County’s Japanese Americans Owe Much to Ancestors Who Parlayed Plots Into Fortunes

Two years ago Tobishima Development Co. bought the lion’s share of the 46-acre Hutton Centre office tower complex in Santa Ana as part of a wave of U.S. real estate investments by the Japanese.

Less than a decade earlier, that same acreage was farmed by the Sakioka family, whose 88-year-old patriarch, Roy Sakioka, came from Japan in the early 1900s.

Just as they did nearly 100 years ago, Japanese today are eager to buy Orange County real estate. But the ancestors of the county’s sizable Japanese-American community were farmers, not investors.

Many Japanese Americans like the Sakiokas--widely considered the county’s wealthiest Japanese-American family--were able to parlay their farm holdings into fortunes.

By trading land in the path of development for ever increasing acreage in more remote areas, some first- and second-generation Japanese Americans continued farming while building a treasury of wealth for their sons and daughters.

Today there are an estimated 40,000 Japanese Americans in the county, some of whom are the descendants of from 30 to 35 Japanese farming families who settled in the county before 1920.

Since World War II, still more Japanese-American farm families have migrated to the county.

The Sakiokas’ farming operation was chased by development from Los Angeles County to Orange County, where the family currently has what is estimated to be more than $200 million worth of undeveloped land as well as ground leases on high-rise office and housing projects going up near Costa Mesa’s South Coast Plaza. In 1978 the family traded 46 acres of strawberry fields that became Hutton Centre for 1,353 acres of farmland in Oxnard.

Other Japanese families who have moved to the county over the past hundred years have also reaped great profits by trading their farmland for expanded agricultural acreage elsewhere or for income-producing shopping centers, industrial buildings and department stores. Property swaps were favored over land sales to avoid capital gains taxes.

Those who remember the county in the early 1900s say it was not easy for the first Japanese settlers to accumulate land since they were poor and since laws discriminating against Asian aliens prohibited them from becoming landowners. But they persevered, even after many were forced to sell their possessions at distress prices and abandon their land to enter internment camps during World War II.

The Rev. Jonathan M. Fujita, pastor of Nozomi United Methodist Church in Santa Ana and president of the Southern California Japanese Ministers Assn., said the first Japanese to leave their homeland for the United States were mostly younger sons who were not entitled to any of the family inheritance.

They left Japan as bachelors and took jobs cutting sugar cane in Hawaii, building America’s railroads or joining farm labor camps in such places as Orange County. Some came without proper passports, he added, and were smuggled over the U.S.-Mexican border. The Alien Land Law of 1913 prohibited Japanese aliens from owning land, and other laws prevented Japanese aliens from becoming citizens.

But some Japanese immigrants circumvented these laws by purchasing land in the names of children born in the United States or in the name of a guardian appointed for under-age children.

“We bought land in the name of my brother, and he had a guardian,” said Jim Kanno, 61. When his family was sent to an internment camp during World War II, Kanno said they were fortunate to lease their 20 acres of asparagus farmland to good custodians. Other Japanese neighbors, he said, returned to find their land had been confiscated.

Increased Family Holdings

After the war ended, Kanno said, he and his brother gradually increased the family’s farm holdings to 100 acres in Fountain Valley. When development pushed south from Los Angeles, Kanno said he joined in the move to incorporate Fountain Valley as a city and bring in utilities to increase the potential selling price of his family’s land and the land of other local farmers. When the city was founded in 1957, he served as its first mayor.

Kanno said many of his neighbors exchanged their farms in Fountain Valley for five times as much acreage in Ventura County. Others, like Kanno, traded their land for income properties and retired from farming.

In one of the trades, Kanno said, he acquired the Buffum’s Department store in the Westminster Mall, which he subsequently sold to an Australian investor. Other properties he swapped for, he said, included a Ferrell’s Jr. ice cream parlor, a Bank of America branch building and a Carl’s Jr. restaurant.

Westminster Mall was once the site of a goldfish farm owned by the Akiyama family, who sold the 40 acres partly in exchange for a shopping center in Vista.

Charles Ishii, also the son of Japanese immigrants, said most of the Japanese farmers sold or traded their land in Orange County between 1969 and 1980. He said his own family traded 200 acres of farmland in Fountain Valley for about 800 acres 35 miles southeast of Fresno on which they grow oranges. The family also acquired a number of industrial buildings in the swap, he said.

Not all Japanese Americans who had valuable farm land used it wisely. There are stories of Japanese Americans who were bamboozled by “fast-talking brokers” or who borrowed against their land for cash that they lost on bad investments.

Turning to Real Estate

For many Japanese, real-estate brokering and management have supplanted farming. And the change is not always regretted.

Clarence Nishizu, 76, said his father, who was a farmer, accumulated heavy debts during the Depression of the 1930s. When he was 21 years old, Nishizu took over the family’s farm operation and ultimately “went just about broke” after two years of searing heat destroyed his chili crop.

“I didn’t know what way to turn but real estate,” Nishizu said, noting that his farming experience had given him a knowledge of land. He said he worked as a real-estate salesman and later a broker to assist his fellow Japanese with farms to sell or swap. He went into partnership with his brothers, one of whom became an industrial developer, while the other built a fruit and vegetable marketing business in Los Angeles.

Other Japanese Americans stuck with farming, such as George Murai, president of Calberi Inc., a Santa Ana-based co-op of 10 Orange County strawberry farmers including eight who are of Japanese descent. Murai, 49, described strawberry farming as a “very meticulous, time-consuming job” requiring relatively little acreage. Therefore, he said it is especially suited to Japanese farmers and to urbanizing areas such as Orange County.

Murai said that when his father moved to the county in the early 1950s, shortly after leaving an internment camp in Poston, Ariz., he worked as a farmhand for a few years and then bought a 20-acre farm in Westminster. “The ultimate dream was to own your own house and farmland,” Murai said.

Through a series of swaps that took advantage of rising property values, Murai said, 20 acres was eventually converted into 250 acres of farmland in Ventura County and 250 acres in San Diego County. “We always traded for land (not cash or buildings), and we were farmers first,” he said. The family also farms 400 acres in Irvine leased from the Irvine Co. Murai estimated the value of his family’s strawberry, tomato and avocado crops this year at between $7 million and $8 million.

Benefits of Expansion

The success of Murai Farms Inc., Murai added, does not stem simply from making the most of land swaps. He said the company has benefited from expanding into trucking and marketing of its produce and acquiring a John Deere tractor sales and service agency in Riverside County. He attributes the family company’s growth to “being a businessman and making a profit in an area where other farmers normally wouldn’t venture.”

After World War II, a new wave of Japanese immigrants began coming to California in quest of college educations, especially in scientific fields. And many decided to stay. Some of that generation are now trying to bridge the gap between the first Japanese settlers in the county and the latest wave.

Edward Koizumi, who was the son of a well-to-do Japanese family and served as an officer with the Japanese navy in World War II, came to the United States in 1951 to study architecture at USC. After graduation, he joined an Orange County architectural firm and learned land planning.

At the offices of his own architectural and development firm, E.K. International in Anaheim, Koizumi displays maps of the United States and Japan, dotted with markers representing his projects. Because he has straddled the Pacific professionally, Koizumi said, he has acted informally as a kind of business broker, introducing Japanese bankers and developers to the Orange County area.

Similarly, Yujiro Yamamoto, a San Clemente inventor who came to the United States in 1952 to study television, has founded a company to encourage exchanges of technology between the United States and Japan with various licensing arrangements. Yamamoto said an interpretive bridge is needed to foster business relationships between Japanese and U.S business people because “the way people think (in each country) is different.”

Because of a profound difference in culture, there is little communication between the latest influx of Japanese nationals, many of whom are stationed temporarily at Japanese-owned firms in Orange County, and the Japanese Americans who have been in the county for generations.

Clash of Cultures

“It is funny and sad that Japanese from Japan don’t generally associate with Japanese Americans from here,” said Murai of Murai Farms. One reason for the communications gap, he surmises, is that the Japanese now arriving have more interest in automobiles and electronics than in farming, which is the background of most of the early immigrant families.

But Minoru Yoshioka, an Anaheim Hills resident who manages the Shizuoka Trade Promotion Assn. in Los Angeles, said Japanese companies increasingly are trying to hire Japanese Americans for bilingual personnel. Also, he said, the newcomers need advice from Japanese Americans, ranging from how to find a good Japanese restaurant to how to purchase car insurance.

Japanese Americans, in turn, are seeking funds from Japanese companies to promote cultural programs that will acquaint their youngest generation and other Americans with the Japanese heritage.

Yoshioka and George Akemi Miyaki (he’s a semi-retired 68-year-old Stanton farmer) last October founded the Orange County Japanese American Assn., an umbrella organization for cultural and social welfare activities. The association, which is trying to “improve the Japanese image” in the county, draws members from the Japanese-American community and from employees of Japanese firms.

Yet another new group of Japanese immigrants consists of young people fleeing the grueling academic competition in Japan to attend schools in California, said Fujita of Nozomi United Methodist Church. In an increasing number of cases, he said, these students outstay their student visas and become what he calls “submarines,” escaping deportation while taking low-paying jobs as gardeners or working in Japanese restaurants.

Fujita said some of these young immigrants appeal to Japanese churches to help them learn English and obtain employment information. A few, he said, have even managed to buy their own restaurants and other enterprises and get permanent visas. Like the immigrants of a 100 years ago, he said, “they want a new life.”