08/29/2026
Wyoming had big farms that the Japanese immigrants were running, long before the camps to imprison them
Japanese immigrants were running big farms in Wyoming long before there was a camp to imprison them.
August 24, 1881: Kasaburō Okazaki was born in Okayama Prefecture, Japan.
He arrived in America in 1905, making his way to Pocatello, Idaho, and eventually to Sheridan, Wyoming. Kasaburō may have worked the railroad himself before turning to farming, although it’s unclear from family records. But other Japanese immigrants certainly did: in 1901, the Burlington Railroad brought in Japanese laborers to extend its line toward Cody, the same stretch of track that, four decades later, would carry over 14,000 Japanese Americans into incarceration at Heart Mountain.
By 1910, Kasaburō and three partners had built K N Gardens, a 25-acre truck farm, ten times the size of the average American farm at the time. Their red onions, table squash, and turnips won first prize at the 1917 Wyoming State Fair. Wyoming wouldn’t pass its own Alien Land Law restricting land ownership by Japanese immigrants until World War II, a law specifically meant to discourage Japanese Americans incarcerated at nearby Heart Mountain from settling there once released.
By 1919, the partnership had run its course. The four men auctioned off the farm’s livestock, equipment, and remaining property, splitting the proceeds, each walking away with roughly $66,000 in today’s dollars, and went their separate ways. One partner opened a grocery inside Sheridan’s famous Sheridan Inn and ran it for 30 years. Another became a photographer in Denver.
Kasaburō stayed in Sheridan and became a hotelier. He took over the Rex Hotel, a 22-room lodging house above Williams Hall on Main Street, greeting guests at the front desk himself. His personal photo collection includes what’s believed to be the only surviving photograph of the hotel’s interior. His young son Tatsuru would later recall the sound of guests’ spurs clanking on the wooden staircase. Kasaburō sold the hotel in 1928, as life grew increasingly difficult for Japanese immigrants through the decade.
Meanwhile, his own path took another turn. Born Kasaburō Sato, he was adopted into the Okazaki family in 1904, likely to help clear his path to immigration. That adoption was annulled in 1908. In 1919, he married Masano Kimura in Japan and was adopted again, this time into her family, becoming Kasaburō Kimura. Three names, two adoptions, one lifetime.
He and Masano settled in Seattle in 1929, raising two sons who would go on to earn advanced degrees in medicine and pharmacology. Kasaburō died in 1935 at age 54.
His granddaughter, Kathryn Kimura Mlsna, never met him; he passed away 17 years before she was born. But as she put it: “His love for his family, his courage, and his determination to succeed despite the many challenges he faced as an immigrant became part of the foundation on which his descendants have built their lives. His story reminds me that the choices and sacrifices of one generation can shape the lives of many generations to come.”
Kasaburō now has seven grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and seven great-great-grandchildren carrying that legacy forward.
