Have you ever felt like you’re forgotten or overlooked and left alone? In 1941, thousands of Japanese Americans were wrongfully suspected or accused of treason and taken to internment camps across the American West. Our StoryMaker of the Past is a reminder that God never leaves his children alone, no matter where they are or what is being done to them.
Born on January 30, 1889, Hiram Kano was the second son of a member of the Japanese parliament and the governor of a region of Japan. As the second born, he knew his brother would follow in his father’s footsteps so Hiram needed to pursue something different. He chose to study agriculture, learning about growing crops and food.
When Hiram was a young man, his family hosted a famous American lawyer, William Jennings Bryan. Bryan convinced Hiram to pursue more education in the United States and helped him apply to the University of Nebraska. Hiram graduated with a master’s degree in agricultural economics in 1918. He married Ai “Ivy” Nagai and had two children. He started a 300 acre sugar beet farm near Litchfield, Nebraska.
Hiram had been active in the Japanese American Society in Nebraska and served as an interpreter and English teacher for other immigrants. Through this work, he met the local Episcopal bishop and worked with him to defeat a law that would have made it illegal for Japanese residents to own land or even serve as legal guardians for their own children. His relationship with the bishop drew him into the church more and more and in 1928, Hiram became a deacon. In 1936, he became a priest.
In 1941, Hiram was arrested, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Police across America, especially the Western states, were wrongfully arresting prominent Japanese Americans, simply because of their ethnicity. “Because his family in Japan had connections with the Japanese government, and he was so personally influential with the Japanese Americans as both a minister and a teacher of agriculture, he was rated ‘Class A – the most potentially dangerous of Japanese Americans.’ He was the only Japanese of the 5,000 living in Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming to receive this rating and to be interned.” Hiram was investigated by the FBI and eventually, with many other Japanese residents, he was sent to an internment camp, away from his family.
Alone in the camps, Hiram did not stop his work. According to his son, when he arrived at the camp, he said, “Well, God put me here, what does he want me to do?” He taught English classes to other prisoners, even calling it Internment University. He also served as a minister, leading services and sharing God’s story and love with others held wrongly in the camps. In 1944, Hiram was released from the camp and he and his family moved to Wisconsin where he entered a seminary and received another masters degree. In 1946, he and his family moved back to Nebraska to minister to Japanese residents until his retirement in 1957.
Hiram Hisanori Kano, the son of an influential governor, successful beet farmer, priest and deacon, never stopped looking for what God would have him do. His story is another example of how even in the most unfair, horrible circumstances, God is at work, ministering to his children, never leaving them alone, sending other StoryMakers to love and serve them.
