After internment, Japanese Americans took to farming in rural Colorado. Now, their legacies are at risk of fading.

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There is a chance that the plants you brought home from the garden center, or even the melons you bought from a Colorado farmer’s market, were grown by a generations-old farm owned by a Japanese American family. But as these farmers face the same uncertainty about the future as any other farmer, at risk of being lost is a record of this community’s contributions to Colorado’s agricultural identity.

During World War II, southeast Colorado was the site of Camp Amache, an incarceration camp that held Japanese American families on the unfounded suspicion they were spies for the Japanese government. Families from California, Oregon and Washington state were relocated to camps like this across Western states, often in remote areas with punishing, unfamiliar weather. Many of those held were already farm laborers and in most camps, would be put to work farming for the U.S. Army.

There have been a handful of efforts in recent years to shine a greater light on the history of Japanese Americans in Colorado, focusing almost entirely on the adversity they faced during World War II. But there were Japanese people in Colorado well before that. Not to mention after the war, more than 11,000 Japanese Americans chose to make Colorado their new home, and not all of them came to Denver. In fact, more than half spread out over Colorado’s rural areas, with many turning to farming and flower growing to support their families, eventually building multigenerational businesses. Decades later, as the younger generations take their careers elsewhere, this legacy is beginning to fade.

Still, you can find signs of this history if you really look. For example, if you go to the History Colorado center in Denver and take a stroll through “Zoom In,” the permanent exhibit that displays 100 objects from throughout Colorado’s history, you might notice a dirty, beat-up old baseball hat belonging to the late Bob Sakata, owner of Sakata Farms in Brighton.

Bob Sakata, American farmer

Born in California, as a teenager, Sakata and his family were imprisoned in the Topaz Internment Camp in central Utah. Gaining special permission to come to Colorado to enroll in Brighton High School, he worked for Brighton dairy farmer Bill Schluter, who allowed the young man to “batch” on the farm. 

In 1944, while Schluter’s fellow farmers in Brighton were lobbying for a ballot measure that would have banned Japanese land ownership, he extended the Sakatas a helping hand. Not only did Schluter vouch for Sakata’s family to leave the Topaz camp, Schluter bought Sakata his first 40 acres, telling the young man to pay back the $6,000 loan. 

Rob Sakata, Bob’s son, says it only took his father two years to repay Schluter’s kindness. “And Mr. Schluter said jokingly to my dad, he said, ‘What bank did you rob?’”

And so, in 1945, Sakata Farms was born. 

Over the next 50 years, Bob Sakata would grow his farm to a peak of 3,000 acres, becoming a well-known onion and sweet corn supplier for Front Range supermarkets. He was a part of numerous farm organizations, even founding his own in 1955 called the Brighton Agricultural Institute. Bob and his wife, Joanna, are in the Colorado Business Hall of Fame and the Colorado Agriculture Hall of Fame. In 1994, Japan Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko paid a visit to Sakata Farms, and in 2004, the Sakatas were invited to visit the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

But community service was particularly important to Bob Sakata. In 1959, he helped to raise funds to build Platte Valley Medical Center, the area’s first hospital, and he continued to support the facility all his life, on top of participating in local school boards and church organizations. In fact, when Sakata died last year, his obituary asked that instead of sending flowers to his funeral, people donate money to Platte Valley Medical Center.

Rob says his father never really discussed his past in the Topaz camp, even when asked. “And the only thing he ever told me, he said that was the blessing that brought him to Colorado,” Rob said, an example of his father’s pathological positivity, a quality Rob admired. 

In fact, Rob said he had to read about it. In 2009, writer Dan Blegen wrote a children’s book called “Bob Sakata: American Farmer.”

“I learned so much about his past that I didn’t know,” Rob laughed. “I think we should all have a book written about our parents because growing up, so many of us don’t ask them about their past. You know, it’s just like we’ve been together forever, what else do I need to know?”

During World War II, Colorado gained a reputation as a sort of “safe state,” thanks to then-governor Ralph Carr, who was a vocal opponent of Japanese internment, despite the fact that Colorado was home to a camp of its own. He invited Japanese families to come to Colorado, a move that arguably lost him his next election. It made a huge difference to the Sakatas, who had nothing to go back to in California, and to countless other families who found themselves in the same situation.

“Growing up in Brighton, at least, there was a pretty high population of Japanese Americans, and most of them were farmers growing up,” Rob said. But that didn’t make him immune from discrimination.

“I remember in elementary school I think I came home one time and he could tell something was wrong, and there was,” Rob said, referring to his dad. “The school bully in the bathroom started picking on me and called me a dirty Jap. And I told Dad, and I remember him telling me, he said ‘You just have to be sorry for that person that they don’t understand what that means, and don’t understand the hurtful nature.’” 

At 66, Rob has no children of his own and no other direct relatives who are even thinking about taking over the farm. Family farmers all over the country find themselves in this exact predicament. But in a way, Rob sees this as a blessing.

“I’ve talked to other people that do have multiple children interested in coming back and they’re just questioning that decision going ‘oh my gosh, do they know what they’re in for? Can our operation support their families?’” Rob said. “That’s an even tougher dilemma than the one I have.” 

But it does mean that the future of Sakata Farms is a bit uncertain. Labor costs have dramatically increased for farmers in recent years, and so, Rob and his father began gradually phasing out vegetable production in favor of growing feed crops to supply local dairy farms. The pivot has allowed Sakata Farms to outlive its namesake, even as many others leave farming altogether. The last vegetable crop was harvested two years ago, one last round of Sakata onions. 

“That was a tough one for me because I felt like I was tearing down the legacy that he had built,” Rob said. But his father, ever practical, saw the writing on the wall himself: the cost of labor had drastically increased in recent years. Vegetable farms typically bring in seasonal laborers who move from state to state, following planting and harvest seasons. Farms typically pay for travel and temporary lodging for these workers, but Rob said rising housing costs in the area made this practice increasingly unsustainable.

“That was one of the toughest things that we couldn’t overcome and pretty much why we got out of vegetable production,” he said. 

The real estate boom in recent years also means that the actual size of the farm itself has shrunk by as much as half. Rob said a large share of the land they used to farm on was rented, and as the value of that land (and associated water rights) started to soar, those landlords opted to cash out and sell.  

From California To Colorado

Before the Sakatas and many other Japanese American families ended up in Colorado, they were in California, where they left an indelible mark.

“If you think of ag in California, you think of the Japanese community first and foremost over even other Asian communities,” said Gil Asakawa, Denver-based journalist and author of “Being Japanese American” and “Tabemasho! Let’s Eat!” “They’re the ones who brought irrigation and they’re the ones that made California the produce heart of the United States in the 1920s and 30s before the war, until they were all sent off to camps.” 

Even inside Camp Amache, Japanese Americans grew food and ornamental plants. Asakawa points to the recent documentary made by the Denver Botanic Gardens called “Amache Rose,” about a rose bush found growing near Granada, on the parched Eastern Plains, planted by an Amache prisoner. Released earlier this year, the documentary features interviews with Amache survivors.

“I think for the Japanese American community in general, it’s about adaptation,” Asakawa said. “Everything I read about them is that they tried to make the best of it. They had dances, they had movies, they had football teams, they had basketball, they had sumo wrestling in the camps, and baseball was huge in the camps.”

TOP: The “Amache Rose” begins to blossom on May 20 along the old concrete slabs at the Amache internment camp. The rose was planted by a prisoner 80 years ago. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun) BOTTOM: Perennial catmint plants lined up for sale at Kiyota Greenhouse in Fort Lupton. (Ann Marie Awad, Special to The Colorado Sun)

After leaving the camps, Asakawa said many Japanese American families set down roots in Colorado and got into the flower and nursery business, like the Tagawa family that runs Tagawa Gardens in Centennial and Tagawa Greenhouse in Brighton. Though today, fruit and vegetable farms owned by Japanese American families are rare. For example, Hirakata Farms in Rocky Ford, famous for growing juicy Rocky Ford cantaloupes, remains the only active Japanese American farm in Otero County according to History Colorado.

“History makes people forget,” Asakawa said. That’s especially true as older generations age and pass away, like Bob Sakata who died just last year. Or Victor Tawara, a friend of Asakawa’s father-in-law, who died in 2021. A survivor of an incarceration camp in Crystal City, Texas, Tawara eventually settled down in Fort Collins where he ran T&M Tree Farm. He has a variety of pear named for him, patented by Bailey Nurseries.

Older Legacies

The presence of Japanese farmers in Colorado predates World War II, and goes back even before the turn of the 20th century. The Kiyota family of Fort Lupton can trace their roots back almost far. 

It was 1916 when Unosuke Kiyota and his wife, Tomi, moved to unincorporated Weld County. Unosuke worked as a laborer for other farmers until finally purchasing his own land in Fort Lupton in 1931. At that time, many other states had what were called “alien land laws,” which specifically prohibited Asians from land ownership, however, Colorado was not one of those states. And so the Kiyotas and many other families were able to move from being farm laborers or tenant farmers to owning their own farms outright.

Shortly after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued a series of orders ramping up surveillance on Japanese Americans, until finally issuing Executive Order 9066, which ultimately paved the way for the relocation and incarceration of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Families living inland, like the Kiyotas, did not have to relocate, but sometimes had relatives or friends who did.

By the time Mayrene Iwata married into the Kiyota family in 1952, the farm was up to 200 acres, supporting dairy cows and producing sugar beets, sweet corn and other vegetables for Denver grocery stores. She remembers a time when all the nearby farms were also owned by Japanese Americans.

By the late ’50s, Mayrene’s husband, Hank, took over the family business with his brother, Johnny, overseeing the transition from farming food crops to running a greenhouse business, growing plants for commercial and retail customers — another decision driven by simple economics.

“We hired all the Japanese neighbors’ wives to help us in the greenhouse so they could work during February, March and April when we needed to transplant,” Mayrene said. “Then they went home to the farm to help their husbands raise crops on the farm.”

Johnny died in 2009 and Hank died in 2010. Mayrene’s son Dale then took over, and they ran the business together until 2020. She decided to retire when the pandemic hit. But she’s not far away — her home is right across the street from Kiyota Greenhouses.

“I miss the people,” she said. “The people that came, three to four generations come shopping.”

Having just turned 91, she worries about the similarly uncertain future of Kiyota Greenhouses. Dale also has no clear heir to take over the business. 

“He turned 64 and his friends are all retiring,” she said. “He’s not ready to retire.”

Out in one of the greenhouses, as a pair of shoppers tugged a cart down the rows, Dale looked out from the cashier station past a small selection of houseplants, and confirmed, “we’ll just do it as long as we can and go from there. Maybe we’ll find a renter that would like to continue on.” 

Dale’s family pivoted from farming to keep the business running, a familiar story of adaptation as farmers face increasing cost pressures. But as the surrounding farms have disappeared — either sucked up by larger commercial operations or developed for some other purpose — Dale laments a vanishing way of life.

“It’s sad,” he said. “So big farms are getting and getting bigger and the little ones are either quitting or selling out.”

CORRECTION: This story was updated at July 2, 2023, at 9:30 a.m. to clarify that Victor Tawara was a friend of journalist Gil Asakawa’s father-in-law and to correct a typographical error in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066.