Sunday marked the 70th anniversary of a popular tradition in the North Bay, the Enmanji Teriyaki Barbecue in Sebastopol. In addition to the secret-recipe teriyaki chicken, the small town also serves up some lessons in humanity.
Each year, the Enmanji Buddhist Temple welcomes thousands of their neighbors for a barbecue chicken dinner with a Japanese flair and a family secret: the teriyaki sauce that is sprayed onto the 1,200 chickens roasting over the giant coal pits.
Barbecue master Brent Ono couldn’t even remember how many years he’d been cooking there.
“I lost count. So, my dad is third generation, I’m fourth generation and my brother’s fourth generation. So, we’ve been here for as long as we could stand up at the pit,” he said. “They say it’s one of the best barbecues around, so I guess it’s an honor to keep cooking.”
Don’t bother asking for the recipe, although many have tried.
“Developed by my two grandfathers,” said event co-chair Julene Leach. “It is a secret, and you’re not going to find out. It was so good that Kikkoman asked for rights to it and they refused. And soon thereafter, Kikkoman developed their own, but it’s different.”
The barbecue was suspended for three years because of the COVID pandemic. But, while it is now smaller than it once was, it has been growing in size every year since.
Walk through the grounds with Julene, and it’s clear that she either knows or is related to just about everyone in the crowd.
For a gathering of nearly 5,000 people, there is a distinct family atmosphere and it all seems to center around the elegant temple building, originally built for the 1934 Chicago World’s Fair.
“…and after the World’s Fair, they dismantled it, put it on flatbeds and brought it to Sebastopol,” said Julene.
Local residents even helped reconstruct it. But after all, the Japanese Americans were rounded up for internment in 1941, some vandals tried to set fire to the building. There is still one burn mark visible if you look closely.
But then something extraordinary happened. A group of teenagers from a local youth group showed up to protect the building.
“They encircled the temple for I think it was two weeks after that happened,” Julene said. “Because those were friends of the people that had to leave here. And they were Catholics and Christians and Jews, but everybody was friends and nobody could understand why the Japanese were getting hauled away.”
So, is there a lesson in that for today?
“Yes,” she said, “love each other every day.”
It’s a lesson that many of the returning Japanese residents took to heart, including Julene’s dad, Martin Shimizu, now 94 years old.
“We were accepted as people,” he said, “not just somebody to put to work. Because you could become whatever you wanted to be, not just a worker, you know? Makes a difference.”
And it seems like the community still feels a sense of pride over that.
“The tragedy of the internment is a legacy that…it’s a sad legacy that we as Americans carry with us,” said resident Glen Pinnow. “But the Japanese American community overcame that. And this town protected those properties and this temple.”
Eighty years have passed since the war ended and now everyone can gather for a meal and feel like family. The fear and suspicion now seem irrational. And perhaps that’s also something to keep in mind today.
