Japanese

"Frank Yasuda (1868 - 1958)"

Frank Yasuda was born in 1868 in Miyagi prefecture, Japan. The Yasuda family had run a clinic for generations and been well off, but when Frank was 15 years old, both of his parents passed away. Although his elder brother had already taken over family business, he could not earn enough income to support whole his family. Therefore Frank started to work in the Mitsubishi Shipping Company. Then, he went to America and made his living by working on a farm and in a cosmetic manufacture when he was 19 years old. At the age of 22, he started to work in a coast-guard patrol boat as a cabin boy. This brought him to Alaska.

During his voyage on the USS Cutter Bear, the ship was hit by a cold wave and stuck in drifting sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. Frank volunteered to go ashore to Point Barrow to get help because nobody else would go. The coldness of Alaska was so severe that he could hardly walk, but anyhow he could arrive at the destination and was successful in receipt of rescue. The Eskimos rescued the crews of USS Cutter Bear and Frank. Since then he decided to leave the Bear and stay in Point Barrow where the Eskimo lived in.

Frank was quickly fit in with the native community, learned whale hunting and established a good relationship with Eskimos. Consequently, he was selected as a leader of whale hunting. However, due to the decreased number of whales because of excessive hunting and measles spreading in there, the Eskimos were forced a tight corner of life or death.

In order to save the Eskimos' life, Frank planned to make the Eskimos move to the inland of Alaska and tried to search a gold mine for them. Fortunately, Frank got to know a prospector, and he could find a gold mine with the help of the prospector. He built up a village named Beaver, moved to there with the Eskimos. According to this great achievement, Frank was called "Japanese Moses" or "Santa Clause of Alaska."

In 1939, when the World War II broke out, Frank was deported to a concentration camp. He was released in 1946 after the war, but he never went back to Japan and stayed in Beaver until he passed away at the age of 90.

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