Japanese at Rancho Corral De Tierra

Before World War II, two Japanese families came to cultivate lands now a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the Takahashis and the Satos. Both their stories have historical importance. The first one is about a pioneer horticulturalist and leader of his community. The second is about the struggles of a farm family faced with internment and ruin.

Y. Takahashi and wife, 1940.

Y. Takahashi

San Mateo County Japanese American families always referred to the head of the first family as Mr. Takahashi. One source describes his flower growing enterprise just east of Montara as “a tiny nursery”114that launched the strawflower industry in San Mateo County. Another proclaims it “a large Japanese garden of flower terraces and fish ponds…that…is credited with starting the strawflower industry in the United States.”115 A photograph taken by the San Francisco Flower Market in 1940 shows Takahashi and his wife Kiku in front of a large hedge in front of his land saying “Welcome”. The 1920 Census indicates that both could speak English. It tells us that Takahashi owned his house outright - - that is he paid no mortgage. In part his property existed on the eastside of Sunshine Valley Road where horse stables for Renegade Ranch are today, on the Golden Gate National Recreation Area’s portion of Rancho Corral de Tierra. It is reported that Mr. Takahashi was a former professor of horticulture from the University of Tokyo, and that he introduced the first dehydration chamber at Montara in 1911. He started out by selling flowers on the San Francisco market, using the Ocean Shore Railroad to transport his products.117

Local Japanese families remember this Issei and his Issei wife as kind and respected, but childless.118 For years Takahashi was noted for inviting students from Japan to study his gardens. One of the professor’s initiatives, at least as far back as the 1930s, was to bring orphaned teenage boys from San Francisco and other places to his farm where they worked until they finished school at Half Moon Bay High. One of these boys, Hero Ogo, became a farmer in the area himself, on a parcel of land where Half Moon Bay Airport is today.119By 1942, when coastside Japanese were evacuated because of the start of World War II, Takahashi was in his 60s. At the Assembly Center at Tanforan Race Track in San Bruno, Japanese people from the Corral de Tierra area, from Frenchman’s Creek up to his property, kept close to him. After the War, Takahashi was one of the few to regain his land. He took in other, less fortunate, former internees until they could get back on their feet. Local residents of Montara used to speak of Takahashi “as a short, little man taking his daily walks up and down Sunshine Valley Road.”120 Mrs. Takahashi died after the War. Mr. Takahashi outlived her and moved to San Francisco.121 He expired sometime in the 1950s or 1960s.122

The Sato Family

Just after World War II, Seiro Sato and his son Hamm came to live up Denniston Creek on land on the eastern portion of Cabrillo Farms on today’s Rancho Corral de Tierra lands of Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Seiro was born in 1872 at Kochi, a prefecture in Japan. He was the oldest son in his family and decided to come to the United States in 1890. At first he settled on lands near Stockton, California and did well as a farmer. More than a dozen years later, he decided to return to Kochi to find a wife. He met Masao Hara, who became impressed with Sato’s success in America. They were married and the couple eventually had two sons, Hamm and Sam, and daughters Sue (now Sue Okamura) and Yoshi (now Yoshi Mizono). After Masao died of cancer, Seiro moved the family to San Mateo in 1928. Here he worked as a gardener but longed to be a farmer again. By 1932, he had his family in motion once more. They leased property over the hill at Frenchman’s Creek, north of Half Moon Bay, where Seiro decided to get into the flower growing business.124 He grew marguerites125 (chrysanthemums) and strawflowers.

Close by were other Japanese families. The Katos lived at Miramar, east of the highway, and the Ogos, as mentioned above, lived at the present site of Half Moon Bay Airport.126 Further north were the Takahashis. According to daughter Sue Okamura, the home they lived in was a comfortable two story farmhouse that, by the beginning of World War II, was fully equipped with modern utilities. A photograph, taken in 1940, by the San Francisco Flower Market, shows a happy and proud Seiro, with two sons and two daughters.

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