Japanese family made its mark on area

According to the Houston Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, Saibara asked him, "Col. Glenn, when you get to Japan, if you should meet the emperor, would you give him my regards?"

Glenn later said he seriously doubted that Emperor Hirohito would recognize the farmer's name, but he honored Kiyoaki's request in Japan and asked the emperor if he knew a Mr. K. Saibara in Webster, Texas.

"The emperor immediately flashed a big smile and said, 'How is my dear friend, Mr. Saibara?' " the JACL reports.

Saibara, it turned out, had devoted a great deal of time to strengthening relations between his native Japan and the United States after World War II. Ambassadors visiting the United States from Japan were known to stop by Webster to catch up on relations between the two countries before going to Washington, D.C., the JACL says.

Kiyoaki Saibara (1884-1972) was not the first in his family to play an important role in Webster's history.

His father, Seito Saibara (1861-1939) helped jump-start Texas' relatively young rice industry around the turn of the 20th century.

Today, the Saibara family's role in local and state history is commemorated on a Texas marker placed in the 400 block of East NASA Parkway and Old Galveston in 1974.

"He (Seito Saibara) arrived in Webster with his family and 30 colonists, established the first Japanese Christian colony in Texas, and planted Japanese strains of rice with higher yields than American rice," a portion of the marker narrative reads.

Seito Saibara

As a former president of Japan's Doshisha University, an attorney, the first Christian member of the Japanese Diet (parliament) and an authority on agriculture, Saibara already had a distinguished history when the Houston Chamber of Commerce invited him to Texas in 1903.

He had arrived in the United States two years earlier to study theology at the Hartford Theological Seminary in Connecticut.

The chamber was hoping Seito could serve as an advisor to Texas farmers seeking to bolster their rice cultivation. The grain was emerging as a major crop, but the average rice yield using seed from Honduras or the Carolinas was only 18 to 20 barrels of rice an acre.

Saibara accepted the chamber's invitation and asked his wife and oldest son, Kiyoaki, to join him in Texas with 300 pounds of Shinriki seed.

Seito and Kiyoaki Saibara planted 1,000 acres in Webster and harvested 34 barrels of rice per acre, nearly double the results of the American seeds. That initial crop was used mostly for seed rice in Texas and Louisiana.

The Texas rice industry would grow steadily in the next decades, and by 1972 Texas rice production totaled 2 billion pounds, the Texas State Historical Association reports.

Seito Saibara and his wife also spent 15 years in South America, establishing colonies along the Amazon, before returning to Japan.

Seito Saibara returned to Texas in 1937, suffering ill health and died on April 11, 1939. He was buried in the community cemetery.

Kiyoaki Saibara

When Kiyoaki Saibara told his father he was ready to marry, his dad arranged for him to meet Shimoyo Iwasaki, the daughter of a samurai who was attending a Christian school in Japan.

After a meeting in San Francisco, the two began attending consular events there and decided to marry, the JACL says.

"The ceremony was held at Webster Presbyterian Church on July 10, 1909. The little white church on the prairie, with its steeple gleaming, was festooned with flowers for the occasion.

Among the wedding guests were Japanese consular officials, a tribute to the high esteem in which the Japanese government held Seito Saibara," JACL's Houston Web site states.

In 1953, Kiyoaki became the first Japanese immigrant to because a U.S. citizen in Houston.

And in 1957, he went to Japan to receive the Order of Sacred Treasure for furthering Japanese-American relations.

Kiyoaki and Shimoyo Saibara had four sons and one daughter. According to the 1976 book, "Right Around Webster" by Glenn C. Price, Shimoyo died in 1935, and Kiyoaki married Takako Kondo during a visit to Japan. Kiyoaki Saibara died in 1972.

Later Generations

The Saibara family continued to play an important role in Webster's story, historians say.

During preparations for Webster's centennial celebration in 1992, local historian Tom Wilks researched their family and several others of Japanese descent.

"I served on the Centennial Celebration Committee that year and was chairman of the Webster Historical Committee," Wilks said. "The most interesting assignment was to write about Webster's Japanese heritage. I interviewed several of Webster's Japanese families and took photos of the Kagawa and Kobayashi farms. Martha Kagawa (now Martha Griffith) is a longtime Webster resident and wonderful friend of mine.

Her mother, Kichi, kept a diary which was translated by Sumiko Murao and published as a book entitled 'Kichi, Life of a Meiji Woman who Immigrated to Texas.' "

Wilks also worked at Johnson Space Center with the late Edward Saibara, one of the sons of Kiyoaki and Shimoyo Saibara.

"I saw Ed frequently when he came over to the Crew and Thermal Systems Lab (Bldg. 7) at JSC where I worked," Wilks explained in an email. "Ed worked for Johnson Engineering at the time (in the 1970s).

He inspected some of the equipment used to support astronaut training - such as vacuum pumps and environmental control system components necessary for operation of the vacuum chambers.

"Ed always greeted me with his warm smile and a slight nod. He would ask how my wife, Peggy, was doing (she was the finance director for the city of Webster at the time) and after a short conversation, he would begin his rounds."

Edward Saibara, who attended Webster schools and Texas A&M University, also was involved in rich farming and raising Santa Gertruda cattle for years.

According to the obituary for Edward Saibara when he died in 2012, Kiyoaki's oldest son, Robert, served as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, the highest rank at the time held by a person of Japanese ancestry.