http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/national/16road.htmlTexas Community in Grip of a Kind of Road Rage
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: July 16, 2004
BEAUMONT, Tex., July 14 - It is merely a four-mile stretch of asphalt on this East Texas city's outskirts, dotted with some ranch-style houses, a few decaying trailer homes and a shuttered gun shop, in the distance the rice fields that brought a small group of Japanese settlers here a century ago.
But the name of the country lane, Jap Road, has long angered many Japanese-Americans. Equally outraged are numerous people who live on Jap Road, which has 100 or so residences; they view criticism of their address as meddling in their affairs.
"I hear 'Jap' cars and 'Jap' bikes all the time," Buddy Derouen, 69, a retired petrochemical worker who lives on the road, in the community of Fannett, said in a recent letter published in The Beaumont Enterprise. "Why not Jap Road?"
The competing positions are set to clash in a meeting on Monday at the Jefferson County Courthouse. Leading the county commissioners' agenda is a discussion of whether they should change the name.