![]() “Because was so unexpected, it really gave us hope. “When those trees were destroyed, we just figured there wouldn’t be any cherry blossom trees that bloom this year,” Osaki said. ![]() But just as new cherry trees blossomed in the 1990s, the cultural center once again expects to see the pink flowers bloom by its entrance. The cherry blossom trees that were removed during the period included those planted by the earliest generation to settle down in the part of San Francisco that became home to the country’s first Japantown, Osaki said. ![]() Families in the area, many of whom had just begun returning from prison camps a couple of years previously, were given a deadline to sell their homes or be evicted. Osaki said residents first got notice in 1948 about the urban renewal project, which planned to raze and reconstruct much of Japantown at a time when Japanese Americans were still a “very hated community” as a result of World War II. The city uprooted every tree in Japantown from the 1960s to the 1980s during a redevelopment initiative targeted at areas of “urban blight” - defined partly as neighborhoods with major influxes of non-European populations - the San Francisco Planning Department said in a report. The cherry blossoms, which were planted nearly 30 years ago to commemorate a visit from the emperor and empress of Japan, were the first to have been planted in more than half a century. They were very special and meant a lot more than just a tree growing up in the sidewalk.” “I’d almost prefer them to attack me versus those trees. “It really felt like an attack against our cultural heritage. Law enforcement agencies did not label the incident a hate crime, but one thing was clear to Paul Osaki, the cultural center’s director: This was more than breaking a few branches -it was an act meant to destroy the trees. When the center found the trees last year, every branch had been ripped off to leave only the trunks. ![]()
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