Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 12/Kosaku Sawada

Overview
Kosaku Sawada (October 21, 1882 - April 15, 1968) was a Japanese-American nurseryman operating the Overlook Nurseries garden center in Mobile, Alabama. He is known for popularizing and being a founding pioneer for Camellia trees in America, granting him the name "Mr. Camelia". Sawada was interviewed by Ida Pine as part of the Federal Writers' Project Papers, conducted between 1936-1940 in the midst of the Great Depression.



Early Life
Sawada was born in Osaka, Japan on October 21, 1882 into a family of six. Characterized as man "full of ambition", he studied to attain entrance into Osaka University, where he would graduate with a degree in Agriculture. After concluding his studies, Sawada decided to immigrate to the United States in 1906. Upon arrival, he would find work on a large-scale rice field in Texas. However, after four years of difficult manual labor and dissatisfaction, Sawada would leave Texas and head to Grand Bay, Alabama in 1910, where he would begin to nurse primarily orange trees for a larger profit. After a wintry freeze killed many of his trees in 1923, Sawada officially relocated to Mobile, Alabama and started Overlook Nurseries.

Overlook Nurseries
Overlook Nurseries was officially created by Sawada in 1917. Planting Camellia seeds transported from Japan by his wife, Sawada was able to grow the first Japanese Camellias (Camellia japonica) in the nursery by 1929-30. Growing Camellia trees would soon become the primary business of Sawada and he would take to cross-breeding different seeds to create new varieties like "Sawada's Dream". The nursery would prove to endure throughout all of Sawada's life and past his death, despite taking heavy losses and suffering labor cuts in the Great Depression. Sawada criticized the federal government during the Great Depression for not doing enough to ensure the protection of the environment and helping out farmers by regulating crop prices, as seen in his interview.

Personal Life and Identity
Sawada was married to his wife, Nobu Yoshioka, in 1916 during his trip to San Francisco. Both did not know each other well at the time, so their marriage occurred shortly soon after they met. Transporting around 500 seeds with her and helping him begin initial operations at the nursery, Sawada believed Yoshioka was a "good wife". The couple would together have four kids during their marriage: Tom, George, Lurie and Ben. Yoshioka died soon after giving birth to the youngest child, Ben.

Sawada ensured that all of his children attained an education. He believed that after his death, he would require someone with a "business education" so that the nursery could be inherited and prosper. Sawada's two oldest sons attended college for horticulture (Alabama Polytechnic Institute) and business administration (Spring Hill College), whereas his younger daughter studied at Crichton School. Japanese was not taught to any of the children, nor were any of Sawada's children given Japanese names. Sawada himself felt like a true American, stating that if he desired to be around a Japanese community (or largely an Asian one) he would have just stayed in Japan. Due to this reasoning, all children were brought up with American identities, religion, and values.

Sawada did however return to Japan 1924, but was alienated upon his arrival. Due to his "darker skin" from working in the agricultural field, many other Japanese did not see him as part of their community, rather labeling him as a "Filipino". Moreover, his own brothers and sisters seemed strange to him upon returning due to their different religion and demeanor. As a result of this experience, Sawada proclaimed that he had no desire to go back to Japan to live.



Legacy
Sawada died on April 15, 1968 in Mobile, Alabama. He was recognized as an important figure in the American Camellia society, being granted the name "Mr. Camellia" by those around him. When asked of his importance to the Alabama nursery community, he was noted by others as a distinguished member of the community, regardless of his foreign origin. .

Japanese Immigrants
At the turn of the 21st century, America received a large influx of migrants coming from Japan. As a result of Japan's open border policy after a period of isolation (Sakoku), many laborers and graduates looked to America as a land of possibility. The majority of immigrants from Japan were young workers, with the highest bracket of migrants being within the "twenties-age range", constituting for 50% of the entire mass. The average age for the Japanese immigrant to Port Townsend, for instance, was 25.2 years old. Higher age brackets were deemed as mostly "negligible".

Many Japanese immigrants also were a source for low-skilled agricultural labor. "Since the majority of Japanese immigrants were drawn from the farming classes (Ichihash, 1932, 97), Japanese immigrants definitely had to have at least minimum knowledge of a particular business they were going to enter". Many Japanese however developed businesses in later years, constituting themselves as a "petit bourgeois" in the U.S.A as a result of cooperation and desire to consolidate capital.

Agricultural Relief / New Deal
Many nurserymen and farmers suffered in the Great Depression.“There were 51,863 farm bankruptcies filed during 1920-29, as the farm economy collapsed (and) 37,814 farmer bankruptcies filed from 1930-39 during the Great Depression”. The result of overproduction and unstable farming prices caused both the economy and environment to suffer, causing phenoms such as the Dust Bowl, which were seen as a result of agricultural deregulation. However, many farmers gained security under the New Deal, being "paid not to work" in order to protect prices and the environment. An integral part of the New Deal for farmers was the Agricultural Adjustment Act (also known as the AAA). This was signed into law in 1933, and allowed for farmers to reduce production of stock in order to raise prices of crops and heal the country's soil. “The AAA benefitted most farmers: “Farm income in 1935 was more than 50 percent higher than farm income during 1932, due in part to the farm programs”. The AAA had a large role in helping recover the agricultural economy by employing more market regulation and environmental protections.