Born into a samurai family, he came to America to become a railroad worker, farmer, and prisoner.
April 2, 1877: Gonzo Mimaki was born in Kumamoto, Japan in what was left of a samurai family.
Some lives seem to contain the entire arc of Japanese American history. Gonzo Mimaki’s was one of them.
Born in the aftermath of Japan’s samurai era, he had to try to figure things out on his own. First sons almost always took over the family property, but other children had to eventually move out and create their own lives.
Gonzo crossed the Pacific at the turn of the century and arrived in North America in 1898, first landing in Victoria, Canada, before immediately continuing into the United States. Like many early Issei, he came not to comfort, but to labor.
For two years, he worked on the transcontinental railroad, helping build the infrastructure of a country that had barely begun to imagine Japanese immigrants as part of its future. From there, he moved to San Francisco, beginning what would become a lifetime of reinvention.
Courtesy of University of Washington
Like many early Issei, Gonzo Mimaki entered railroad work at a time when Japanese laborers were recruited to replace Chinese workers excluded by anti-Chinese laws.
Courtesy of the Mimaki family
A surviving koseki (family registry) entry documenting Hideto Mimaki, the little-known child who appears in Gonzo Mimaki’s immigration records and then nearly disappears.
The Mystery Before America
Gonzo’s early life in Kumamoto is relatively unknown. Records suggest he was once married to Kiju Ikegami and temporarily entered the Ikegami family registry. At some point, however, he returned to the Mimaki family name. Whether this came through divorce, family necessity, or some other unknown circumstance remains unclear.
The records raise another lingering question: Hideto.
When Gonzo went back to Japan and returned to San Francisco on April 1, 1916, he was accompanied by his second wife Fuji and a young boy named Hideto. Nobody alive in the family had ever even heard of the existence of this person, Hideo, who may have been a son from Gonzo’s earlier marriage.
Yet no later trace of Hideto Mimaki has been found, except for a heartbreaking reality: records indicating that Hideo died in 1918 at Los Angeles County Hospital, two years after arriving in the United States.
Building a Life in California
After railroad work and time in San Francisco, Gonzo moved into California agriculture, first working in orchards around Fresno.
Later, while experimenting with olive oil production methods in Selma under a French engineer, he became involved in a dramatic local incident in which a Frenchman reportedly pulled a gun on him. According to family accounts, Gonzo faced the moment with remarkable courage, surviving the confrontation and becoming something of a local legend.
He later moved to Los Angeles and began what would become the defining work of his American life: farming. With Fuji, he built a family that included three children: Richard, Margaret, and Claude.
The Mimakis first opened a strawberry farm in Tropico, in what is now South Glendale. Within four years, the family expanded eastward, eventually settling in the Arcadia area, where Gonzo became especially known for rhubarb and strawberry cultivation.
Courtesy of the Mimaki family
Gonzo Mimaki (bottom left) with family and friends, c1940
Courtesy of the Mimaki family
The page from Zaibei no Higojin (People from Kumamoto Prefecture in America) featuring Gonzo Mimaki, documenting his success in California farming and community leadership.
A Leader in the Community
A c1930 Kumamoto community volume, Zaibei no Higojin (People from Kumamoto Prefecture in America), described him as an authority on growing rhubarb. The same source noted that he also held interests in an oil field in Santa Fe Springs and an orchard in Riverside.
While surviving America, Gonzo Mimaki was also helping build it. Success in the fields translated into leadership beyond them.
Gonzo became Chair of Monrovia Japanese Language Academic Affairs, helping support the education of Nisei children growing up between two cultures. He also served as Deputy Director of the Japanese Association’s Education Department and was a longtime councillor of the Kumamoto Overseas Association.
Like many Issei community builders, his legacy was not measured only in acres or crops, but in the futures he helped create for the next generation.
Prisoner in the Country He Helped Build
Then came Pearl Harbor.
In 1942, after decades of labor, farming, and community leadership in California, Gonzo and his family were forced into the Santa Anita Assembly Center.
From there, they were sent to Heart Mountain, Wyoming.
The cruel irony remains: he worked on the railroad system that eventually brought him to an American concentration camp.
The greatest loss came there. In 1943, his wife Fuji died at Heart Mountain.
After everything they had built together in California, incarceration became the place where their shared life ended.
Pearl Harbor changed Gonzo Mimaki’s life forever. Within months, the farmer and community leader would be forced into Santa Anita and then Heart Mountain.
Courtesy of the Mimaki family
Possibly taken during Claude Mimaki’s furlough from the MIS, this Heart Mountain photograph shows Gonzo Mimaki (standing far right) with family and friends.
Photo by Toyo Miyatake
The crowd gathered for Gonzo Mimaki’s funeral on October 22, 1947, speaks to the respect he earned through a life shaped by migration, labor, loss, and endurance.
Courtesy of the Mimaki family
Gonzo Mimaki, the Issei farmer, community leader, and former railroad worker who spent a lifetime building a home in a country that never allowed him citizenship.
The Crowd That Gathered
Gonzo Mimaki died on October 16, 1947.
A funeral photograph taken by Toyo Miyatake on October 22 still survives. The crowd gathered around his casket may say some things the sparse records cannot.
Family, friends, community members, and mourners filled the temple grounds, a testament to the life of an Issei man who had crossed eras, countries, and identities: samurai descendant, immigrant laborer, agricultural innovator, community leader, and wartime prisoner.
His life traced one of the great Japanese American journeys. Although he died before the McCarran-Walter Act was passed, he never had the chance to become an American citizen.