Born as one of eight children to a Japanese banker, he attended Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, Japan, but was taken from his studies in 1904 to fight in the Russo-Japanese War.
Kishi looked for suitable land, starting in California and moving on to the Carolinas, and finally discovering the area near the town of Terry in central Orange County, Texas ideal.
His son Taro, who had been working with a Japanese shipping company at the time, helped support his family by buying a small farm near Orange.
Years later, Kichimatsu Kishi was detained by authorities and kept for two months at Camp Kenedy near San Antonio after the Attack on Pearl Harbor, most likely due to his previous contact with Yamamoto.
[9] As a highly regarded football player, Taro Kishi helped Texas A&M win a Southwest Conference championship and was one of the early great APA athletes.
Kichimatsu's grandson is the NASA engineer, John Hirasaki, who in 1969 along with Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and William Carpentier – became one of the first five known humans to view lunar rocks inside Earth's atmosphere.
In this same area, a road that runs through the central part of Orange County was named "Jap Lane" years back, supposedly in honor of the Japanese for the positive impact on the agriculture of the region.
[citation needed] However, the word Jap is now considered a racial slur and the road's name has been targeted by civil rights groups.