Programs & Classes

Tues., Jan. 23
Matinee, 2 p.m.-3:30 p.m.

Please register to attend.
$5 members $10 non-members

Jerry (Elichi) Yamashita, who turns 101-years-old this year, recounts his family history and their lives as seafood importers, exporters, and as local oystermen, including their pioneering efforts to save the Northwest shellfish industry from collapse in the 1930s.

In the 1920s the Northwest stocks of native oysters had been overharvested to the point of near extinction. Jerry’s father, Mashide Yamashita, a member of a group who first formed an oyster seed-growing cooperative in Japan, saved the day by importing Japanese oyster seed and establishing it on Puget Sound tidelands.

What makes this story even more compelling, however, is that the young Jerry and his father, like all other American citizens of Japanese descent living in the Pacific Northwest, were “evacuated” by presidential order in 1942 and sent to an internment camp for the remainder of World War II.

Today, while shellfish experts work to restore the succulent little native “Olympia Oysters,” most oysters grown and harvested in the Northwest are originally Japanese oyster stock, including the Kumamoto Oyster: fruity, sweet, melon-scented, and lightly briney. Today, the Pacific Northwest oyster industry employs over 3,000 people and contributes an estimated $70 million to the economy.

The River Center’s film series is a collaboration with the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribal Library.