Our Nation has been enriched culturally. economically. and technologically by persons of Japanese descent by a far greater amount than the half a million indicates. Commentators on the progress of Japanese Americans in America. among them Bill Hosokawa. in his book published last year. have remarked that their journey through our land has been not unlike that of Horatio Algerbut on an ethnic scale. and I think that the comparison is an apt one. to say the least. It is to the Nisei. the second generation in the United States. that we commonly refer when we speak of Japanese Americans. but it would be a grave mistake to overlook completely the contributions. or the sacrifices. of the Issei. the first generation of Japanese immigrants to our shores. As historian Bradford Smith observed of them: The Issel contribution to America was not in great men. but in the anonymous men who made the desert spaces green with the labor of their hands. who kept the track even. so that Americans could ride comfortably across the land. who tended the comfort of the welltodo. and grew vegetables the poor could afford to buy. who sacrificed for the welfare of their children. It is true that there were. among the Issei. no Japanborn Andrew Carnegies. no John D. Rockefellers in oil. no Henry Fords to turn out automobiles. Yet there were Japanese immigrants who left an outstanding mark. especially in the State of California. There was George Shima. who showed that the Sacramento delta lands could be reclaimed and made to yield a huge bounty of crops. There was Kosaku Sawada. a hybridizer and grower of camellias. who. before his death in 1968. at age 85. had fostered thousands of new varieties of that flower.
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