Last year, a coalition of Japanese American activists and our allies, delayed the 2024 Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival Parade for 14 minutes to call attention to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We stopped the parade in front of the car of state Senator Scott Wiener, who, we said, “has continued to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, especially in our local schools, in an attempt to delegitimize and silence critique of Israel.”
Our aim was to draw awareness to his politics and to condemn the complicity of the Japanese Americans who continue to champion him.
As a result of our disruption, we witnessed Cherry Blossom Festival spokespeople use the cover of “celebrating cultural heritage” to indoctrinate and normalize our community and all spectators to become accomplices to state violence.
We were appalled to see last year’s parade open with San Francisco Police Department mounted police, followed by the first parade VIPs, Chief of Police William Scott and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, flanked by several officers in uniform, passing out “deputy officer” stickers to parade watchers.
As they proceeded along the route, announcer Mike Inoyue urged attendees to applaud Scott and Jenkins and the SFPD for its “unwavering dedication and exemplary leadership” that “ensures the safety and security of the San Francisco community, as well as Jenkins’ work “to promote public safety, advancing justice for All.” But as the SF Public Defender’s Office noted last year:
Since 2015, SFPD officers have shot 32 community members. In recent years, the department has identified nearly 120 cases of sexual assault, bias, excessive force, and unlawful arrests or searches…Millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on keeping officers under investigation for misconduct on the City’s payroll and hidden in “rubber rooms.” Millions more are being spent on the regressive War on Drugs that has likely contributed to the record number of overdose deaths. With the recent passage of Prop E, SFPD will be spending even more public resources to ramp up surveillance and dangerous car chases while decreasing transparency regarding use of force.
As district attorney, Jenkins’ contempt for free speech rivals the Trump Administration’s, with her office going so far as to charge the Golden Gate 26 with felony false imprisonment for a Palestine solidarity action last April.
Scott and Jenkins were followed by San Francisco Sheriff Paul Miyamoto, who waved and shook hands along the parade route. His office continues to oversee in-custody, preventable deaths at the county’s six jails.
In the weeks after his VIP Cherry Blossom Festival reception, dozens of students at Portola Elementary required immediate medical attention after Miyamoto’s department thoughtlessly released large amounts of tear gas during a “crowd control” exercise near the school. While Cherry Blossom Festival organizers told local media that we put children at risk by temporarily stopping the parade on a mild, sunny day last April, they’ve been silent about the harm caused by Miyamoto and his office to more than 30 elementary school children requiring medical attention thanks to his department.
We were dismayed that this year nothing has changed, with the to see that SFPD and the sheriff once again having prominent booths at this year’s festival and being cheered along as they and DA Jenkins marched in the parade, along with a procession of cars carrying Supervisors Rafael Mandelman and Mahmoud Bilal, along with Senator Scott Wiener.
We ask our community, festival goers, and all people of conscience to join that all who enjoy the Cherry Blossom Festival to join us in voicing our dissent towards the festival’s complicity and alignment with these figures of state violence. As many of us protestors are descendants of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during WWII, we know it is our responsibility to make clear that the mass surveillance of Japanese Americans in the years leading up to war and ability to round up and imprison over 100,000 people in desert prison camps mere months is the same law enforcement infrastructure of today’s immigrant detention centers and ICE deportations.
We call on the festival organizers to no longer invite SFPD, SF Sheriff’s Office, nor DA Jenkins to host booths or participate in the parade. We do not want the festival to continue normalizing law enforcement’s presence in our communities nor put immigrant, queer and trans, and other vulnerable communities more at risk by increased interactions with law enforcement.
They, and the infrastructure of the ICE deportations today, are the descendants of the same reactionary forces that mass surveilled, rounded up, and imprisoned Japanese Americans in the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.
The 2025 Cherry Blossom grand marshals also included Hibakusha, a term referring to survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. We call on the Cherry Blossom Festival to also recognize Korean hibakusha and Chinese hibakusha.
Due to Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea and Manchuria, thousands of Koreans and Chinese were in Japan during the war, many of whom were forced laborers trafficked by the Japanese military from their homelands. Thousands of Koreans and Chinese died during the atomic bombing or were exposed to atomic radiation but receive little recognition or reparations from Japan or the United States. To truly honor the hibakusha, we demand that our community not sanitize history and confront both the United States and Japan’s war crimes during World War II.
Doing so would require our community and the Cherry Blossom Festival to speak on Palestine. In November 2023, it was reported that Israel dropped the equivalent of two nuclear bombs on Gaza. A year and a half later, Israel has betrayed multiple ceasefire agreements and is currently increasing military action while maintaining a blockade of food, medical supplies, and other necessities to human life.
Mimaki Toshiyuki is co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, a hibakusha advocacy organization an organization representing hibakusha andthat won the and winner of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, who called on the world to keep all eyes on Palestine during the acceptance speech.
As our community organized for reparations, we repeated the words “Never Again,” and the famous Fred Korematsu quote: “If you have the feeling that something is wrong, don’t be afraid to speak up.” So here we are, attempting to honor this call. We hope in the future, the festival will join us.
Toshio Meronek and Uta Tamate are writing on behalf of Nikkei Resisters.
