Smyrna History: Japan’s Partnership Powers Smyrna Nissan and 200 Companies Fueling Tennessee Jobs

Japan’s Quiet Powerhouse: 200 Companies Fueling Tennessee Jobs and Growth – A Story Worth Telling in a Documentary from Smyrna’s Roots.

The story of the partnership between Smyrna, Tennessee, and Japan deserves a full documentary—one that traces its arc from Sewart Air Force Base’s postwar reconciliation, through the arrival of Datsun and the Nissan Motor Manufacturing plant, to the Omni Hut restaurant where management gathered for evening meals. This narrative, born from wartime healing and transformed into an economic powerhouse, belongs on the big screen to inspire the next generation.

In my opinion, there’s not another place in America that has a closer relationship with Japan than Smyrna, Tennessee. The bond runs so deep that Smyrna has a sister city in Zama, Japan, commemorated by Zama Park across from the Smyrna Train Depot—a living symbol of the friendship that grew from those early days of reconciliation to today’s thriving partnership.

Today, Japanese investment has quietly become one of the strongest pillars of Tennessee’s modern economy, reshaping communities from the factory floor to Main Street. More than 200 Japanese-owned companies now operate across the state, making Japan Tennessee’s leading foreign investor. These firms—including global names like Nissan, Bridgestone, and DENSO, along with a wide network of auto suppliers, manufacturers, and service companies—have put down deep roots in communities from Smyrna, Murfreesboro, Franklin, Memphis, Jackson, Chattanooga, Clarksville, Knoxville, Cookeville, and beyond.

Smyrna, Tn: A Japanese Auto Maker Finds a Home

The numbers tell a compelling story. Together, Japanese companies employ roughly 50,000 to 60,000 Tennesseans in well-paying manufacturing, engineering, logistics, and professional jobs. These aren’t just jobs but long-term careers, offering benefits, skills training, and advancement opportunities that support families and sustain local small businesses. Japanese firms have invested approximately $20 billion in Tennessee facilities and operations—a commitment that shows up clearly in the state’s tax base through property, franchise, excise, and sales taxes that help fund public schools, roads, first responders, and other essential services.

Yet the beginning wasn’t smooth. The groundbreaking for Nissan’s Smyrna plant in 1981 was meant to signal economic progress but instead highlighted deep labor tensions. Union supporters jeered Gov. Lamar Alexander as he was escorted by state troopers through a crowd of about 1,000 protesters who shouted insults at Nissan executives planning a $300 million investment and 2,000 jobs at the company’s first U.S. plant. Alexander later said he was shocked by the crowd’s rudeness. The protest, reported by Kentucky’s Daily News on February 4, 1981, stemmed from Nissan’s use of a South Carolina contractor employing some non-union labor, underscoring the clash between traditional labor disputes and the realities of global manufacturing.

For me, the story reaches far beyond business statistics. As a 13-year-old working at the iconic Omni Hut Restaurant for $1.50 an hour, I often listened to Major James Walls—who had been at Pearl Harbor during the December 7th attack. Major Walls and Sally would often give me rides to work and paid their son and my friend Lonnie and me $20 to mow his three acres with a push mower. I never sensed in him the bitterness toward Japan that some World War II veterans carried.

My late mother once reminded me of something I told her years ago: “Our small town is going to change when the Datsun plant opens.”

Years later, I worked at the Nissan plant in Smyrna from age 25 to 33. Those years shaped in me a deep understanding of manufacturing, community, and the power of economic interdependence.

Recently, when I was invited to lunch with Consul-General Shinji Watanabe of Japan—Japan’s top diplomat for Tennessee and four neighboring states—the experience felt almost surreal. Sitting across from him, I noticed a picture on the wall of the Smyrna Train Depot, which I believe was a gift from Smyrna Mayor Mary Esther Reed. Seeing that picture and thinking back to our once-small town was deeply moving. I couldn’t help but reflect on how profoundly intertwined Tennessee and Japan have become.

Ironically, our conversation focused not on past success but on future uncertainty. The consulate shared serious concerns about how tariff policies could affect the roughly 200 Japanese companies located in Tennessee. Their worry extended beyond corporate balance sheets to the thousands of Tennesseans whose livelihoods, communities, and public services depend on a strong, stable partnership between Japan and Tennessee in the years ahead.
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Nissan and Datsun History: Originally published in New York Times, Nov 4, 1980

SMYRNA, Tenn. – This little railroad town, where once the greatest excitement was the Dixie Flyer passing through each morning, Is throbbing with speculation about how residents and the local econony will be affected by what is touted as the largest single industrial project in Tennessee history.
Since Oct. 30, conversation has been dominated by the announcement that day by the Nissan Motor Co. of Tokyo that it would build a $300 million truck assembly plant just outside the city limits. The decision in Smyrna’s favor, over a competing location in Atlanta, had been anticipated for a month, but no one in this middle Tennessee municipali-Ly of 8,700 people could be quite sure until the Datsun manufacturer said it publicly. Since the announcement, the phone at City Hall has been almost ringing off the wall with calls from those seeking jobs in a factory that will not begin operating for three more years. When it is operating.. the plant will employ about 2,200 workers.