45th Food Bazaar offers genuine Japanese fare

Barbecue smoke coming from the Placer Buddhist Church, located at Interstate 80 and Penryn Road, behind the Union 76 station, will signal the start of the church's 45th annual Food Bazaar.Authentic Japanese dishes such as teriyaki chicken, sushi, chow mein and more will be served from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26.There will also be cultural displays, bonsai demonstrations and displays, taiko drumming and tours of the chapel where there will also be floral arrangements on display.Saturday has also been designated as a "Objects of Memory Community Collection Day," during which Americans of Japanese ancestry who were sent to interment camps during World War II are asked to have their artifacts photographed for archival purposes. The photography session will run from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.David Unruhe, president of the church's board, said the purpose of Community Collection Day is to take digital photographs of artifacts that were made at the interment camps, also called assembly centers or relocation camps.When internees got to the camps, they found only "rooms, beds, a potbellied stove and one electric light," Unruhe said."Everything else they had to make … out of scrap lumber."The internees basically built the camps themselves, he explained. And from the extra lumber they fashioned cabinets, bookcases, tables and chairs."Not only did they have to make the furniture, they had to make the tools to make the furniture," he said.Digital photographs will be taken of the items, documents and photographs that are brought to the Buddhist Church, and all items will remain in the possession of the owner.Unruhe said the Community Collection Day is a project of the National Japanese American Historical Society and is funded in part by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program.