Cultural conflict continues over Irvine veterans cemetery

What was originally billed as a town hall meeting for Irvine residents to discuss the veterans cemetery approved for the perimeter of the Orange County Great Park turned into a private homeowners meeting after Irvine Mayor Steve Choi and Councilwoman Lynn Schott backed out of the forum.

About three dozen people attended the two-hour meeting Monday night while organizers, with the aid of an Irvine city official, denied access to the media and members of veterans groups. The two men at the door said the town hall discussion had been canceled and that the gathering was now simply a private assembly in a rented space at the Cypress Village Community Center.

“We want to avoid any unpredictable consequences,” said Tony Pan, who led the meeting, organized by a group called the Orange County Residents Alliance, according to information distributed in the original town hall announcement.

Tensions have run high between residents who oppose a cemetery near the Great Park and veterans groups that have lobbied successfully for the site on the northeast perimeter of the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro.

“We thought it was the best interest for all of us not to have, kind of, opposition parties in the meeting,” Pan said.

Outside the community center, Bill Cook, commander of the American Legion District 29, said, “If there was a meeting, as there obviously is, we would like to sit in, hear what’s going on and hear what their point of view is.”

The Irvine City Council approved the plan for the 125-acre plot of land last July. Assembly Bill 1453, which called for establishment of a veterans cemetery in Orange County, subsequently passed in both houses of the California Legislature and was approved for funding by the appropriations committee. Gov. Jerry Brown signed it into law in September.

Choi said he originally agreed to attend the forum on the invitation of Schott, but changed his mind when material promoting the event appeared to place him in favor of moving the cemetery site.

“It looked like [organizers] were using me to promote an opposition rally rather than a public discussion,” Choi said. “As an elected official, I can not lend my name to something like this. I thought, at first, it was going to be a neutral discussion, a more educational forum.”

“They were setting the mayor up to be ambushed as presenting himself as anti-veteran’s cemetery,” Cook said.

Schott did not give organizers specific reasons for reversing her commitment.

“We did not intend to put them in that position,” Pan said after the meeting. “I think it’s just a misunderstanding of the fliers that we were distributing.”

Pan said the meeting was nothing more than an informational session. “We want to understand what’s our rights as a resident, what you can do to protect your interests,” he said.

Choi said he invited community leaders through the Chinese Cultural Center and members of the local Chinese press to discuss the legislation last year, but “nobody showed up.”

“The boat has left. The time is done,” the mayor said.

Irvine resident Ming Chang said she attended the meeting to voice her opposition to the cemetery. Chang and her family bought their Irvine home in February 2014, before the cemetery site was proposed.

“When we purchased the house, it was our dream retirement place,” said Chan as she explained that the 6,000-year-old Chinese philosophy of Feng Shui — and its belief that positive and negative forces require a balance in the natural world — is a factor in her opposition to the cemetery.

“I would not say just Chinese. I would say Asian overall do not like to live near a cemetery.”

Cook, a Vietnam veteran whose term as American Legion D-29 commander comes to an end this month, has a different perspective.

“It’s not the cemetery that’s put in the wrong place. It’s their homes that are put in the wrong place,” he said, noting that two other cemeteries are located within three miles in Lake Forest. “If someone’s building homes specifically for the Chinese market, they didn’t do their homework.

“No one stops to think that thousands of Americans — teenagers basically — left here [El Toro] to fly off to Vietnam. It was the last place they stood alive on American soil. And it’s the same base where thousands of Southeast Asian refugees first set foot in America in the wake of the same war.”