Historic Japanese American Family Farm Is About to Fade Into Much-Needed Housing in San José

W

hile James Tsukuda doesn’t say too much about his farm work, his attention to detail makes his care for the craft apparent.

For harvesting raspberries — some so deeply red in color they appear purple in the right light — he keeps a small metal coffee can tied around his midsection where he collects them.

For growing heirloom tomatoes, he ties the branches to stakes to help support the weight of the fruit. It’s extra work, but the twine is more effective than tomato cages, he said.

“If the tomatoes sit on the ground, the slugs will put a lot of holes in them,” he said.

The farm and the Tsukuda’s stand — located on a plot of land bordered by the busy Montague Expressway near the corner of Seely Avenue — are an unusual sight in San José. Surrounded by tech company office buildings, Tsukuda harvests fruits and vegetables for the day starting at dawn.

The Tsukudas started leasing the farmland after James’ father, Eiji Tsukuda, and his family lost some of their own farmland off Oakland Road four decades ago through the eminent domain process. The forced sale allowed the Orchard School District to purchase the land and build its facilities there.

James Tsukuda took over the lion’s share of the planting and harvesting work nearly 20 years ago after his father was diagnosed with cancer and died. His mother, Miyo, might be an octogenarian but said her age is “a secret.” She helps at the stand — which is not much more than a set of bright yellow tables under wooden arbors.

As active Japanese American farmers, the Tsukudas are a rarity in the South Bay. But after the fall season’s popular persimmon harvest, they will close up shop.

Why?

The family that owns the land under the stand, the Sakauyes, is preparing to sell it to a developer. And with the sale, a significant piece of Japanese American history is at risk of disappearing. A decision on the fate of the land is expected to be made Tuesday by the San José City Council.

“I feel sad. I’m going to miss this work,” Miyo Tsukuda said while working the stand, tossing extra raspberries into a basket for a customer. “What am I going to do now? I’m going to miss all these people coming here.”

Japanese American family history

The 22.8-acre plot of land is steeped in history and has been owned by the Sakauyes — a Japanese American family with a long farming legacy — for roughly 120 continuous years. While many Japanese American families lost their property during World War II, the Sakauyes were able to retain their land due to the stewardship of a white neighbor. (A fire broke out Thursday, burning 3–5 acres and a barn not considered historically significant before San José Fire Department crews stopped it.)

The land was first brought into the family after Japanese immigrant Yuwakichi Sakauye bought the initial plots in 1907, only several years before the Alien Land Act would have prevented an Asian immigrant from owning such property. It was later managed by his eldest son, Eiichi Edward Sakauye.

Eiichi Sakauye became a prominent farmer and civic figure serving on local boards and commissions. He was also a steadfast booster and advocate for the preservation of Japanese American history in the region.

The farm is one of only a handful of remaining active farming and orchard sites in the city’s boundaries and represents the last patch of agricultural land owned in the immediate area by the Sakauyes.

The family once grew the plots under their control into a veritable farming empire of around 200 acres in the region, despite facing severe hurdles, including entrenched racism against Asian immigrants; government-sanctioned discrimination such as the Alien Land Act and Asian Exclusion Act; two World Wars, including four years during WWII when the family was sent to a concentration camp at Heart Mountain, Wyoming; and a technological revolution that collapsed the agriculture and canning industry here.

The Sakauyes, led by Eiichi Sakauye’s son Ron, planned to develop or sell off much of the acreage they once owned beginning in the 1980s, and indeed, a pair of large commercial offices sit today on nearby land owned by some of the family members.

However, Eiichi Sakauye painted a more complicated picture of what happened to the rest of their farmland in a February 2005 interview with the Japanese American Museum of San Jose, alluding to disagreements with in-laws.

“It’s a sad story. We had family disputes, so gradually, we got in debt and lost it,” he said. He died later that year at the age of 93.

But over the decades, the family has held onto this cleaver-shaped parcel the longest, part of the original farmland worked by the patriarch, Yuwakichi Sakauye in the early 1900s, and now farmed largely by James and Miyo Tsukuda.

Historical Sites into housing

About half of the site is eligible to be listed as an entire historic district in the state’s Register of Historic Resources, according to a consultant report commissioned by the developer. On the site are several buildings — such as barns and pump houses — in addition to the rows of crops, dirt roads and fruit trees.

One of those buildings is an adobe home with a red clay tile roof built around 1920. This home is where Eiichi Sakauye lived his entire life, save for the years he was interned during World War II. It is eligible on its own for listing in the register.

Now, a contract is in place for the Sakauyes to sell the land to the Hanover Company, a Houston-based developer that has mapped out plans to level the entire site to build nearly 1,500 apartments and townhomes, as well as a 2.5-acre public park.

The San José City Council will consider the proposal at its Aug. 13 meeting.

Not worth preservation, according to family

While no one disagrees that housing is sorely needed in the region, some in the city are concerned about the apparent ease with which city officials, the Sakauye family and the developer are willing to allow the historic structures to be leveled.

In letters to the city, family members said they are proud of their father’s accomplishments and contributions in the community but don’t care about saving his former home.

“While Carolyn Sakauye and Jane May, the children of Eiichi Edward Sakauye, have very fond memories of growing up and spending their childhoods in that family farmhouse, they do not think it is worth trying to preserve it,” their attorney, Sam Farb, wrote to the city in June. The sisters declined to be interviewed for this story, citing advice from their attorney.

Scott Youdall, a development partner at Hanover, told city officials the public park will include a prominently featured historic interpretation area with embedded storyboards that would tell the story of Eiichi Sakauye’s life in San José, his internment, and his contributions to agriculture. Youdall did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

“It’s hard to see this last patch of the farm and orchard land be converted into apartment buildings. It’s very difficult to see,” said Vanessa Hatakeyama, the acting director of the Japanese American Museum of San José.

“There are very few Japanese American farms. And so I think to see one of the last ones in this area go, it is a little bit painful,” she said, citing the once large cultural influence on farming by Japanese Americans.

Hatakeyama said the museum is in a tough spot. The organization is dedicated to preserving and perpetuating the stories of Japanese Americans in the South Bay but also wants to respect the wishes of the family members who have decided to sell the land.

Eiichi Sakauye seemed resigned to the fate of farms like his even decades ago. In a 1982 feature story in the San José Mercury News about the changing of the guard in his family, he described his farming in the area at the time as a hobby.

“I hate to see it going like this, but there’s no way you can save the valley. It’s too far gone already. All the canners and packers have moved out, all the equipment people have moved out, all the cold storage people have moved out,” he said at the time.

Then, in the 2005 videotaped interview with the local museum, Eiichi was asked what he thought of the future for Japanese Americans in agriculture in Santa Clara Valley.

“I believe there’s none,” he said. “Because there’s very few of us in agriculture, and those very few are not producing as much.”

Eiichi Sakauye’s legacy 

Hatakeyama noted that Eiichi Sakauye purchased a home on Fifth Street in San José and generously donated it to the Japanese American Resource Center in 1998, an organization he helped found, which later became the first iteration of the museum.

The family also donated many other farm tools, equipment and artifacts that support the museum’s exhibit on Japanese American agriculture in the valley, including a pear sorting machine that Eiichi and his brothers engineered. Carolyn Sakauye and Jane May are also members of the museum’s advisory board.

“Their contributions were really huge already as a family. So even though it’s difficult, and even though we always like to preserve things … sometimes you have to remember that these are people’s personal stories and their personal lives,” Hatakeyama said. “It is their story to tell, and it is their property to control.”

The museum has advocated for the public park to be named after Eiichi Sakauye, not just the family name, Hatakeyama said, so people will remember his unique story and contributions, including his force of spirit while incarcerated.

Eiichi, while with his family at Heart Mountain, took on a variety of roles, such as block manager and activities coordinator, and he was assigned to be the assistant superintendent of agriculture because of his depth of farming knowledge.

He recruited other farmers interned there and together they helped produce bounties for thousands of people forcibly living at the camp, according to city and museum records. He led the construction of a root cellar, which was preserved and dedicated there in 2015.

With a camera he managed to bring into the camp, Eiichi documented life at Heart Mountain in photographs and video footage, which were used in a national television documentary in the 1960s. In 2000, he published a photo book called Heart Mountain: A Reflection of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center.

Hatakeyama said the property in North San José is visible evidence of not only Japanese American lineage and the journey of an entire community but also of allyship and of gaman, a Japanese term meaning to persevere and endure through difficult times.

Eiichi and his father were able to preserve the land in part because of a close friendship with their neighbors, the Seely family, from whom Yuwakichi first bought the land. During World War I, which lasted from 1914–18, the Sakauyes helped take care of the Seely farm and Edward Seely’s ill mother while Edward Seely served in the military, according to city reports and museum accounts.

During WWII, when the Sakauye family was incarcerated, the Seelys took ownership of the Sakauye family’s land and protected it for them until they returned, then handed it back, while many other Japanese Americans lost their land, homes and possessions during that time.

“They persevered, and they endured, and they managed to hold on to that farm and make it thrive even after resettling in the area,” Hatakeyama said.

Losing history for good?

Members of Preservation Action Council San Jose are hoping city officials will push for a rejiggering of the plans to allow at least the home that Eiichi Sakauye grew up in to be preserved on the site and incorporated into the development, and possibly some of the remaining orchard trees.

“We don’t have a lot of sites that really tell such a compelling story,” Ben Leech, the president of the action council, told KQED.

“Here’s a major preservationist [Eiichi Sakauye] telling a major San José story, and his own house is now threatened,” Leech said. “That just seemed like we needed to speak up and say, there’s got to be a better way to treat this as a development site.”

Leech said his organization has had conversations with the developer and the city, but overall, his organization’s requests are being met with apathy, with no one yet willing to take responsibility for the home.

“I like plaques as much as the next person, but this still exists. And it is being proposed as if this was a blank slate, and it’s not a blank slate. It’s actually an incredible site,” Leech said.

While Carolyn Sakauye and Jane May’s attorney said they don’t believe the developer nor the city should have to bear the costs of preserving their father’s home, Leech thinks it can be done without affecting the bottom line of the deal for the family and developer.

“Sometimes the site and the story transcend the personal interests of the people involved in a positive way,” Leech said.

“​​As much as it is significant that two of the daughters aren’t championing preservation, it doesn’t mean that preservation isn’t important to the larger community. In the future, 50 years from now, 100 years from now, people will forget who was for and who was against saving this thing. They’ll just be glad that it’s still around.”

Hatakeyama also worries about what else is lost when something is gone.

“I think the loss that might come with this transformation of the property, it might be one that we don’t realize immediately off the bat,” she said. “There is something that can be very, very magical about being able to actually stand in a space that is still full of generations of history.”

The future of San José family farming

Some customers of the Tsukuda fruit stand share a similar sentiment.

“Before my time here, I heard there were orchards everywhere,” said Rich Buttrey, a customer for the last two years, as he loaded his haul from the fruit stand into his car. “And this is one of the last remaining ones, and we’re very fortunate to have it.”

“They’re wonderful people, really make you feel at home, and they have really good food,” Buttrey said of James Tsukuda and his mother.

Another grower in the region, Phil Cosentino, along with his daughters, still maintains the 2-acre J&P Cosentino Family Farm near Highway 85 in South San José that was started in the 1940s by his father, Dominic Cosentino.

Phil Cosentino said he’s saddened but not surprised to see the paving over of another patch of what he calls the “most fertile fruit-producing region” in the state.

“But what are you going to do? Money talks. Nothing else seems to matter anymore,” he said. “History and all that, what there was here in the valley, is meaningless. Money is the only thing that means anything, and nothing else matters.”

James Tsukuda said he doesn’t know what he’s going to do next after his time working the farmland here comes to an end. The Tsukudas say they likely won’t continue their business elsewhere after they close, especially given the exorbitant prices for land in the area.

“We’ve gone through this before. So for me, this is roughly the same experience or a similar experience,” he said. “Once we’re done, I think I’ll miss it.”

One thing he’s sure of: he won’t be visiting the area to gaze at the multi-story apartment buildings about to replace the rows of crops he’s worked in for years.

“It’s not for me. I might come and take a look at the development once after they finish,” James Tsukuda said. “And I’ll probably never come back here again.”