Kaisei Maru

This stone monument in Sitka remembers a Japanese ship that arrived here entirely by accident. The Kaisei Maru was a sea otter hunting vessel that is said to have gone off course near Sitka, where it was impounded in the early nineteen hundreds. American authorities charged the crew with illegal hunting and with failing to report when they entered United States waters.

The men were jailed, then deported home to Japan. The ship itself was left moored off Japonski Island, slowly took on water, and eventually sank and was forgotten. Decades later, when a new boat harbor was dredged, pieces of the wreck came up.

Later, a delegation traveled from the Japanese city of Shiogama to Sitka to bring relics home.