No Japanese were known to have settled in the farm belt of east-central Saskatchewan. But along the CNR line are stations called Kuroki, Togo and Mikado. When the Ukrainians who dominate the area learned of Japan's triumph in 1905 over their hated oppressor, Czarist Russia, they were so elated that they named three tiny hamlets in honour of the most prominent victors: a general, an admiral and the emperor.

Tomekichi Nishimura of Antelope, Saskatchewan, 1911, was the first and one of the very few Japanese homesteader to settle on the Prairies.  The farm remains in the family.
Although Tomekichi Nishimura landed with his family in Canada in 1898, they headed eastward in the U.S. to railroad and to farm in Minot, North Dakota. From there, the Nishimuras trekked northward with livestock and machinery in 1910 to Antelope, Saskatchewan, west of Swift Current, becoming one of the very few homesteading Japanese families in Canada.
The eldest son, Tokutaro Nishimura, who was educated in the U.S., was the highest ranking Oriental in the U.S. Ar­my in the First World War: a sergeant-major with the American Expeditionary Force of 1917 serving in. France. The original Nishimura homestead remains in the family and many of the descendants live in the Swift Current vicinity.
Until the entry of the wartime evacuees into Southern Manitoba and to the Regina and Moose Jaw areas, the entire Japanese population of Saskatchewan and Manitoba fluctuated at about twenty families. Some families moved from Alberta to Brandon, Manitoba in the 1920's but pulled back after a few summers. Other records reveal a Ryukichi Ui in Souris, south of Bran­don, but the first Japanese to till Manitoba soil was pro­bably Terukichi Umehara at Portage la Prairie in 1906. Later, he moved to Ontario.

At one time, bellboys at most major hotels in Western Canada were Japanese, such as those above at Lake Louise, 1927.
The rail, not the soil, brought most Japanese to the prairies. Kitaro Hazemoto and his men worked at the Moose Jaw roundhouse in 1909. At the Winnipeg sta­tion, the hub of trans-Canada rail activity, the Japanese were engaged as porters, busboys and cleaners. In Moose Jaw, Regina and Winnipeg, hotels, an integral part of rail travel, hired them as bellhops and kitchen help.
Whether is suited a sterotype of Hollywood image, the major Alberta hotels - the Banff Springs, Calagary's Palliser or Edmonton's MacDonald (as well as others in Western Canada) hired Japanese bellhops.  In 1924, a head bellboy, Saturo Kuwahara, wuit his position to open up a drygoods store, Nippon Silks.  He took on two partners, branched into Edmonton and Regina, then into Vancouver in 1939, to create a chain of shops spanning three provinces.  WWII shut down the Vancouver outlet, and changed the firm name to Silk-O-Lina.  It is today the oldest uninterrupted Japanese Canadian enterprise, since it continued to operate throughout the war in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Winnipeg's 1909 City Directory lists an S. Shibata as a Portage Avenue merchant. Ichiro Hayakawa, father of Samuel I. Hayakawa, the first Nisei graduate of the University of Manitoba and elected as Senator from California in 1976 to the U.S. Congress, was in the importing business as early as 1918. Naka Nakane, who ran a restaurant at the Moose Jaw station, was so highly respected that he served as an executive with the local Chamber of Commerce. The first person of Japanese ancestry to receive the Order of Canada in 1970 was Genzo Kitagawa, a Regina pioneer and businessman.

Genzo Kitagawa, pioneer Regina businessman, became the first Japanese Canadian to receive the Order of Canada, presented by Govenor-General Roland Michener.

Among Japanese businesses were: a small lamp shade factory in Winnipeg; a drygoods store in Saskatoon; a dental laboratory in Moose Jaw; and a tire vulcanizing shop in Regina.

The small number of Japanese on the prairies was a concernt to Issei parents with growing sons and daughters. With so few eligibles, where would they find a suitable life partner among their own?  Ironically, the B.C. coastal evacuation eased this cricis with the entry of approximately 2,700 exiles.

- Nikkei Legacy: The Story of Japanese Canadians from Settlement to Today (1983). pp. 102-104.