A story of three generations of the Omaye family
A few years ago, Mr. Kosei Omaye, who lives in Kyoto City, sent me a copy of his book "The Story of Ichiro Omaye" (Zou no Mori Shobo), a family history of the Omaye family with ties to Florida in the United States. Mr. Omaye knew that I had previously written a non-fiction book about Japanese immigrants to Florida called "Yamato Colony: The Men Who Left Japan in Florida" (Shunposha).
Immigration from Japan to America was centered on the West Coast, and the history and reality of immigration to Florida has hardly been mentioned even among researchers. My book is set in a Japanese village (Yamato Colony) that existed in South Florida at the beginning of the 20th century, and I also touched on Japanese immigration throughout Florida.
Among these, there were also cases in the northern part of the state where Japanese people settled en masse, such as the Yamato Colony. According to "A Hundred Years of Japanese Americans in the United States" (1961), a compilation of Japanese immigration to the American mainland, around the time that anti-Japanese sentiment grew in California and a law was enacted in 1913 restricting land ownership by foreigners, a man named Mogi Seikichi, who dealt in land transactions, introduced land near Jacksonville in northern Florida to Japanese people in California.
The land was owned by then Governor William Jennings, who was trying to invite Japanese people to settle there. In response to this immigration plan, over 30 Japanese people settled there. However, local newspapers responded to this movement with anti-Japanese sentiment, calling it the "Yellow Peril," and the situation threatened to develop into an issue of racial differences, so the Japanese government adopted a policy of appeasement.
Furthermore, Sakai Joh, leader of the Yamato Colony in the south, which had already achieved success, welcomed the settlement of Japanese people, but was critical of Mogi's plan, saying, "It is problematic to sell land to anyone with the purpose of buying and selling land."
In the end, Japanese people began growing vegetables in a collective settlement called the Middleburg Colony, named after the name of a nearby place. However, there were problems with the soil and transporting the crops, and after a while it became clear that it was difficult to continue, so most of the settlers moved to other states, such as California.
Among them, the brothers, Hisajiro and Tsuruzo, stayed in the suburbs of Jacksonville and started growing vegetables together. The nephew of Ichiro, the son of Hisajiro, the elder of the two brothers, was Hiroo Omaye, who sent me the book, and was the son of Ichiro's sister.
Omaye-san became interested in the roots of the Omaye family, including Ichiro, who had gone to America, and his father, Kyujiro, and based on the stories he heard when he visited Ichiro in Florida while he was still alive, as well as the family history compiled by Ichiro's eldest daughter, he published the family history of the Omaye family, focusing on Ichiro, at the end of 2017. In addition to the Japanese version, it has been translated into English and an English version is also being produced.
I have exchanged emails with Mr. Omaye a few times since then, and recently met him when I went to Kyoto, where I asked him about the circumstances that led to the compilation of the book. Taking this into account, I have tried to summarize the history of the Omaye family as it appears in this book, first in chronological order.
From the mountains of Hyogo Prefecture to America
The story begins in the Meiji era. At that time, the Omaye family lived in what is now Kitaota, Yamanami-cho, Tanba City, Hyogo Prefecture, an area surrounded by mountains. The Omaye family had been farmers for generations, and the head of the family, Hanpei, made his fortune as a peddler on the side while farming. In 1876 (Meiji 9), his eldest son, Kyujiro, was born and took over the family business, but he became a guarantor for a friend's debt and ended up with a huge debt.
Realizing that he would never be able to repay the debt if he stayed in his hometown, Kyujiro decided to go to America to earn money in order to repay the debt, and he traveled alone to America in 1903 (Meiji 36). By this time, he was already married, his eldest son Ichiro was four years old, and his wife Fuji was pregnant.
The ship on which Kyujiro was aboard arrived in Seattle. Many of the Japanese who had landed in Seattle around the same time were deemed stowaways and sent back to Japan. It is unclear why Kyujiro was allowed to land, but he was later hired by the Northern Pacific Railroad and began working as a railroad worker.
In order to get a better-paying job and pay off his debts as quickly as possible, he endured working in the freezing cold of the Rocky Mountains, even getting frostbite. A few years later, he moved to Los Angeles, where he met the Ozaki brothers from Wakayama Prefecture and began growing sugar beets with them.
In 1906, Kujiro's younger brother, Tsuruzo, who was seven years younger than him, also came to the United States. He wanted to help his brother, but he also wanted to allow him to return to his hometown where his wife and children were waiting for him. Meanwhile, Kujiro gave up on beet farming and responded to a call from Mogi Seikichi to join Tsuruzo and the Ozaki brothers in a group migration to Florida on the Atlantic coast.
However, this settlement ended in failure, and while many people left the area, the Omaye and Ozaki brothers remained in the suburbs of Jacksonville. Tsuruzo encouraged Kyujiro to return to Japan, but Kyujiro thought that instead of returning to Japan, he would invite his son Ichiro to Florida.
In December 1917, Ichiro arrived in San Francisco from Kobe and was reunited with Kujiro, who had come to pick him up. Ichiro and Kujiro went straight to Jacksonville, Florida, where they worked hard to grow vegetables together with Tsuruzo and his son. In 1918, Kujiro and his family became the first in the area to bring in a truck and began to grow large quantities of vegetables.
In the same year, Kyujiro returned to his hometown in Japan for the first time in 15 years since he had gone to the United States. His father Hanpei passed away shortly thereafter, and he had no intention of ever returning to the United States. However, upon hearing that Tsuruzo and Ichiro had bought land that had previously been rented out in Florida, and that they had expanded their business by owning land, he promised his wife and daughter that he would return in three years, and returned to the United States in March 1920 (Taisho 9).
Ichiro is left alone after losing his father and uncle
Kyujiro devoted himself to growing vegetables with Tsuruzo and Ichiro in Florida, but just six months later, in August 1921, he died of a local disease similar to typhoid. The following month, Tsuruzo also died suddenly from the same disease.
His mother wrote him a letter asking him to return to Japan, but Ichiro decided to stay in Florida, determined to take over the business his father left behind, and with the help of Tom Gray, a black man who had worked for the Omaye family since his father's generation. In his hometown, his younger sister Natsue got married, and her husband Masashi inherited the Omaye family business.
In 1931, Ichiro married Shizu, the second daughter of Tokutarou Takami, who had immigrated to Jacksonville from Japan, and they went on to have six children.
As agriculture in Jacksonville began to stagnate due to the Great Depression, Ichiro opened an import souvenir store in 1938. Also, at the recommendation of the Ozaki brothers, he started a farm in Georgia, a state north of Florida, in partnership with his acquaintance, Butsuen, and moved his family to Georgia.
Three years later, when war broke out between Japan and the United States, Ichiro was only imprisoned for one night, but was prohibited from owning land, so he changed the name of his land to Tom Gray and escaped. When the war ended, the family returned to Jacksonville, and Ichiro continued to work in Georgia during the week.
In 1949, Ichiro returned to his hometown for the first time in 32 years to reunite with his mother and sister. He stayed there for three months before returning to Florida, where he would say his final farewell to his mother.
After that, the farm business went smoothly and Ichiro retired from farm management in 1962. That was the year that Ichiro's farm made its most profit ever.
In 1971, Ichiro and his wife Shizu visited Japan for the first time in about 20 years at the invitation of their third daughter, Emmy, who had become a teacher at an American school in Japan. They enjoyed sightseeing in Kyoto and visited the Omaye family grave. In August of the following year, 1972, Ichiro, who was suffering from bone marrow cancer, moved to Los Angeles where his son, his wife, and their grandchildren lived.
While his children and grandchildren visited Ichiro frequently, on December 7th of the same year, Ichiro passed away surrounded by his family. About 22 years later, in 2005, his wife Shizu passed away at the age of 96. Each of his six children got married and had children. Ichiro had 10 grandchildren. (As of the time of this book's publication in 2017)
This is the summary of the Omaye family chronicle centered around Ichiro, as revealed in "Omaye Ichiro Story." Left alone in Florida at a young age, Ichiro likely considered returning to Japan. However, he remained in America. That determination and his subsequent efforts led him to spend the rest of his life in America, and as a result, the Omaye family remained in both Japan and America. One can sense the weight of one man's determination, or perhaps its mysterious power.
To be continued...
© 2024 Ryusuke Kawai