Japanese American actress, Karen Fukuhara, shares that she was randomly assaulted

Yesterday, one year after six Asian women were murdered in Atlanta, Karen Fukuhara shares that she was physically assaulted by a random man. Karen is a Japanese American actress known for her roles in “Suicide Squad” and “The Boys” to name a few.

In her post on Instagram, she wrote:

“Today I was struck in the head by a man (I’m physically fine) and this shit needs to stop. Us women, Asians, the elderly need your help. I rarely share about my private life but something happened today that I thought was important.

I was walking to a cafe for some coffee and a man struck me in the back of my head. It came out of nowhere. We made no eye contact before, I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. It came to my surprise and my hat flew off. By the time I looked back, he was a few feet away from me (he must have kept walking after hitting me). I thought about confronting him first but he started coming towards me and I didn’t think it was worth the risk. After a few seconds of staring at each other, and him yelling at me, he eventually walked away.

This is the first time I’ve been harmed physically, although racial slurs and hurtful actions have been directed to me in the past. I write this, because I’ve had conversations with multi-racial friends of mine that had no idea these hate crimes happen to everyday, regular people - people that they share meals with. I felt it was important to raise awareness.

Ultimately, I know I got lucky. He could have come back to hit me again. He could have carried a weapon. The shock of this experience has me thinking about taking self defense classes. But why is this something we as ‘victims’ have to think about? What satisfaction are these perpetrators getting from hitting women, Asians, the ELDERLY? They need to be held accountable. What can we do as a community to prevent these horrible crimes?”