Kinjiro Matsudaira
Kinjiro Matsudaira was an American inventor and politician who served as the mayor of Edmonston, Maryland in 1927 and 1943.Biography
Matsudaira was born in Pennsylvania on September 13, 1885, as the son of a Japanese father, Tadaatsu, and an American mother, Carrie Sampson. He was a descendant of the Fujii-Matsudaira clan. After his father's death, he lived with his maternal grandparents in Virginia. On May 1, 1912, Matsudaira filed for concerning the functions of a thermometric fire-detector. The patent was granted to him on September 29, 1914.
In 1925, Matsudaira sent a letter to the Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C., asking whether he was related to Tsuneo Matsudaira, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States at the time. He was elected as the mayor of Edmonston, Maryland, in the summer of 1927. Although the election was reportedly recalled due to the Immigration Act of 1924, which prohibited Japanese immigration to the United States, the election reportedly made him the first Japanese American mayor in the United States. Matsudaira was re-elected as mayor of Edmonston in 1943.
