Chapter 3 Establishment of Japanese settlements (1)

It is said the first Japanese immigrant arrived in Juqueri (the former name of Francoda Rocha), located in the outskirts of São Paulo City, approximately 33 km north of the city, in 1911 (Takezo Mamizuka of the 2^nd set of emigrants on board the ship Ryojun-maru) and began growing potatoes and by October 1913, nine families, including Choju Akimura, had purchased land and moved to Jucqueri. Afterwards the Juqueri Agricultural Cooperative was established in the settlement, and this cooperative developed into a huge organization, the Nanpaku Nogyo Kyodo Kumiai Chuokai (South Brazil Central Union of Agricultural Cooperatives) in the postwar period.

In 1913, young single emigrants who had been working as carpenters in the city of São Paulo and emigrant families who had left the Guatapara plantation, rented land owned by a church in Moinho Velho on the outskirts of São Paulo City (27km southwest of the city) and began farming there. It was not long before a Japanese immigrant settlement (called "Cotia Village") was formed. Although land used to be farmed extensively, without plowing burned fields and without using fertilizers, in this area, those Japanese immigrants began to plow land as in Japan, and to use purchased fertilizers (fertilizers made from livestock entrails at first and chemical fertilizers from 1923 onwards). These agricultural methods enabled them to achieve great economic success with the shipment of large quantities of potatoes to São Paulo City. Afterwards, in this settlement as well an agricultural cooperative, the Cotia Agricultural Cooperative, was formed, which developed into the largest agricultural cooperative in South America during and after the war.

Hirano Unpei was one of the five interpreters who accompanied the emigrants on board the ship Kasato-maru to the plantations, dispatched to the Guatapara plantation and appointed as an assistant director of the plantation. He recruited settlers from among Japanese families at the Guatapara plantation and other plantations. He managed to recruit 200 families and purchased 1,620 acres (3,920ha) of primeval forest land (the Hirano Colony) along the Dourado riverside 13km northeast of Presidente Penna station (the former name of Cafelândia station) which was located 125km from Bauru station on the Noroeste line. Their advance party entered the forest in August 1915, and by December of the same year, 82 families had settled and begun cultivating rice. But in November cases of malaria began to appear and by February of the next year, almost all of the settlers had been bedridden. One report says that nearly 80 persons died from the disease, and which was the most casualties in the history of Japanese emigration to Brazil. The location for this colony was chosen particularly because it was a lowland marsh conducive to rice cultivation; Japanese immigrants, however, were not aware of the dangers of malaria in such a lowland marsh at that time.
The plight of settlers in the Hirano colony continued. The colony was infested by a massive swarm of locusts in 1917 which ate all of the crops, and then faced a severe drought in 1918. In February 1919, Hirano Unpei died suddenly (at the age of 34). The settlers had to overcome all of these hardships and devote themselves to the development of the colony, and eventually succeeded in cultivating coffee and cotton.

In 1918, Uetsuka Shuhei, an overseas agent of the Kokoku Shokumin Kaisha (Kokoku Colonization Company) in Brazil, purchased 1,400 acres (3,388ha) of land in Itacolomy a little more than 4km from Heitor Legru station (the former name of Promissao station) , northwest of Lins and established the First Uetsuka Colony. It is said that a number of young people who admired Uetsuka settled in this colony. In 1922, Uetsuka established the Second Uetsuka Colony west of Lins.

In 1913, the Birigui colony was constructed in 50,000 acres (12,000ha) of land that the São Paulo Companhia de Terras, Extrativismo e Colonizacao (Land, Extraction and Colonization Company) reclaimed, around Birigui station located 260 km from Bauru on the Noroeste line. A Japanese immigrant settled here in 1915 for the first time, and a Japanese young man, Hachiro Miyazaki was employed as an agent of the Japanese section of the company in 1916. He helped Japanese immigrants to settle the colony and the number of Japanese families reached 296 in 1923.

Hoshina Ken'ichiro who was known for the publisher of the "Shukan Nanbei" (The South America Weekly), the first Japanese-language newspaper in Brazil, established the Baibem Colony in 1917 and the Brejao Colony in 1918, both of which was located along the Sorocabana Railway line. He placed advertisements in his newspaper to sell land in the colonies. Many settlers died in the reclamation period of the Brejao Colony due to endemic diseases and tuberculosis caused by, malnutrition and overwork.

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Japanese emigrants who left coffee plantations in the State of São Paulo settled on the right bank area of the Rio Grande River known as the Triangle Mineiro in the west of the State of Minas Gerais, bordered by the State of São Paulo to the south, and began cultivating rice. It is said that in 1919 the number of Japanese families in the area reached 410 ones, but that the Japanese settlers dispersed due to the economic depression and soil fertility decline in rice paddies after World War I.

From the end of the Meiji Era through the Taisho Era, the Japanese emigrants who had come up the Rio de la Plata through Peru, Bolivia and Argentina and worked on the construction of the Noroeste railway, settled for the first time in the city of Campo Grande in the State of Mato Grosso bordered to the west of the State of São Paulo. Afterwards immigrants from Okinawa prefecture became concentrated in the city.