TATSUDA’S IGA

At 18 years old, Kichirobei “ Jimmie” Tatsuda, left his home in Yawatahama, Japan for America in search of new opportunities and adventure. Jimmie arrived in Ketchikan, Alaska in 1904 and immediately began doing odd jobs in in the local salmon canning industry and other places. Jimmie worked hard and eventually bought a small hand troller and spent his summers fishing off the shores of Bond Bay, north of Ketchikan. “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 a mail boat up north before he got married and they started the store.”