The most ardent Aggie football fan will likely miss the question about the first Asian player on the team.
Texas A&M had a Japanese halfback who helped lead the team to a Southwest Conference championship almost a century ago.
He also brought some Orange to the Maroon.
Taro Kishi was a native of Japan and a graduate of Orange High School. He grew up in his father’s Orange County farming community in the Terry area.
After the Aggies won the 1925 conference title, the Battalion, the A&M student newspaper, described Kishi as one of “the most consistent ground gainers that the Aggies have ever known. He has made himself one of the fellows and a truer friend and comrade we have ever known.”
The Bryan Eagle newspaper in a 1998 story by Joe Michael Feist told Kishi’s history.
Kishi enrolled at A&M in 1922. In those days, freshmen had a separate team and he was a starter. The next year, he went to the varsity team with D.X. Bible as coach.
Kishi was described in a September, 20, 1923, Eagle newspaper article as “an artful dodger and exceptionally fast.” “He proved a splendid broken field runner on that team.”
Feist also found a 1924 story showing that Kishi had caught a touchdown pass and returned a punt for another score in the game against Baylor.
In 1925, the Aggies won the Southwest Conference title and the wins included a Thanksgiving shutout against the University of Texas.
Kishi missed part of the season because of a torn shoulder ligament. But he came back. The Battalion wrote that he played against TCU “purely on guts.”
After graduating with a degree in agriculture, Kishi returned to Orange County to help with his father’s farm.
The Texas State Historical Association’s Handbook of Texas said Kichimatsu Kishi was a graduate of the University of Tokyo and a veteran of the Russo-Japanese War. He came to the United States in 1906 to look for farming land suited for rice.
After buying acreage in Orange County, Kishi moved here with his second wife (his first had died), along with four-year-old Taro and Taro’s sister, Toki. He also brought along other Japanese to start a farming colony. Altogether, the Kishi Colony began with 32 men, five women, and four children.
Luck came and went for the elder Kishi. After the Sabine-Neches waterway was dredged, salt water moved up Cow Bayou. The rice crops did not have fresh water for irrigation.
The colony then began farming vegetables and trucking them into town in Orange to sell. Kishi formed the Orange Oil Company in 1919 and later hit oil, making him a fortune.
But like others in the oil business, the wells eventually ran dry. The Great Depression began with the October 1929 stock market crash.
The Bryan Eagle 1998 story reported Taro Kishi during the Great Depression moved to New York City and worked for a Japanese shipping company. He sent money back to Orange for his family.
After the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Taro was taken to Ellis Island and questioned. Government authorities released him and he moved back to Texas.
The elder Kishi was taken to Camp Kennedy in San Antonio and held for a while. But prominent Orange citizens used their influence to have him released.
The Bryan Eagle story said Taro married in 1957. He loved the arts and music. Not only did he play the violin, he also made them. In addition, he sang in the Methodist choir and donated the land for the Orangefield Methodist Church.
Taro also played a lot of golf. He participated in the dedication ceremony in October 1982 for a Texas Historical Marker commemorating the Kishi Colony. The marker is along FM 1135. Taro died in 1993 at the age of 90.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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