OCEAN DRIFT

Evening Star, Issue 19797, 22 February 1928, Page 10

OCEAN DRIFT

JAPAN TO AMERICA POPULATION THEORY When the Japanese fishing junk, Ryo Yei Maru, was recently found drifting in the Pacific Ocean with all its crew dead for many months it provided another scrap of mute evidence to support a theory that has been advanced in late year'sj viz., that America may have been peopled from Asia. This fishing junk had been drifting helplessly for eleven months, the last two of the crew of twelve had died apparently in March of last year, and there were abundant signs that cannibalism had been practised in the final struggles of these fishermen to ward ff almost certain death. In the September issue of ‘ Chambers’s .Journal ’ Arthur P. Woollacott, F.R.G'.S., tells something of the sea story of the lost junks of Japan. He says the question whether America was peopled from Asia _ in preColumbian days is one that is .revived from time to time by ethnological finds or by speculation arising from events in which Chinese or Japanese figure, and ho distinctly recalls having pointed out to him as a child a group of small, more or less bandy-legged sailor men, swarthy, talkative, and greatly amused, who were a group ol Japanese rescued from a junk stranded off the coast of Vancouver Island. CHARACTERISTIC KNIFE. Not long ago a representative of the Imperial University at Tokio exhibited half a dozen lath-like spikes of wrought iron, the use of which was not immediately apparent. These were long wrought-irou nails used in junk construction. They arc bent in a curve and the head of all on one side. Hammer the edge thin and sharpen it and you have the characteristic Indian knife which is found among the coast dwellers from Mexico clear around to Kamschatka. These spikes were obtained from the wreck of a junk on the Queen Charlotte Islands. This representative bad the records of one hundred junks which were blown away from the shores of Japan by monsoons, many of which were eventually cast away on the coast ot North America at points from Acapulco to the Aleutian Islands. “ At least twenty-five of them were thus stranded on this continent, two in Mexico, three in Lower California, one at the mouth of the Columbia River, one at Cape 1 lattery in Washintgon, another at Nootka on Vancouver Island, and others on the Queen Charlottes and at Sitka. Small parties of male Japanese have thus repeatedly reached the American continent by sea, cast upon its shores after floating helplessly for months. In early years, if they escaped death at the hands of the natives, they must have remained permanently near where they landed. On their uniting with the women of the native races their descendants would be more or loss impressed with their physical peculiarities. THO US ANUS • OF VESSELS. Mr Woollacottt continues with the perennially interesting story of these castaways. Nothing in sea history is exactly 'like it. Every January strong north-east monsoons cause a great uinnv disasters off the coast of Japan. In 'the course of centuries literally thousands of helpless vessels have been blown out to sea, and carried by a current averaging ton miles an hour across the ocean. In every case the disabled junks were found without rudders or masts. Hv the imperial decree ot IbJi, Japanese who bad loft the country and had been abroad wore not allowed to return, death being the penalty for travelling abroad, studying_ foreign languages, introducing , foreign customs, or believing in Christianity, lo make it more difficult to evade ehis decree another was passed in_ 1639 which commanded the destruction of all boats built upon foreign models and forbidding the building of vessels of any size or shape superior to that of the junk, which was ordered to be built with an open stern and large square rudder. Tin's craft was thus rendered unfit for ocean navigation. The location of the stranded vessel and of those found adrift, together _ with information derived from the survivors, has enabled navigators to. plot_ the course of the Kuro Shiwo. the North Pacific current, which, coming up from the Equator, is deflected westward from Japan to the shores of "Washington and British Columbia, where it divides, one half circling north along the Alaskan coast, and the other south past the mouth of the Columbia River to the shores of the Hawaiian Islands. The junks found on these Pacific Islands had not only crossed the ocean, but were lialf-way back to Japan again, SOME RECORDED CASES. As far back as 1617, says Mr Woollacott, a Japanese junk belonging to Magome was at Acapulco. The Russians picked up the crow of a junk wrecked on the coast of the Aleutian Islands. These sailors were eventually taken to Siberia. In 1815 a sailing ship cruising off Saint _ Barbara sighted a Nipponese derelict drifting at the mercy of wind and waves. Her masts and rudder were gone. Fourteen dead bodies were found in the hold, the captain, the carpenter, and one seaman alone surviving. She had been drifting helplessly for seventeen months. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s officers lescued two Japanese men and a boy from the Indians at Cape I lattei}, Washington, sole survivors of a crew of nineteen persons. The dead bodies of the remainder were found headed up in firkins in customary Japanese style, ready for burial. A San Francisco paper of the fatties reported that a crew of eighteen who had been drifting in a rudderless, dismasted junk for fifty days were picked up and taken to San Francisco. LINGUAL SIMILARITIES. A number of remarkable instances of Japanese words in use among the Indians of the Pacific Coast are remarked upon by Mr Woollacott. In Oregon and California the Indian word tsche-tsche (milk) is pure Japanese. There arc many other words in their unchanged state. The Japanese words hiaku (speed) and yakn (evil genius) are found in use among many tribes on the coast, though in the abbreviated forms, as liyack, moaning fast, and vak (evil, bad). In all such cases the ’lndian word is shorter, which would indicate derivation from the former. It has been found time after time that shipwrecked Japanese have no difficulty in communicating with and understanding the Indians. Mr Woollacott recalls the visit of a Japanese warship lo Victoria, in the ’eighties at a time when, the warlike BeUa-Bclla Indians had come down from their villages, four hundred miles up the coast. These Indians, only a dozen years, from the scalping period of their development, were to be seen daily thronging the streets of British Columbia’s capital. The Japanese officers and men were also very conspicuous on the streets of the town, and observers were struck by the fact that the savages and the man-of-war s men were identical in appearance. Readers will recall the voyage to Vancouver from China a few years ago of an old sea captain in a. Chinese junk, with his Chinese wife and family. Mr Woollacott concludes his article with the remarks that there is not flic slightest doubt that, if for no other reason than that of historical interest, Japan will continue to cherish her alleged discovery of America, and per-

haps regret exceedingly that tier policy of that day prevented her frojn acquiring a continent, as she might easily have done, which would have enabled her to realise to-day that ambitious dream of Imperialism—world domination.