JOB ANNOUNCEMENT: Marketing Coordinator and Special Projects at the Nichi Bei Foundation

JOB ANNOUNCEMENT: Marketing Coordinator and Special Projects at the Nichi Bei Foundation   POSITION: Full-time, non-exempt HOURS: 32 hours per week; must be available some evenings and weekends for events and meetings LOCATION: On-site, 1832 Buchanan Street, Suite 207, San Francisco Japantown COMPENSATION: Commensurate with experience, includes health, dental, vision and 401(k) plan after probationary […]

Bachan’s: A special sauce that’s generations in the making

  You’ve probably seen Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue Sauce on the shelves at your local supermarket, packaged in a familiar looking chef’s squeeze bottle and labeled with a cheery hachimaki-wearing octopus. For the uninitiated, Bachan’s Japanese Barbecue Sauce (Original flavor) has a savory-sweet flavor, full of umami. With notes of ginger, garlic and green onion, the […]

Grateful Crane Ensemble reflects upon 20 years, upcoming Sacramento show

Nichi Bei Weekly Report Grateful Crane Ensemble’s mission is “to pay tribute to the unique hardships and inspiring contributions of Japanese Americans in our country’s history and continues the traditions of our Japanese ancestry through educational and entertaining works of music and theater to the Nikkei and broader communities.” Recently for the “Nichi Bei Café,” […]

THROUGH YONSEI EYES: DEAR ASIAN AMERICANS: An open letter and guide-in-progress on being a productive ally to African Americans by a devastated and outraged Asian American

Are you also devastated and outraged? You should be. That’s just the start. So, what’s next? How can the Asian American community mobilize to be productive and supportive to the Black community right now? I’m not claiming to be a perfect ally/activist, or that this is the definitive guide to being an ally in 2020, […]

FINDING YOUR NIKKEI ROOTS: Organizing your genealogy files

Camp records. Census records. Death certificates. Pedigree charts. Photographs. Probate files. At some point, you will realize that you have an ever-growing collection of family history documents. Do you have a filing system that works? Or do you have a disorganized mess of unlabeled items? Perhaps you use the “stack of papers on the dining room table” filing system. Or, the “stick it in one folder on your computer desktop” method.

DISSENT: Coronavirus is especially dangerous for those in prisons, jails, and immigration detention

Every day, government officials take more drastic steps to contain the coronavirus, including shelter-in-place orders, shutdowns of bars and restaurants and preparing college dorms to serve as makeshift hospitals. But shockingly, ICE and some law enforcement agencies are largely going on with business as usual. According to the Los Angeles Times, ICE agents are continuing to arrest immigrants, including a 56-year old man who is the sole breadwinner for his family; the agents arrested him when he left his home to work and buy groceries that would have prepared his family for coronavirus lockdowns. And while a number of sheriffs and police departments are wisely choosing to ramp down enforcement of low-level offenses, many are continuing to book people into jail for minor misconduct.

FINDING YOUR NIKKEI ROOTS: Navigating genealogy Websites — Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org

Genealogical information can be found in a plethora of locations. Of course, not everything is online, but quite a bit IS available digitally. There are many sources of online material, including public and private libraries, universities, Internet Archive, Library of Congress (LoC.gov), the National Archives (Archives.gov) and Densho.org. Some of the best searches begin simply […]

THROUGH YONSEI EYES: Friendsgiving

Many English teachers in Japan have a tough time during the holidays. It’s times like these when we realize how much we need each other here. I look around the room and become overwhelmed by how deeply I love the people around me.

DISSENT: Stephen Miller’s white supremacy should alarm JAs

New ColumnPart of a host of new editorial features funded by a grant from The Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation, the Nichi Bei Weekly is proud to announce the launch of a new civil rights-oriented column, “Dissent,” written by New York-based ACLU attorney Carl Takei, a native of Sacramento, Calif. The Washington Post recently […]

FINDING YOUR NIKKEI ROOTS: Once Upon a Time — Preserve your family history through storytelling

Family stories are just as important to your family history as names, dates and places. Perhaps they are even more important because the stories are what connect past generations to future ones. According to Aaron Holt, an archives technician at the National Archives in Fort Worth, Texas, “it only takes three generations to lose a piece of oral family history… it must be purposely and accurately repeated over and over again through the generations to be preserved for a genealogist today.”