ITC's Japanese Texans

In 1902, under government pressure created through overpopulation in Japan, Sadatsuchi Uchida toured the Gulf Coast with an eye to emigration possibilities. Many Texas businessmen appreciated the visit, indicated that Japanese farmers would be welcome, and invited settlement efforts.

Some of the immediate leaders were prominent. Seito Saibara, a lawyer, businessman, former university president in Kyoto, and former member of the Japanese parliament, came to Webster near Houston in 1902. Businessman Kichimatsu Kishi settled in Terry near Beaumont. Both brought families as well as single men and successfully set up rice farms. These efforts attracted others, and, although the rice market failed 15 years later, many stayed, some changing their investment to truck farming.

For a short time, some of these settlers wore traditional Japanese field dress and practiced their native religions. Most kept a low profile, deliberately adopting Western clothing and local beliefs.

Another small wave of Japanese families arrived in Texas from the West Coast, driven away by anti-Japanese feelings there. They settled mostly in Cameron and Hidalgo Counties in the lower Rio Grande Valley, while a few chose El Paso and Bexar Counties.

These arrivals were welcomed, but by 1920 the American Legion post in Harlingen told Japanese immigrants to stay away, and the following year the Texas legislature passed a law prohibiting the owning or even leasing of land by foreign-born Japanese.

World War II brought a strong, illogical, but certainly understandable reaction against Japanese immigration and also against individuals of Japanese descent living in the United States. The Bexar County Japanese were particularly noticeable in a military city, and the Jingu family, who had helped create the Japanese Tea Garden for San Antonio, were forced to leave. The garden was hastily renamed the Chinese Tea Garden.

During World War II nearly 6,000 “alien” Japanese arrived as prisoners, called internees, in three federal camps in Texas: Seagoville, Kenedy, and Crystal City. Many of these Japanese were former West Coast residents, and at the close of the camps, a few made Texas home. Some stayed because their properties on the west coast had been confiscated and sold.

After 1950 the Japanese population turned urban, and assimilation increased. Many of the individuals coming to Texas were “war brides,” Japanese women who had married American servicemen. For a time, Japanese women in Texas greatly outnumbered the men, and the women themselves formed clubs to teach each other how to deal with a very different land.

The ban on Japanese naturalization ended in 1952, and immigration laws were relaxed; but in general, the Japanese did not target Texas as a new home.