On their international journey, the three travelers had transportation issues that landed them in an unexpected destination: Vancouver.
Their historic adventure is something that links Vancouver with a city in the travelers’ homeland.
And no, it isn’t Russia.
A possible relationship between Vancouver and a Russian city on the other end of Valery Chkalov’s 1937 transpolar flight was part of a recent Columbian story about sister cities.
Katy Sword’s story noted that the Japanese city of Joyo is Vancouver’s only civic sibling. Shchelkovo, where Chkalov and two other Russian aviators started their 5,475-mile flight, is interested in a partnership.
Their ANT-25 was supposed to land in San Francisco, by the way, but was running low on fuel. And that’s why the first American monument commemorating a Russian achievement is just west of Pearson Air Museum.
But there is another monument a couple of hundred yards away. It honors another traveling trio that followed a much more harrowing path here a century before Chkalov. They were among 14 Japanese sailors who left the port city of Mihama in October 1832. After the cargo ship was crippled by a storm, it was adrift for 14 months and eventually wrecked along Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.
The three survivors — remembered only as Iwakichi, Kyukichi and Otokichi — were found by native hunters and held at a village in what’s now the Makah Indian Reservation.
Word of the three foreign castaways reached Fort Vancouver. John McLoughlin, who ran the Hudson’s Bay Company’s regional operation, sent a ship to ransom the sailors. They reached Fort Vancouver in July 1834.
A monument commemorating the first known journey from Japan to North America is at the Fort Vancouver Visitor Center, 1501 E. Evergreen Blvd.
It has been a popular stop for Japanese visitors, including a sister-city delegation from Joyo.
Unlike the Russian aviators, however, there were no triumphant homecomings for the three Japanese sailors. As we have reported previously, Japan was an isolated nation two centuries ago. Its people were not allowed to leave.
Even those who left accidently, such as the sailors swept off course, were considered tainted by foreign influences and were not allowed to come back. Iwakichi, Kyukichi and Otokichi never did return home.
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
