imprisoning his family.
Deployed to Italy, he fought with the all-Japanese 442nd
Regimental Combat Team, one of the most decorated battalions of
the war. While Nagao was overseas in 1943, Lillie gave birth to
Rod at the camp.
On Jan. 2, 1945, FDR revoked his executive order; the last camp
closed in early 1946. Nagao attended law school at Cal on the
GI Bill, then moved with Lillie and Rod back to Oxnard, where
he became one of the first bilingual attorneys in Southern
California. He died in 1988. A year later, Lillie received a
reparations check for $20,000 and a written apology from
then-president George Bush. The letter, which Scott keeps on
the computer in his den, says in part: "Your fellow Americans
have, in a very real sense, renewed their traditional
commitment to the ideals of freedom, equality and justice."
Even now, Scott gets angry when he mentions how Japanese
internment was never brought up in school. His desktop is full
of research on the topic, including photos of the camps and
government documents.
Given the depth of his feelings, it makes sense that Fujita has
adopted the ideals of perseverance that sustained his
grandparents. As a high school freshman in 1994, he was his
father's height: 5'6". Over the next three years, he shot up to
6'4" and became a star safety for Rio Mesa High. But lacking
mass, he drew meager attention from major D1 schools, and Cal
offered him a shot to walk on only a few months before his
graduation.
Fujita redshirted his freshman year, but not before blowing
away coaches in his first camp by helping out the
injury-plagued Bears at safety even though both of his hands
were clubbed up with tape—one because it was broken, the other
because of a nasty gash. The Bears gave him a scholarship the
next spring, and he added 20 pounds to his 6'5" frame while
switching from safety to linebacker. But as a sophomore in
1999, he was plagued by nerve stingers in his neck. Following
the season, he had career-threatening surgery that put him in
the ICU for three days and a neck halo for a week. That was
March. By August, he was cracking skulls again in live practice
drills. Two seasons later, he was among Cal's leading tacklers.
"I call it Pat Tillman syndrome," says former Cal defensive
coordinator Lyle Setencich, now at Texas Tech. "There are a few
players you come across who give their heart and soul to the
game. That's Pat Tillman, and that's Scott Fujita."
In Kansas City, Fujita's relentless play led his teammates to
name him the Chiefs' best rookie of 2002, and he topped the
team in tackles in 2003 and 2004. At times, though, he suffered
from "walk-on disease." Fearing the next bad play might be his
last, he stressed and pressed, not realizing that often the
only difference between good and great linebackers is just a
stutter step—the split-second difference between thinking
through a play and reacting on instinct. "I used to be the guy
running around, banging his head on the walls before a game,"
Fujita says. "Not anymore. Sometimes success is more about
relaxing and getting comfortable."
And finding the right fit. After making over their linebacker
corps, the Chiefs traded Fujita to Dallas five days before the
2005 season. He started the final eight games for the Cowboys
and made enough plays to draw interest, as an unrestricted free
agent, from Dallas, Jacksonville, Philadelphia and Oakland. His
first trip, though, was to New Orleans, where former Cowboys
assistant Sean Payton had just been hired as head coach.
The first time Fujita met with Payton in his office at the
team's practice facility (which had been used as a national
command center during Katrina), he was struck by how Payton had
embraced the Saints' role as sports savior of New Orleans.
Sappy or not, Fujita wanted to buy in, if only because he
thought that embodying something bigger than the game would
bring out his best as a player. "The hurricane, my family's
internment, issues of race—I feel like all that is a part of me
when I play."
Shortly after his sit-down with Payton, Fujita and Jaclyn were
enjoying dinner at Emeril's when Saints GM Mickey Loomis called
to thank him for visiting. "I'm ready to sign," Fujita blurted.
Ten minutes later, Loomis raced in with a contract in his
hands. Fujita got a four-year, $12 million deal for dessert,
and the Saints got a key piece for their rebuilt defense
without breaking the bank.
On Sept. 25, during the grand reopening of the Superdome on
Monday Night Football, Saints defensive back Mike McKenzie
introduced Fujita to a national TV audience by calling him "the
Asian Assassin." On the very next play, Fujita erupted through
a crack in the Falcons line and sacked a thoroughly shocked
Mike Vick, forcing a fumble and a fourth down. Fujita
celebrated with a fist-in palm samurai bow (a move now being
mimicked on high school football fields in New Orleans). The
Saints then blocked the Falcons' punt and recovered it in the
end zone to begin the 23-3 romp.
By the time the Saints reached their Week 7 bye, coming off
gritty wins over Tampa and Philly, they had morphed from
Katrina recovery mascots to contenders. Most of the hype has
centered around the backfield of Drew Brees, Deuce McAllister
and Reggie Bush, but the real credit belongs to the
Fujita-fueled defense that ranked fourth in the NFC through
Week 8. Playing behind a dominant, attacking front four, Fujita
is often left unblocked, free to shoot run gaps, roam the deep
middle and wreak havoc 80 feet in either direction. He has
prototypical size, strength and speed, but it's his
lightning-fast presnap recognition that keeps him one step
ahead of opponents and all over the stat sheet—a team-high 55
tackles and two picks, plus 2.5 sacks, a forced fumble and five
passes defensed. "In the huddle," McKenzie says, "he looks like
a missile ready to launch. He's everywhere out there."
Lest anyone want to dismiss Fujita as an overblown do-gooder,
note his $7,500 bill for a low hit away from the action on
Carolina's Steve Smith in Week 4. Or the red, swollen cleat
scars up and down his shins, courtesy of illegal leg whips by
blockers—the ultimate sign of respect in the trenches.
Halfway through the Saints' bye week, in fact, Fujita's shins
are still so swollen and discolored that he has to gimp the
last few blocks home from his favorite sushi joint, Rock-n-Sake
(home of the Mt. Fujita Roll). When he gets home, there are
half a dozen UPS boxes full of Pottery Barn picture frames
waiting for him. One of the candidates for the new frames is a
photo of the banner that Fujita's neighbors made for him after
the Eagles game. Spread out across his parking space, the sign
reads: McNabb Got FUJITA'ED.
It was a nice gesture, and it's a decent enough photo, but the
universal truth behind the message is what makes Fujita eager
to frame it: the idea that no matter where you're from or how
you were raised, no matter what you look like or who you play
for, when fans turn your name into a verb, well, you've arrived.
Posts
