Musher joins hall of fame

WASILLA — A Japanese explorer of mythic proportions who roamed Alaska in the late 1890s and early 1900s was honored Saturday for his contribution to Alaska history.

Jujiro Wada, the second son of a samurai warrior, may have helped found Fairbanks, blazed a section of the Iditarod Trail, lived among Alaska Native villages in the Arctic, hunted seals, and competed in marathons. According to one legend (of his own design), he trained two polar bear cubs to pull his sled, a tale that was a crowd-pleaser when told in Vancouver, Canada. Wada once mushed from Fairbanks to Dawson City to report a gold strike on the Tanana River.

The relatively legendary — though unquestionably prolific — fixture of territorial history was also inducted into the Iditarod Dog-Mushing Hall of Fame at a ceremony at the Dorothy Page Museum Saturday. Local officials joined several prominent Japanese-American Alaskans, like Anchorage-based Japanese Consul Akira Iwanade, Japanese Society of Alaska vice president Misa Mishimura and University of Alaska Fairbanks Professor Anthony Nakazawa.

A member of the Jujiro Wada Memorial Association, Professor Hiroyuki Matsuura from Taisei Gakuin University in Sakei, Japan, arrived in Alaska the night before from Japan to deliver a brief address.

“I am very honored to be here to attend the ceremony, and very much appreciate the invitation to attend,” he said. “I deeply appreciate your estimation of Jujiro Wada as a musher in Alaska and his induction into the Hall of Fame.”

The association plans to produce a musical “The Samurai Dogmusher” about Wada’s life for presentation in Anchorage for May 2015, Matsuura said.

“Taking this opportunity, we also hope to establish good relationships with several cities in Alaska through cultural, economic and education exchanges,” he said. “We are planning to visit Wasilla after performing in Anchorage.”

“I wish the city of Wasilla much happiness and continued success,” Matsuura added.

Mayor Verne Rupright echoed those sentiments.

“This is the beginning, we hope, of a long relationship between Alaska, the Wasilla area, and the Japanese government over the history we share,” he said.

Wada’s history — he died a pauper in San Diego with $0.62 to his name — was somewhat conflicted by his origins and World War II. His history was recorded in various newspapers throughout Alaska, papers themselves that no longer exist, and was essentially rediscovered in the 1990s, according to Mat-Su Borough historian and archaeologist Fran Seager-Boss.

His contribution matches or exceeds those made by familiar Arctic explorers, like Raold Amundsen, Seager-Boss said.

“There were a lot of Arctic explorers, but they pale in comparison to what he did,” she said. “He did more and way above what they accomplished on their explorations, but he wasn’t a ‘famous explorer,’ in his words, and he was also Japanese, which was very detrimental to recording his life.”

While a war with his home country may have marred his legacy on the Eastern side of the Pacific, Wada is revered in his home country, according to Seager-Boss.

“He wrote letters home to his mother to show that he was in the papers at the time,” she said. “Alaska has asked for those newspaper clippings because a lot of those newspapers don’t exist today.”

American historians also hope a Japanese biography of Wada will eventually be translated into English, Seager-Boss said.

The ceremony marked the second visit by Consul Iwanade to Wasilla.

“When I came to Alaska last year, I was surprised that there are many friends of Japan here,” he said. “The history of Alaska isn’t very old, so many first-generation and second-generation immigrants contributed to the development of Alaska.”

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269 or brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com.