Among those scheduled to testify was a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was comprised of Japanese Americans from Hawai'i and the Mainland.

County Judge Carl Griffith put two people who live along the 4.3-mile road in charge of a committee to come up with a new name. The proposal is to be delivered to him by July 29.

"There are people in this country that believe we are a bunch of racists, and that is so, so far from the truth," Griffith said.

Commissioner Mark Domingue, the lone dissenter, said he wanted people 20 years from now to look back and "think the court had the backbone to maintain that part of our history."

Griffith, the Anti-Defamation League and one resident who lives along the road said they would pay for a historical marker to tell the story of Yasuo Mayumi, the Japanese rice farmer who lived at the end of the road and whose ancestry gave the road its name in 1905. Mayumi returned to his homeland in the mid-1920s.

About 150 people crowded the commissioners' meeting, and the vote came after pleas that focused on history and sensitivity.

"I am very offended by the claim I am a racist and bigot because I am trying to preserve history," county resident Jimmy Norton said.

"Losing Jap Road would be like losing a part of who we are," said Donnie Harvey, who's lived along the county road for 32 years.

But Martin Kominsky, regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, gave commissioners a petition with more than 4,300 signatures on it in favor of a name change.

"There is no getting around the fact that the word is a racial slur," he said.

Samuel Bean, head of the local NAACP chapter, agreed, saying Jap Road was "an offensive racial slur and an embarrassment to our community."

Joining forces to press for a name change were Japanese-American veterans of World War II and veterans representing the "Lost Battalion" of Texas.

In October 1944, the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team became a part of Texas history when they rescued the Texas 36th Division's 1st Battalion, 141st Regiment, which was trapped in a ring of German forces in the Vosges Mountains of France.

Marty Higgins, the 1st Battalion commander who now resides in Anna Maria, Fla., sent a letter to request the change in the road's name.

He wrote that Japanese Americans "fought in the European and Asia Pacific theaters to prove their loyalty and to be viewed with respect. ... Texas owes it to the Japanese-Americans to remove these derogatory and demeaning references."

Higgins said that if he didn't have heart problems, he would be in Texas to testify in person.

Among the scheduled speakers was 442nd veteran Kelley Kuwayama, a member of Company E who took part in the rescue of the Lost Battalion.

The Japanese American Citizens League says although it understood the historic reasons for the road name, times have changed and a more fitting and appropriate name would be Mayumi Road.

An unsuccessful effort to drop the name began in the early 1990s when Sandra Tanamachi, whose grandfather immigrated to Texas from Japan, decided to try a popular seafood restaurant about 20 miles outside her hometown of Beaumont, a city of nearly 115,000 about 80 miles east of Houston.

She knew it was on Jap Road, but didn't realize the offensive effect it would have on her family until they got there.

"I was called names when I was a little kid, and 'Jap' was one of them," Willie Tanamachi, Sandra's uncle, told the commissioners. "It was always used to put me down."

Micki Kawakami, an Idaho woman whose parents were in a Japanese internment camp during World War II, thought what should be taken away from the session was that everyone wanted to honor the Mayumi family.

"We are not Japs," she told commissioners. "The people here are not bigots or racists. May I suggest you inherited a road with a racist name?"