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Photo by John Wagner

Photo by John Wagner

During the 50th anniversary of his death, the life of legendary Japanese Alaska pioneer Kyosuke “Frank” Yasuda is being commemorated in both his birthplace in Japan and in Beaver, the Yukon River community he founded with his Inupiat wife Nevelo in 1910.

The first portion of the international celebration returned home Monday evening from a trip of a lifetime.

Toting luggage filled with Japanese mementos, eight schoolchildren and five adult chaperones from the Athabascan village of Beaver wearily debarked at Fairbanks International Airport on their next-to-last stop on the voyage home.

A year of fundraising, gift-making, regalia-sewing and a semester and a half of Japanese lessons prepared the group for journey.

But the excitement isn’t done yet. The school trip will be followed in August by a three-day potlatch in Beaver featuring 35 Japanese guests.

“We’re so grateful to have gone,” Beaver Cruikshank School Principal Charleen Fisher-Salmon said. Last year, Fisher-Salmon won a Teacher Dream Challenge Grant from the Aurora Foundation in California, which paid her way.

Elders and others in the village were already making plans for the commemorative potlatch when Fisher-Salmon won the grant, and it served as a stimulus for others to make a trip to Japan.

Then began a flurry of fundraisers — raffles, cakewalks and spaghetti feeds. Help also came from the Beaver Village Council, the village corporation and the Yukon-Koyukuk School District.

As soon as school started last fall, the K-12 students started taking Japanese lessons with a long-distance instructor and preparing gifts and regalia and practicing songs in their Native language.

The work and preparation, which included learning proper Japanese etiquette, was worth it all.

“They treated us so kindly,” Salmon-Fisher said. “It was really exciting.”

Ryo Satomi, a frequent visitor to Beaver during the past 15 years, researched Yasuda’s life and made all the contacts for the trip, Salmon-Fisher explained.

Four days were spent participating in a multitude of planned activities in the seaside city of Ishinomaki — where Yasuda was born — and Sendai, both in Miyagi prefecture. The group cut the ribbon at a special Yasuda display at a university and viewed traditional dancing and drumming.

Other highlights of the trip were being greeted by the large Minato (Ishinomaki) Elementary School marching band, seeing cherry blossoms in bloom, participating in a Buddhist memorial ceremony for Yasuda’s ancestors and meeting the Ainu — an indigenous Japanese people — the governor and mayor.

Many of the city experiences, especially in Tokyo, were firsts for the village children — taking trains and subways and walking through crowded streets.

“We are so glad we could share some of our Athabascan language and culture,” said Paul Williams Jr., a language instructor at the Beaver school, who also enjoyed learning firsthand about Japanese culture and customs during the trip.

“I liked seeing Tokyo, one of the huge cities of the world and all of the nice people,” Williams added.

Second-grader Allison Fisher-Salmon, 7, said she liked Japanese snacks and popsicles, and also Tokyo.

“It had lots of fun stuff,” she said.

Yasuda came north as a cabin boy to Capt. Frank Healy on the U.S. Revenue Cutter, “Bear,” and took up residence in Barrow in 1893, where he eventually married. At the time, the whale population was nearly decimated by commercial whalers and the coastal people were hungry and suffering from disease brought by the newcomers.

Yasuda later was called the “Japanese Moses” for leading his wife’s people across the Brooks Range from the northern coast of Alaska to the Yukon River. The Yasudas partnered with gold miners in the Chandalar area and established Beaver in 1910 as a supply center to supply the new mines in the region.

He was well known for his kindness and never refusing a miner a grubstake.

The village of Beaver will be hosting 35 Japanese visitors from the Minota School Aug. 22-25, including a contingent of drummers and dancers.

In the meantime, Beaver schoolchildren will continue with their study of Japanese culture and language, making gifts as village elders continue preparations for Yasuda’s Golden Anniversary Potlatch.