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Ketchikan: Tatsuda's grocery celebrates centennial; Family's 4th generation operates Stedman landmark By DAVE KIFFER - In 1904, Yawatahama, Japan was a bustling town on the western edge of Shikoku Island, the smallest of Japan’s main islands.

It had been barely 60 years since the American Navy had forced Japan to open itself and its people to the Outside world, but Yawatahama already had a reputation as a growing industrial center for Shikoku.

The small city was called the “Manchester” of Shikoku because several of its local industries had already begun to industrialize, particularly the mikan, better known as the satsuma mandarin, production.

Yawatahama was also adjacent to the Sadamisaki Peninsula, Japan's longest Peninsula, and was also near Japan’s Island Sea, the seafood rich passage between Shikoku and Japan’s largest island, Honshu. Yawatahama, blessed with a large natural harbor, was the significant seafood port in western Shikoku.

In the latter part of the 19th century, jobs were plentiful in the area and by 1889, the town had the first bank in the region and also had the first electric light system on Shikoku. But there was also significant disruption in the centuries old agricultural economy of Japan. That led many Japanese to seek a better economy elsewhere.

Between 1886 and 1907, more than 400,000 Japanese men and women went to the United States.

So what specifically inspired 18-year-old Kichirobei “Jimmie” Tatsuda to leave Yawatahama in 1904 for an uncertain future across the Pacific Ocean. His grandson, Bill Tatsuda Jr. says the word “adventurer” comes up in notes he took when he visited his distant relatives in Yawatahama in the late 1960s.

When he arrived in Ketchikan in 1904, Kichirobei Tatsuda found a world that, at least physically, was not all that different from his home in Japan. There was little flat land in both communities, they clung to steep hillsides above the harbor and both had growing seafood industries.

But where Yawatahama had a population approaching 5,000 and been settled for generations, Ketchikan was still a frontier town consisting of few buildings. Ketchikan had only been incorporated four years earlier and its year round population in 1904 was estimated at no more than 300 hundred, although three times as many people were in bustling community during the summer months.

It was the perfect place for a hard worker to get ahead and Jimmie Tatsuda almost immediately began doing odd jobs in the local salmon canning industry which had started with the Fidalgo Island Cannery in 1900.

According to family members, “Jimmie” Tatsuda also got a small hand troller and spent summers living on the beach at Bond Bay on across Behm Canal from Clover Pass. Each day he would row his small boat out into the Canal to catch salmon.

“They were paid 50 cents per king salmon but could not sell white kings, “ Bill Tatsuda Jr. said recently. “I was showing Ernie Boyd some of the old pictures...and he told me that his mother told him that Jimmie Tatsuda was a cook on the mail boat up north before he got married and they started the store.”

In 1913, after nearly a decade in Alaska and approaching 30, Jimmie Tatsuda decided it was time to settle down He let his family in Japan know that he was interested in marriage and his family in Yawatahama found a 19-year-old woman from the nearby village of Uwajima, Sen Seike.

After 1907, the American government had severely curtailed immigration from Japan, but there was a loophole. Wives and families of Japanese men living in America could still emigrate. That led to more than 25,000 Japanese women coming to America in the next decade as “picture brides.” - More...
Thursday PM - May 19, 2016

Alaska: GOVERNOR CALLS FOURTH SPECIAL SESSION OF THE 29th ALASKA STATE LEGISLATURE - Governor Bill Walker announced today that in the public interest he is calling the Twenty-Ninth Legislature of the State of Alaska into its fourth special session. The Second Session of the 29th Alaska Legislature came to a close Wednesday without any significant action to address the ongoing fiscal crisis brought on by the sudden drop in oil prices and the decreased oil production. The House and Senate failed to pass the FY 2017 Operating Budget.

Without a FY 2017 Operating Budget, the possiblity of a state government shutdown looms six weeks away. The Alaska Legislature was called into special session by the Governor to pass a budget and for deficit-reductions. The special session will take place at Juneau on Monday, May 23, 2016, at 11 a.m. to consider the following subjects: - More...
Thursday PM - May 19, 2016

Alaska: Winners of Contest to Name New Ferry Boats Announced - Governor Bill Walker and Lt. Governor Byron Mallott today announced the names of Alaska’s two new ferry vessels. They thanked Tanalian School 7th grader Malea Voran of Port Alsworth and Eagle River High School 10th grader Taylor Thompson of Eagle River for the winning entries naming the Alaska Class ferries the Tazlina and the Hubbard. According to statute, each ferry is to be christened after one of the state’s 745 named glaciers.

In January, the Governor called on Alaska students to submit essays on potential names for the vessels. The two ferries are being built at the Vigor Alaska shipyard in Ketchikan after the Alaska Legislature appropriated funding for the projects in 2009 and 2012. Upon completion in 2018, the ferries will provide day boat service between Juneau, Haines, and Skagway – also known as the North Lynn Canal region.

In all, 448 6th through 12th graders submitted essays to name the two new vessels. - More...
Thursday PM - May 19, 2016