Hiram Kano

Hiram Hisanori Kano was a Japanese American priest in the Episcopal Church who was interned by the United States government during World War II. Biography

Kano's father was Viscount Kano , governor of Kagoshima Prefecture and a member of the National Diet. As a second son, he chose a career different from his father, studying agriculture at the Imperial University in Tokyo, graduating in 1916.

Kano married a woman named Ai Nagai in 1919; the couple bought a farm near Litchfield, Nebraska and had two children. Like many other Japanese immigrants in the area, Kano farmed sugar beets. Kano became active in the Japanese Americanization Society and served as an interpreter and English teacher for immigrants. Government officials considered him a threat to national security because of his family ties to the Japanese government and his position as a leader in the Japanese immigrant community. They sent him to an internment camp, separating him from his family. He retired in 1957 and died in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1988, at the age of 99.

The Nebraska legislature recognized him as "a quiet and persevering warrior in the battle against the evil of racism and a champion of his people" in a 2012 resolution.