Japanese Farmers: Pioneer growers formed Yamato Colony near Brownsville

DONNA — Happy Kitayama remembers spending the long hot hours farming his own 350 acres and the other property he leased around Donna.

“Cotton was one of our main crops,” said the 82-year-old Kitayama, who declined to give his first name because it’s “just too long.”

Happy Kitayama’s father came from Hiroshima in 1903 after working in the pineapple industry in Hawaii. Happy was born near San Benito.

“We grew everything,” said his wife, Kay “Iku” Kitayama, 80. “He had a lot of vegetables, too, like cabbage, onion, carrots, pepper, broccoli, you name it.”

Kay and Happy are both children of Japanese immigrants; they are among a small group of life-long Rio Grande Valley residents of Japanese descent who made significant contributions to local history. The book Planted in Good Soil: A History of the Issei in United States Agriculture by Masakazu Iwata states that several Japanese farmers formed the Yamato Colony near Brownsville in the early 1900s. The colony did not last long, however, and its members spread to other parts of the Valley.

“The crops of these early pioneer growers included cabbage, cantaloupes, cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, bell pepper, and squash, which were consigned to distributors in Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth, and Dallas as well as to brokers in Oklahoma,” wrote Iwata. “The produce, in order to retain its freshness, was shipped via railroad express.”

Ironically, Japanese farmers were not allowed to own land when they first arrived in the Valley; Iwata wrote that some white landowners would not allow them even to work here. In most cases, however, local farmers welcomed the industrious nature of the Japanese workers.

Once they arrived here, however, other Japanese residents were sometimes able to help them get started.

Carl Otsuki was born in a small town near Beaumont but moved with his family to the Valley when he was only 3 months old.

“I think we stayed in Mercedes until 1942, then we moved to San Benito and we farmed the Oyamas’ land,” said Otsuki, 80. “It was long hours.”

Iwata’s book states that Tokujiro Oyama was a resident Issei in the Valley.

Otsuki attended San Benito High School where he excelled in sports and met Fay Wood, who would later become his wife. He later continued his education on an athletic scholarship.

Although Fay Otsuki, 75, says intermarriages were not very accepted at that time, neither she nor Carl encountered much discrimination. Carl’s parents had both died by that time, and his wife’s parents loved him.

“Our kids were very popular in high school,” said Fay Otsuki.

Minoru Kawahata, who immigrated from Kagoshima, Japan in the early 1900s, was a member of the Yamato Colony. Iwata wrote that, after the Yamato venture ended, Kawahata went to Pharr and then to Hidalgo. His daughter, Rose Sakai, who remembers him as “Jimmy,” said a man cheated him.

“He had bought land with an Anglo, and at that time the Japanese people could not buy land, it was restricted, and he bought it with an Anglo, and he cheated him, and put it in his name,” she said. “He got cheated from this man.”

With a hearty laugh, she added: “He never really spoke to that man again.”

Her father, she said, raised cotton, beans, and tomatoes, but he’s especially known for introducing lettuce to the Valley’s agriculture. Iwata wrote that hardships led Sakai’s father “to do the impossible.”

“When other farmers of the Valley stated dogmatically that ‘You can’t plant lettuce successfully in the Rio Grande Valley,’ he refused to listen,” Iwata wrote. “He planted the crop on his Hidalgo farm and produced excellent lettuce, each acre yielding from 250 to 300 crates of the green gold.”

Sakai said her father went to grammar school long enough to read and write English.

“He had a need to know the language,” said Sakai, 83. “He did learn how to write, and he did learn how to read the newspaper.”

Her father became Americanized in more ways than one. He named one of his sons Benjamin after a cartoon character named Ben Gump.

“He was from a country that didn’t even have funnies in the newspapers,” she said. “I thought that was interesting.”

Sadly, the child died at a young age.

Sakai herself is a perfect example of the way many Valley residents of Japanese descent have assimilated into the local culture.

“I knew Spanish before I knew English,” she said. “My mother had help with a maid. The maid had a little sister and we went home with her, spent the night with her, learned how to speak Spanish. When I started school, I really didn’t understand English. I knew Japanese and Spanish.”

Happy’s mother came to the United States as a picture bride, meaning he was sent a picture of the woman before they met and married. He understands Japanese, but he can’t read or write it. His wife, Kay, has a much stronger command of Japanese, having attended a private Japanese school in California where she was born and raised.

“I had the advantage with my mother, probably taught me a lot more than other kids,” she said.

She also spoke the language when she visited cousins on her mother’s side in Iwakayama about 12 years ago. Her mother, who attended college in Japan — and played the piano and organ — had come from an old and prosperous samurai family.

“When my mother was growing up, the family owned about 15 boats, and they were in great business,” she said. “They were able to send my mother to private colleges, and she stayed in the dorm like young people do now, too. She loved studying and reading. She never gave up reading. Her passion was flower arrangements. She loved that.”

During her memorable visit there 12 years ago, she found some branches of the family doing extremely well in the fishing industry, while others had orchards of oranges.

“They’ve had orange orchards for years and years,” she said. “My mother remembered growing up with all the beautiful orchards around there. It’s by the ocean, it’s beautiful.”

The relatives were delighted that she could speak Japanese; they wined and dined her and the other visiting members of the family. Kay Kitayama also noticed that one part of the house was very western, with air-conditioning and a large piano; the other side of the house was very traditional, without air-conditioning, and they removed their shoes and sat on the floor.

“Thank goodness I was able to do that,” she said. “I couldn’t do it now.”

That same synthesis of east and west could be found in the Issei of the Valley. Kay Kitayama remembers her mother-in-law who quickly adapted to the local culture. When she first arrived, she was disheartened to find it was nothing but “forest” and wanted to return to Japan.

“It was miserable for her,” said Kay Kitayama. “Then she learned to speak Spanish and everybody called her Maria. She did a lot of midwifing, helped deliver a lot of babies. She made the best tamales. I haven’t tasted tamales that good yet. And she always shared it with her friends after she made them.”

Kay Kitayama herself still makes sushi and teriyaki.

“All three of our sons love teriyaki, but the two older ones don’t eat sushi,” she said. “They are steak and potatoes. My youngest son could eat everything, including liver, which I never cooked.”

The Kitayamas emphasized the importance of education to their children, with fine results. One son is a chief executive officer of a bank in California, another is an orthopedic surgeon, and the youngest is an ordained Episcopal priest.

While they have retired from farming, they lease their land to others still in the business.

“I wouldn’t go back to farming if they gave me money,” Happy said. “It’s takes a hard person to farm.”

Rose Sakai’s son, Paul, returned home from California a few years back to farm the family’s land. He’s currently farming field corn and winter greens, such as mustard greens, collards and kale. He’s glad temperatures have finally cooled.

“The cooler weather helps,” he said. “It slows down the bug pressure, which means less spraying. The warmer it is, the more bugs you have. I’ve really scaled back because I’ve really lost money in the last couple of years.”