Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai led a five-day working visit to Japan last month to meet with companies that could relocate their businesses or expand their operations into the San Antonio region.
“We have a couple of Japanese businesses that are proposing to come in immediately, so I will pay them a visit,” Sakai told the local San Antonio Report before leaving the United States.
Japanese companies, according to data from Texas Economic Development reported 119 investment projects, $6.9 billion in capital investment, and 19,620 new jobs created by 96 companies over the last decade.
Bexar County, the largest county in San Antonio, is home to over 1,700 Japanese and Japanese-American citizens and more than 12 Japanese multinational corporations.
“There’s a lot of discussion, and perhaps diverse opinions, as to the effectiveness of our current workforce. One of the reasons I want to go to Japan is to make sure they feel that the skill set of the labor that they’re getting satisfies their needs,” Sakai said.
Sakai became the first Asian American executive of Bexar County in January 2023. A second-generation Japanese American, he is the grandson of farmers who left Japan to build new lives in the United States.
