Kiyoshi Hirasaki
Kiyoshi Hirasaki was a notable Japanese American farmer and entrepreneur who played a pivotal role in establishing Gilroy, California, as a leading center for garlic production. Born in Kyushu, Japan, he immigrated to the United States at age fourteen and began his agricultural career working on farms. In 1919, he founded Hirasaki Farms and, after initially growing a variety of crops, shifted his focus to garlic cultivation by the early 1920s. Despite facing significant challenges, including internment during World War II, Hirasaki became the nation's largest garlic producer by 1940, significantly contributing to his community's economy.
Hirasaki was also recognized for his philanthropic efforts, providing employment during the Great Depression and supporting local initiatives, including the construction of a Japanese community center. His legacy continues to be honored through the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival, which celebrates the town's agricultural heritage and has raised millions for charitable causes. Hirasaki's impact on agriculture and his community remains significant, making him a key figure in the history of Gilroy and Japanese American contributions to agriculture in the United States.
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Subject Terms
Kiyoshi Hirasaki
Japanese-born businessman and philanthropist
- Born: March 1, 1900
- Place of Birth: Kumamoto, Kyushu, Japan
- Died: December 24, 1963
- Place of Death: Gilroy, California
In his three decades as a commercial farmer, Kiyoshi Hirasaki became the nation’s largest commercial producer of garlic and helped transform Gilroy, California, into a center of garlic production and processing. Although he faced racial discrimination and was forced to relocate to an internment camp during World War II, he remained a successful business leader and established an enduring legacy in Gilroy.
Areas of achievement: Business, philanthropy
Early Life
Kiyoshi Hirasaki was born on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four major islands. At the age of fourteen, he immigrated to Milpitas, near San Francisco, California, where his father and older brother had earlier settled. He briefly attended high school, acquiring the nickname Jimmy, but withdrew from school at age sixteen to work on farms growing carrot and onion seeds. He relocated to Gilroy, an agricultural community in southern Santa Clara County, and continued to farm. He leased farmland and founded Hirasaki Farms, a seed-growing operation, in 1919. By 1922, his business was well enough established that he was able to return to Japan to marry his childhood sweetheart, Haruye Yonemitsu. The couple returned to Gilroy, where they would become the parents of three sons and five daughters.
Life’s Work
In the early 1920s, acting upon the suggestion of a local farmer, Hirasaki began to grow garlic commercially; at the time, Southern California dominated commercial production. As his crops—tomatoes, carrots, celery, and especially garlic—flourished in the mild climate and fertile soil of Gilroy, he purchased five hundred acres of land to expand his garlic-growing enterprise. Because the California Alien Land Law of 1913 prohibited him from owning land, he registered the property in the names of his children, who had been born in California and were thus automatically US citizens. By the late 1920s, Hirasaki had become one of the state’s largest producers of fresh garlic.
Throughout the 1930s, Hirasaki, dubbed the Garlic King, thrived and expanded his garlic-growing business to fifteen hundred acres. During the Great Depression, he provided regular employment for out-of-work Gilroy residents and donated truckloads of fresh farm produce to feed area schoolchildren. In the mid-1930s, Hirasaki sold part of his land to developers of a vegetable-dehydration plant, Gentry Foods, which would later become a subsidiary of McCormick & Company. Hirasaki Farms was the nation’s largest garlic producer by 1940, establishing Gilroy’s reputation as a center for the cultivation and processing of garlic.
In addition to contributing to the agricultural economy of Northern California, Hirasaki brought a landmark to Gilroy with the purchase of sections of the Japanese pavilion from the 1939–40 Golden Gate International Exposition. The pavilion, constructed using a tongue-and-groove method, was dismantled, transported to Hirasaki’s farm, and reassembled as an elegant home that was completed in late 1941. The home was later placed on the historical register, remaining a Gilroy landmark until its destruction in an accidental fire in 2007.
Following the Japanese attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into World War II, Hirasaki was interned with other Japanese Americans in North Dakota, while the rest of his family was allowed to relocate to Colorado. His son Manabi served with other Japanese American soldiers in the segregated 522nd Field Artillery Battalion and participated in the liberation of prisoners from a satellite camp of the Nazi concentration camp Dachau. After the war, Hirasaki returned to Gilroy to resume his farming operations, which during the conflict were held in stewardship by non-Japanese friends.
In the late 1940s, Hirasaki built a packing-shipping warehouse in Gilroy. He also invested in a San Francisco Japanese-language daily newspaper, Hokubei Minichi (North America Daily). After unseasonably hot weather in 1950 caused widespread failure in his garlic crop, Hirasaki gave up farming to concentrate on public service, seeking in particular to assist fellow Japanese Americans. He funded the building of a Japanese community center in Gilroy and was active in the Buddhist community and on the board of his newspaper. Hirasaki died in Gilroy in 1963, at the age of sixty-three.
Significance
Over the course of his career as a commercial farmer, Hirasaki developed Gilroy, California, into a significant producer of garlic, and the cultivation and processing of garlic remained one of the town’s primary industries long after his death. Since 1978, the town’s unique agricultural status, Hirasaki’s legacy, has been celebrated with the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival. A fair-like gathering featuring garlic-flavored foods and a Garlic Festival Queen, the July gala attracted fifteen thousand visitors in its first year. By 2023, the festival had raised nearly $12 million for a variety of charitable organizations and causes.
Bibliography
Adema, Pauline. Garlic Capital of the World: Gilroy, Garlic, and the Making of a Festive Foodscape. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2009. Print.
"GGFA Announces 2023 Payouts to Local Charities/Nonprofits." Gilroy Garlic Festival Association, 5 Dec. 2023, gilroygarlicfestivalassociation.com/f/ggfa-announces-2023-payouts-to-local-charitiesnonprofits?utm‗source=whatsupmonterey.com&utm‗medium=referral. Accessed 20 Aug. 2024.
Hirasaki, Manabi, and Naomi Hirahara. A Taste for Strawberries: The Independent Journey of Nisei Farmer Manabi Hirasaki. Los Angeles: Japanese American Natl. Museum, 2003. Print.
"History of Japanese Americans in Texas: The Hirasaki Family." Rice University Houston Asian American Archive, haaa.rice.edu/hirasaki-family. Accessed 20 Aug. 2024.
Niiya, Brian. "Kiyoshi Hirasaki." Densho Encyclopedia, 8 July 2020, encyclopedia.densho.org/Kiyoshi‗Hirasaki. Accessed 20 Aug. 2024.
Salewske, Claudia. Gilroy. Mount Pleasant: Arcadia, 2003. Print.