H.H. Kano: Farmer, Teacher, Priest, Saint

By The Rev. Charles Hoffacker, ’82

At the end of World War II, Nashotah House received a donation of 2,000 pine seedlings from the University of Wisconsin.  Dean E. J. M. Nutter asked the graduating class of 1946 for help in planting them. Outstanding among the volunteers assisting with this project was the Rev. Hiram Hisanori Kano, an Episcopal priest who was an experienced farmer with a strong academic background in agriculture. In later decades he became known among some as the Saint of Nebraska and Colorado.

H. H. Kano was born into a family of Japanese nobility in 1889 when the samurai and feudal system had recently given way to the growing presence of industrialists and a business elite.  His father was the governor of Kagoshima Prefecture. A pivotal event in his life occurred when the American statesman William Jennings Bryan visited the Kano home in 1905. Hisanori, then a teenager, spoke of his interest in agriculture, and Bryan stirred the young man’s sense of adventure by encouraging him to study at the University of Nebraska. Kano studied first at the University of Tokyo. It was as a college student that he became a Christian.

As he told the story decades later, “First I got flu, then typhoid fever, then appendicitis, then peritonitis. The two doctors attending me declared that mine was a hopeless case. My vitality was nearly gone; I was too weak to be operated on, and I thought, ‘I have to go,’ but at this critical and serious moment, God appeared to me and I surrendered. I didn’t see his face, or hear any voice, but it is true God appeared to me. Then strangely, I felt better physically, and I felt better every day thereafter. After exactly 100 days, my hospitalization ended and I was permitted to go home. My doctors said it was a miracle.”

Kano began to read the Bible, and on Christmas Day, 1909, he was baptized by a missionary of the Dutch Reformed Mission of America. It was during a seminar on “Population, Food and Land” that he heard God’s voice address him: “Go to America, God’s melting pot; work there.” He wanted to inspire Japanese immigrants so that Americans would be convinced of their desire to become sincere and loyal citizens.

Kano answered this call. In 1916 he left his native land with a Bachelor of Science degree and a letter of recommendation from Bryan. He was the only one of his classmates to emigrate. Two years later he graduated from the University of Nebraska with a master’s degree in agricultural economics. He also became an activist and leader among the Issei, the first generation Japanese-American community. Many of them had come to farm or work on the railroads. Because they could not become citizens, they were prevented from obtaining professional licenses for other kinds of work.

In 1919 Kano married Aiko Nagai, whom he had known in Japan and who had come to America to marry him. They were married the day she arrived in San Francisco. She was his loyal, courageous companion in a marriage of almost 70 years. The couple established a 300-acre diversified farm near Litchfield, Nebraska, at the center of the continent. The couple worked hard to make “Humble Cottage Farm” thrive despite periods of national economic panic. Known always as Ai and Nori to their Japanese family members, they adopted the American names of Ivy and Hiram and raised two children.  

Their son Cyrus studied and taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During World War II, MIT counseled him not to study aeronautical engineering because his Japanese ancestry would prevent him from getting a job, so he majored in mechanical engineering. He was honorably discharged from the U. S. Army in 1946 at MIT’s request so he could resume teaching there.  He worked most of his career as an engineer at Teledyne Engineering Services and two predecessor firms, specializing in stress analysis.

Their Adeline was a biochemist who worked for her entire career—more than 42 years—at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, first in the chemistry department, then (after its establishment) in the biochemistry department. Beginning as a research assistant, she then taught as an assistant professor and laboratory instructor before becoming a department administrator. Fort Collins was the community to which her parents eventually retired in 1957.

Anti-Asian sentiment arose in Nebraska in 1919 and legislation was introduced in the state legislature to restrict Japanese residents, who could not be naturalized because they were neither whites nor blacks. This was the work of anti-Japanese Californians, not Nebraskans, and would have destroyed 200 farms. Kano helped kill this effort. In 1921, legislation that was even more repressive was proposed that would have prevented Japanese from owning or inheriting land, or even leasing it for more than two years, as well as owning stock in companies they had formed. It would have also prevented them from serving as the legal guardians of their own children.

Hiram Kano went again to the state capitol in Lincoln on behalf of Nebraska’s Japanese population. He testified that “we Japanese have a strong desire to be adopted here, to live here permanently, desiring to be buried in Nebraska when our earthly life comes to an end.”

This crisis led Kano to meet the Rt. Rev. George Allen Beecher, Bishop of the Missionary District of Western Nebraska, who also strongly opposed the anti-Japanese legislation. A bill was eventually passed, but it was not as harsh as the original proposal.  

The relationship between the two men grew and in 1923 Bishop Beecher urged Hiram Kano to undertake missionary work among the Japanese of Nebraska. Kano declined the invitation, but the Bishop asked again the next year, and he agreed.  

Over the next eighteen years, the Kanos moved from one community to another in Nebraska as they worked for both the Episcopal Church and the Americanization Society, originally named the Japanese-Americanization Society. Hiram Kano was the sole president of the society from 1920 until its dissolution in 1941. He taught English and worked as a translator for other Japanese Nebraskans. 

He also began to study for the ordained ministry and was ordained deacon in 1928 and priest in 1936. He established two Nebraska congregations, St. Mary’s, in Mitchell, and St. George’s, in North Platte. By the spring of 1934, some 250 people had been baptized through his ministry.

Immediately after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Fr. Kano was arrested on the steps of his church in North Platte. His influential family background, connections with Japanese government figures, and leadership among Japanese immigrants in America were reasons the federal government deemed him a threat to national security, but he was never charged with any crime. He was, however, rated “Class A”—the most potentially dangerous of the Japanese, and was the only Japanese of some 5,000 living in Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming to receive this rating and to be interned.

Upon arrest, he was not allowed to contact his family in Scottsbluff and was taken to jail in Omaha. He was given a trial, but no attorney, and so defended himself by speaking for two hours.

Bishop Beecher promised to care for the Kano family and the Japanese people in Nebraska.  He addressed public meetings, asserting that the Japanese were his friends. “If any of you is seeking to unjustly persecute them, you will have to kill me first.”

120,000 people of Japanese descent—men, women, and children—were relocated to ten internment camps far from their homes. In several of these camps, and across four states, Kano led worship and ministered to and taught those around him, including his jailers, people of Japanese background, AWOL American soldiers, and German prisoners of war.

Finally the American government realized that Japanese Americans were utterly loyal to their adopted country. Not a single case of subversive activity was discovered and the internees were set free.

Kano was released on parole in 1944 and returned home to Scottsbluff, but some people there remained bitter about the Japanese, so he relocated to Nashotah House several months later, where he earned his master’s degree in 1946. His graduation thesis was titled “The Sermon on the Mount.” FBI and immigration officers visited him often. They queried him and asked other seminarians about him.

Fr. Kano found in the Nashotah House cemetery the grave of an alumnus who was a major figure in the expansion of Japanese Christianity, John McKim (1852-1936), whose ministry as a bishop in Japan spanned forty-two years. By the time of his resignation in 1935, McKim’s diocese had been divided four times. He is also remembered for his cable to New York after the Great Kanto earthquake of September 1, 1923: “All gone but faith in God.”

Those once interred had trouble finding jobs after their release. Dean Nutter hired eight of them to work mainly in the kitchen and the dining hall.  Six came from St. Peter’s in Seattle, one from Los Angeles, and one from Alaska. They stayed in Shelton Hall in Milwaukee. The hall at All Saints’ Cathedral, thirty miles east of the seminary, was used by Japanese people for missionary work, to which Fr. Kano contributed. He visited St. Peter’s in Seattle in 1971 and at a party given in his honor was welcomed by members there he had once known in Wisconsin.

On Trinity Sunday 1946, Fr. Kano was able to resume his ministry in Nebraska among his welcoming and fervent congregation. An increased number of baptisms verified that the war was finally over.

The loyalty of the Japanese-born Issei to the United States had become undeniably manifest through World War II. Their children, the American-born Nisei who held dual citizenship, served valiantly in the United States military and many were killed in action. In 1952, Japanese immigrants were finally given the right to citizenship. On May 5, 1953, Hiram and Ivy Kano became the first Japanese Nebraskans to become U.S. citizens. They went on to establish citizenship schools, and soon practically all the Japanese living in Nebraska had become citizens.

Some forty years after the war, the United States government recognized that Japanese Americans had been wronged and offered to pay reparations. Kano told his bishop, “I don’t want the money. God just used that as another opportunity for me to preach the gospel.”

Upon Fr. Kano’s retirement in 1957, he became rector emeritus, and the two Japanese congregations merged with the other congregations in their communities—St. Mary’s with Holy Apostles, Mitchell, and St. George’s with Our Savior, North Platte. The Kanos retired to Fort Collins, Colorado, where Fr. Kano served St. Paul’s Church and enjoyed gardening, sailing, and judo.  Working together as always, Hiram and Ivy established a farm. They built a cabin and planted some 500 trees and shrubs that drew a wonderful variety of melodious birds. Both the Emperor of Japan and the Episcopal Church’s Presiding Bishop bestowed honors on Fr. Kano.

The Rev. Hiram Hisanori Kano died in 1988, just months short of his one hundredth birthday.  His ashes are buried in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.  

The later generations of the family include another Episcopal priest named Kano. Maria (Mia) Benjamin married Ivy and Hiram’s great-grandson Aaron Kano-Bower in 2018, and they decided to take the name Kano. She became an Episcopal priest in January 2020. At her ordination, Mia received from her mother-in-law Susan Kano the engraved communion kit Fr. Kano had used during his ministry.  A graduate of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, the Rev. Mia Kano serves at St. Andrew’s, Wellesley, Massachusetts. Her office there is graced with a signed letter from President Barack Obama recognizing Fr. Kano’s powerful legacy.

Fr. Kano wrote his autobiography in Japanese. Translated by Rose Yamamoto and introduced and edited by Tai Kreidler, it is available as Nikkei Farmer on the Nebraska Plains: A Memoir by Hisanori Kano, published in 2010 by Texas Tech University Press. (Nikkei refers to the Japanese diaspora.) This memoir contains many brief references to a host of friends with whom the author maintained relationships over the years. Fr. Kano was truly a connector!

The commemoration of H. H. Kano is not yet included in Lesser Feasts and Fasts, but is likely to appear there in the future. A Great Cloud of Witnesses features an entry for him on October 24, the day of his death.

Among his many memorable teachings are these words from his internment period:

“We must bring into our hearts the God who is the source of life, wisdom, love, peace, and justice.  We must firmly believe that our hearts are the palace of our God, then our world will naturally become more light; strength with hope will be given to us; our bodies, even if under the restraints of imprisonment, will transcend time and space in the environment of freedom.  This huge happiness we can have now if we have faith.”

The Rev. Charles Hoffacker (’82) is a priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington who lives in Greenbelt, Maryland. He served as a campus minister, rector of three parishes, and interim in five congregations, as well as a convocation dean, General Convention deputy, and reader of the General Ordination Examinations. Now enjoying an active retirement, he ministers in various ways, including as a writer, independent scholar, activist, and board member of the Frances Perkins Center. 

Episcopal clergyman and educator John Masters Edmondson Nutter (1879-1953) was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, and graduated from the University of Leeds in 1904. In 1905 Nutter migrated to the U.S. He graduated from Nashotah Theological Seminary in 1911, and was ordained to the Episcopal priesthood that same year. He served pastorates in Chicago (1911-1918) and Detroit (1918-1925). In 1925 he returned to Nashotah House where he served as dean, and as professor of pastoral theology and homiletics (1925-1947). He retired from active teaching in 1947, and in 1948 was given the title of dean emeritus of pastoral theology.