BY JANICE BRYSON
Arizona residents and tourists alike grew to love the South Mountain flower gardens on Baseline Road in Phoenix. The Japanese-American farmers and their fields of flowers and vegetables are an important part of Arizona’s agricultural history as well as the history of JapaneseAmericans in our state. For many years, each spring, over 300 acres of brightly-colored fragrant blooms turned the desert into a kaleidoscope of yellow, white, light pink, bright fuchsia and violet-lavender. Although the fields now grow housing and shopping centers, one flower shop remains on the site of one of the original fields. I met with Nick Nakagawa at Baseline Flowers located at 3801 E. Baseline in Phoenix. The flowers in his shop are no longer grown in his own fields but come mostly from California and South America. Nick is 95 and says he keeps the shop so he has something to do. The first Japanese-Americans involved in farming in the Phoenix area were a group of laborers brought into the Salt River Valley to establish a sugar beet farm in 1905. The crop failed to thrive due to the heat and many Japanese farmers left the Valley by 1915. The remaining farmers settled permanently, growing fruit and vegetable crops such as cantaloupe and lettuce. The rocky soil in the South Mountain area was considered undesirable for farming. The Japanese American families were willing to establish farms there even though they had to uproot rocks with their bare hands and create irrigation systems. A microclimate was created at the foot of South PG. 30 :: SPRING 2019
Mountain as the mountain created a down draft that kept the warm air on the ground to protect their crops. The Japanese-American farmers in Phoenix were Issei, the first generation to immigrate, and Nisei, the children born in the new country to Japanese-born immigrants. Nick was a Nisei, born in Idaho, and when he was three years old his family moved to Utah. In the late 1930’s, Nick’s aunt encouraged the family to move to Phoenix; his father’s health was suffering in Utah. In 1936, the Kishiyama family began growing flowers on their leased land at 36th Street and Baseline. The Nakagawa family farmed fruits and vegetables but turned to growing flowers in 1940 including longstemmed flowers called stocks, sweet peas and flowering purple-gray cabbages. They grew vegetables including cucumbers, tomatoes and summer squash. Eventually, the Maruyama, Nakamura, Sakato, Iwakoshi and Watanabe families also grew flowers along Baseline Road. During World War II, 120,000 Japanese Americans were removed from their homes and interned in camps. The Nakagawas were given only 48 hours to prepare for their move to the Poston War Relocation Center. All the families were forced to abandon their homes and farms. Nick was seventeen when he arrived at Poston. Nine months later, a farmer in Glendale needed help on his farm and Nick was released from Poston and allowed to work at the Glendale farm. After the war, the families were released with few
