The First Japanese Colony in America: The Yamato Colony
Long before World War II, a community of Japanese farmers braved hardship to settle in Florida, establishing a piece of Japan in the American South.
In the early 1900s, the United States saw an influx of immigrants seeking new opportunities. While many Americans are familiar with Japanese communities on the West Coast and in Hawaii, few have heard of the Yamato Colony, one of the earliest Japanese settlements in the continental U.S., founded in Florida in 1905. Its improbable history is both a testament to immigrant ambition and a forgotten chapter in America’s story.
The origin of the Yamato Colony traces back to Jo Sakai, a young Japanese man from Miyazu, who studied at New York University. Inspired by stories of Japanese immigrants succeeding in Hawaii and California, Sakai grew determined to create a Japanese farming community in the American South, where land was abundant and less expensive. He worked with Major Frederick S. Rust, a Florida real estate developer and mayor, who was eager to attract settlers to develop the Boca Raton area, then a wild expanse of pine forests and marshland.
Sakai recruited families and single men from his hometown. In 1905, he and a handful of these pioneers arrived to begin a new life in a place they called “Yamato,” after the ancient name for Japan. Each colonist purchased, or leased with an option to buy, parcels of land, and set about the arduous task of clearing the dense Florida undergrowth. Their primary crop was pineapple, which thrived in the subtropical climate, at first bringing hope for prosperity.
Life on the colony was challenging. The settlers battled poor soil, unpredictable weather, and insects that devastated crops. Hurricanes periodically flattened their efforts. Despite the harsh conditions, the colonists persevered, building homes, a small community clubhouse, and a school for their children. For several years, they continued to harvest pineapples and shipped them north. However, disaster struck at the end of the 1910s. Brazilian pineapples, less expensive to grow, flooded the market. Florida’s crops were beset by blight and competition, crippling the Yamato colonists’ livelihoods.
Some settlers left, moving to other Japanese enclaves or returning to Japan. Others tried growing new crops, such as winter vegetables or oranges, but without enough capital or support, many eventually abandoned farming altogether. The Great Depression and growing anti-Asian sentiment in America made life even harder.
By the late 1920s, most of the Yamato Colony was gone. A few Japanese families remained into the 1940s, but World War II marked the final chapter. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government seized much of the colony’s land under the pretext of national security, using it to create an Army Air Corps training base—now Boca Raton Airport and Florida Atlantic University.
Today, little physical evidence of the Yamato Colony remains, save for a few historical markers and a street name—Yamato Road—that cuts east-west through Boca Raton. The memory of these first Japanese Floridians persists largely through the efforts of historians, local museums, and descendants of the original settlers. Their story is rarely taught in schools, and few Americans are aware that Japanese immigrants once tried to carve out a home in Florida’s wilderness, forging bonds with their neighbors and Americanizing their families, even as circumstances drove their quiet community into obscurity.
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