ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, June 21, 1996 TAG: 9606210032
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
ISAMI HIROI, who played a key role in developing Hokkaido's public works, is believed to have worked for the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1886.
Isami Hiroi was to the Japanese Island of Hokkaido what Robert Moses was to New York City.
Hiroi's public works projects were built decades earlier, however, and he may have been regarded more warmly by his countrymen than New Yorkers regard Moses, who is sometimes criticized for crowding the city with freeways, bridges and parks.
A team from Japan's Sapporo Television Broadcasting Co. Ltd. visited Roanoke on Thursday, gathering information for a documentary about Hiroi, who apparently worked for the Norfolk and Western Railway for about nine months in 1886.
The researchers were looking for information at local offices of the railroad's successor, Norfolk Southern Corp., and at the Roanoke City Library and Roanoke Valley Historical Society & Museum.
The time Hiroi spent in Roanoke with the railroad was part of an American and European journey that the 24-year-old student of civil engineering made to further his education.
Later in his life, Hiroi was a key figure in the development of Hokkaido, northernmost of Japan's main islands, and was personally responsible for building and designing bridges, railroads, and harbors and improving river navigation.
Koichi Katano, a director for Sapporo TV, and two others were looking for any kind of record of the months Hiroi spent in Roanoke. That was 110 years ago; the city itself was only four years old. They think he stayed in the City Hotel at Salem Avenue and Jefferson Street.
Plans for a documentary about Hiroi were prompted by the fact that 1997 is the 100th anniversary of the building of Otaru Harbor under Hiroi's direction, Katano said. A statue of Hiroi sits in a park above the harbor and is his only memorial.
Japan was on the verge of ending 300 years of isolationism under samurai rule when Hiroi was born in 1862 at Kochi on a southern Japanese island. Although, his father, who died when Hiroi was young, was from the samurai, a warrior class, Hiroi grew up in poverty.
He attended the Sapporo Agricultural School, which had been founded by an American, William Clark of the Massachusetts Agricultural College. In December 1883, he set off alone from Yokohama on a steamer for San Francisco.
Hiroi is believed to have worked for the Mississippi River Commission in St. Louis; Norfolk and Western; and Edge Moor Bridge Co. in Wilmington, Del., before leaving the United States about 1887 for two years of study in Germany. After he returned to Japan, Hiroi taught at prestigious Tokyo University from 1908 until his death in 1928.
Junco Tsunashima, a Hawaii resident and employee of a New York production company hired by Sapporo TV, said Thursday that researching Hiroi's life has been difficult because most records about him were destroyed in the great Tokyo earthquake of 1923 and bombing raids during World War II.
Katano plans to return to the United States and to Roanoke in September with a film crew. The 60-minute documentary will air across Japan in February with a longer version being shown to viewers on Hokkaido.
LENGTH: Medium: 62 linesby CNB