George Shima

George Shima (1864 – March 27, 1926) was a Japanese American businessman in California who became the first Japanese American millionaire. At one point, he produced about 85% of the state's potato crop, which earned him the nickname "The Potato King".

Early life Born in Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan, he entered a preliminary course at the Tokyo Commercial School (now Hitotsubashi University), but failed the entrance examination for the regular course. He emigrated to San Francisco in 1889 determined to learn English, the subject that gave him the most trouble on the exam. then became a migrant farm laborer in the Sacramento Delta for a while. Soon afterward, he turned his eye to management, when he began supplying Japanese farm workers to white farmers. By the late 1890s, he leased some land and began his own farming operations. He was successful enough to purchase some inexpensive swampland (considered undesirable by white American farmers Still, the opposition he encountered led him that same year to become the first president of the Japanese Association of America and to unsuccessfully fight the passing of the California Alien Land Law of 1913, which was written to prevent Asians from owning land.

Death and legacy In 1926, after a business trip to Los Angeles, he suffered a stroke and died. That same day he was awarded the Fourth Rank Order of the Rising Sun from the Emperor of Japan. He received the award from Hirohito, posthumously known as Emperor Shōwa. At his funeral, David Starr Jordan, the president of Stanford University, and James Rolph, the Mayor of San Francisco, both served as pallbearers. At the Japanese Cemetery, there is a monument in his honor.

The Shima Center at San Joaquin Delta College honors his legacy. Yoshinobu Hirotsu, a fellow resident of Shima's hometown of Kurume, also raised several hundred thousand yen to set up a life-sized monument to him in a park there in 1999.