Latest news with #JapaneseAmerican
San Francisco Chronicle
10 hours ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
A Japanese grocery giant is opening a new Bay Area store. Here's where
A Japanese specialty grocery store is expanding with a new Bay Area location, becoming the most recent entry in a flurry of Asian supermarket openings in the region. Osaka Marketplace has signed a lease in Foster City at the Edgewater Place Shopping Center. The location is the vacant 35,000-square-foot space at 919 Edgewater Blvd., where a Lucky supermarket previously operated. The new retailer is best known for their selection of Japanese and Asian goods, as well as fresh seafood and prepared foods. The store is slated to open in November. This will be Osaka Marketplace's third Bay Area location, with its other stores located in Fremont and Pleasant Hill. The company is currently working to expand in Northern California and Arizona. The 123,000-square-foot Edgewater Place is currently in the middle of a capital improvement program to refresh its common areas and parking lot, among other amenities. The shopping plaza has attracted a variety of Asian dining options such as Chinese restaurant Rickshaw Corner, Yemeni Coffee house Sana'a Cafe and Rita Indian Restaurant. 'We're thrilled to join the Foster City community and bring our authentic Japanese grocery experience to Edgewater Place,' Osaka Marketplace owner Kazuhiro Takeda said in a statement. 'From fresh produce and seafood to prepared meals and pantry staples, we're looking forward to serving the community and celebrating the tastes and traditions of the neighborhood we now call home.' The incoming store is is located not far from San Mateo, known for its Japanese American heritage. It's also the latest in a wave of Asian specialty supermarkets across the Bay Area that looks to satiate ever increasing demand, as seen in the recent opening of the Korean grocery store Jagalchi at Daly City's Serramonte Center, which drew hours-long lines. Future Asian grocery store arrivals include Tokyo Central at Emeryville's Bay Street mall, T&T at San Jose's Westgate Center and the long-anticipated H Mart in Dublin.
San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Keep ICE out of Dublin': Hundreds protest prospect of immigrant detention centers
Hundreds of protesters gathered Saturday at a park in Dublin to oppose the possibility of Immigration and Customs Enforcement reopening the nearby federal prison into an immigrant detention center. Drivers passing by the family-friendly protest at Don Biddle Community Park honked their horns in support of the demonstrators holding signs that read, 'Keep ICE out of Dublin.' There were designated art tables where children could color, and attendees could pick up screen-printed posters that read, 'Hands off our immigrant neighbors.' The protest was organized by Tsuru for Solidarity, ICE Out of Dublin Coalition, several labor unions and other organizations. Tsuru for Solidarity, a Japanese American social justice advocacy group that seeks to end detention sites, organized the rally in solidarity with immigrant communities and to protest detention centers from opening in the Bay Area, specifically the scandal-plagued former women's prison in Dublin that shuttered last year. FCI Dublin made national headlines in 2023 after incarcerated people filed a class-action lawsuit alleging rampant sexual abuse by many of the prison guards. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons closed FCI Dublin in early December, citing poor facility conditions and staffing shortages. Later that month, the bureau announced that it will pay $115 million to 103 women who were sexually abused — the largest monetary settlement in the bureau's history, according to representatives of the prisoners. Rumors of potentially reopening the site as an immigrant detention center began after ICE officials toured the facility in February. A bureau spokesperson told the Chronicle last week that 'there are no plans to reopen it.' Still, Bay Area residents have been on edge about the possibility of the prison reopening as a detention center, prompting demonstrators to take to the streets to protest. Stacy Suh, program director at Detention Watch Network and one of the speakers at Saturday's rally, told the crowd that immigrant women were targeted at FCI Dublin because of their immigration status. 'We do not want ICE in our backyard, not in Dublin, not in the Bay Area, and not anywhere,' Suh told the cheering crowd. 'Mass detention and deportation mean more and more and more Black and brown people are racially profiled because of the color of their skin,' Suh added. Marissa Seko, of the Oakland-based Family Violence Law Center, said she has worked with survivors of the prison for 15 years. The prison's conditions described by the survivors reminded Seko, a Japanese American, of the conditions her grandmother endured while she was detained at an internment camp in Arizona. Hundreds of thousands people of Japanese ancestry were incarcerated after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 and invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 during World War II. In March, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to detain Venezuelans. 'As a kid, my grandma and my great aunt told me stories about what it was like losing everything, how desolate, dusty and dirty the camp was,' Seko said. 'Supporting the survivors of FCI Dublin … reminded me of what my family endured during the internment.' 'The prison was closed for good reason and should remain closed,' she added. Sharon Osterweil of Oakland said she attended the rally because, as someone of Jewish descent, 'we have a responsibility to stand up whenever any group is facing detention, concentration camps, kidnappings the way that we're seeing right now.' 'This is the time when elected officials need to stand up and actually represent people who elected them, which means not allowing ICE to expand, let alone keep operating the way they are,' she said.
CNN
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Video: George Takei draws parallels between 1940's Japanese-American internment camps and ICE detentions
"Star Trek" actor and activist George Takei tells CNN's Audie Cornish about his family's experience in a 1940's Japanese-American internment camp, saying Americans "need to speak out" as he sees what is happening with ICE detentions today as "the same thing" as what he experienced.
CNN
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Video: George Takei draws parallels between 1940's Japanese-American internment camps and ICE detentions
"Star Trek" actor and activist George Takei tells CNN's Audie Cornish about his family's experience in a 1940's Japanese-American internment camp, saying Americans "need to speak out" as he sees what is happening with ICE detentions today as "the same thing" as what he experienced.
New York Post
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
‘Star Trek's' George Takei likens US internment camps of Japanese to Trump detaining illegal immigrants
'Star Trek' star George Takei compared President Donald Trump's deportation of illegal immigrants to the U.S. imprisoning Japanese Americans during World War II. During a podcast interview on Thursday with CNN host Audie Cornish, the actor, who played popular sci-fi character Sulu, compared his experiences of being a marginalized Japanese American in World War II to illegal immigrants being detained by the Trump administration. Advertisement 'But politicians lie, and people believe that lie because there's hysteria rampant at that time,' the anti-Trump actor said, mentioning the chaos during America's war with Japan. 'And in our time today, right now, people got swept up by a lie and elected him. And now people have regrets. People must speak out.' As The Associated Press recounted in a 2024 article, 'On Feb. 19, 1942, following the attack by Imperial Japan on Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry to WWII, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry who were considered potentially dangerous.' 4 Takei compared his experiences of being a marginalized Japanese American in World War II to illegal immigrants being detained by the Trump administration. CNN 4 This 1945 photo provided by the Texas Historical Commission shows an aerial view Crystal City Family Alien Internment Camp in Crystal City, Texas. AP Advertisement The report added, 'Japanese Americans were forced into hastily built barracks, with no insulation or privacy, and surrounded by barbed wire. They shared bathrooms and mess halls, and families of up to eight were squeezed into 20-by-25 foot rooms. Armed U.S. soldiers in guard towers ensured nobody tried to flee. Approximately two-thirds of the detainees were American citizens.' Having been born to two Japanese parents, the actor lived this and has shared his experiences with the public. During his interview with Cornish, he said, 'Even great presidents can get swept up in the hysteria of the times because, to Roosevelt, the West Coast of the United States was just like Pearl Harbor. It was open. Unprotected and vulnerable. And here were these people that looked exactly like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor. And so, he panicked out of ignorance.' 4 An unidentified immigrant is detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents inside the Federal Plaza courthouse following his legal proceedings on June 27, 2025 in New York. AFP via Getty Images Advertisement 4 In this April 1, 1942, file photo, U.S. Army medical corps members assist a Japanese woman in Seattle to the ferry at Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound after she collapsed during the evacuation of more than 300 Japanese from the island. AP Takei continued, noting that 'teachers and librarians are the pillars of democracy' and are the ones who can protect society from getting caught up in a political frenzy. 'They can teach them this truth that people, even great presidents, can be stampeded by hysteria. And that's what we're going through right now,' he said, suggesting people are getting caught up in Trump's hysteria. Cornish fleshed out this comparison, stating, 'You have a president who is now saying he's carrying out mass deportations because it's popular, or saying that he has popular support for going after undocumented migrants. And it made me think, as I was reading your book, about the fact that a majority of Americans at the time, in the '40s, supported the removal of Japanese Americans.' Advertisement She asked, 'And so how does your experience of that inform your thinking of the way the president is saying now — that there's somehow, there are at times popular support for these kinds of actions?' He replied, 'The important thing – and my father taught me this when I was a teenager, I had many, many after-dinner conversations – Americans need to speak out… But politicians lie, and people believe that lie because there's hysteria rampant at that time. And in our time today, right now, people got swept up by a lie and elected [Trump]. And now people have regrets. People must speak out.'
