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THE YUKON KING SALMON Some days later, I met a sujiko technician from Japan. We flew together to a village called Marshall located at the upper reaches of the Yukon River. Same as the year before, I flew to Bethel. From Bethel, we had to charter a Cessna. The Cessna flew over deep forests, lakes and tundra at a low altitude, rolling a lot. It started to rain. A big river and a village along it came into sight. The Cessna passed the village by. At the next village, the pilot, wearing an Apollo cap, said, "Now, here we are." The pilot didn't land and just flew away. "We got to wait until the wind becomes fair," said the pilot. We started to fly around the village in quite a small circle for many times. "I say, I am not feeling too good," said the technician in his Hokkaido dialect. I felt like throwing up too. "Hey, how do you guys feel?" said the pilot. I wondered how I could have felt good in a case like that but didn't mention it. Instead, I said, "Yeah! Great!" It must have been a good answer to the pilot's some kind of American sense of humour. After a 30 minute merry-go-round ride in the air, the Cessna landed at the airport of Marshall. The small craft hopped 3 times high when she landed. The airport was a flattened out hill with only loose small stones gravelled as pavement. To say more, it was only about 500 yards in length. I almost cut my tongue when we landed, but thank God that we didn't fall over the cliff. The technician and I took off our trunks from the Cessna and waited at the airport for about 15 minutes. The mountains around seemed to be a good place for grizzly bears to live. From below the hill came a Japanese man. He was large, muscular, wearing a vest of down, had a stubble, his name was Ishiwara and he was hired for Ataka Agri & Aqua Products Co.. "How are you?" said Mr. Ishiwara grinning with pleasure. "Fine. Nice to meet you," said I. The technician and Mr. Ishiwara were not strangers to each other. From their conversation, I understood that they had worked together somewhere before. We all walked down the hill. There was a house in the Eskimo village rented for us to stay. Cold rain blew in my face together with the wind. It was about 10 degrees centigrade. The simple log house that we reached had 2 rooms and a living room plus dining kitchen. In the Japanese definition, these type of rooms were called 2L.D.K., which stands for 2 rooms and 1 living dining kitchen. Mr. Ishiwara and I got each of the 2 rooms and the technician stayed at the L.D.K.. The Yukon River is about 2,300 miles in length. It is the longest river in Alaska and the flow of water is extraordinary. Although Marshall is 120 miles upstream from the mouth, the Yukon River is so wide that you couldn't see the opposite side of the river. The size of the Yukon River gives the salmon a characteristic that salmon of different rivers don't have. They store a great deal of their energy to run up the Yukon River. In other words, they are very fat. Within the salmon, that have the Yukon River as a mother river, are three kinds: kings, chums and pinks. The king salmon is very popular in America and has a large domestic demand. They are cooked into steaks and are good for making into susi . Japanese buyers pay high prices for the Yukon king salmon. It is mostly used for raw material, for smoked salmon in high classed hotels and restaurants in Japan. Some people say that the Yukon king salmon is the most delicious salmon in the world. I have no objections about it. Yukon River is one of the early spots that salmon fishing season opens in Alaska. But in 1980, the run of the salmon was to come late. So, the sujiko technician and I, who had arrived at Marshall in the middle of June, had no work to do although it was almost July. It was lucky for me because I was frustrated for having so little sleep working at the market in Japan. In Marshall, besides eating, I slept for 24 hours a day. The daily life were so different from that in Japan. There was no bath; no hot shower. The water was cold as ice. In Japan, I took baths everyday. But in Marshall, I didn't take one for more than a month. Eskimos made a kind of steam bath or sauna by themselves. They gathered dry twigs and leaves and made a two foot tall tent out of it. On one side, the tent opened. Under the tent, they dug a hole. They filled the hole with water and threw in red hot burnt rocks in it to make steam. I had never tried this sauna, but just took a look. I think now that I have missed a good experience, but I had been shy and fooled myself by thinking that saunas didn't make you clean. I was rather busy smoking marijuana in the bushes outside of the village, close to a small power plant. Finally, July came. The salmon appeared in the streams around Marshall. Salmon fishing season was open at last. Just the same as Yugtuk, the Japanese bought salmon from the Eskimo's fishery co-op. The co-op had no freezing facilities. The co-op's name was Maserculiq Fish Co-op. "Maserculiq" meant "Red fish," in Eskimo language. Already processed salmon -- head, guts and roe removed -- were put in a 200 pound carton box full of ice, airlifted to Anchorage immediately by a Cessna and was quick-frozen there. Advance money was paid from Ataka and with it, Maserculiq had bought a large ice making machine. A couple of boxes of 200 pound salmon were loaded on a Cessna and it was ready to take off from Marshall airport. The Cessna blasted its engine into full power. Everytime, the Cessna seemed to drop down the cliff as if she couldn't bear the weight of the cargo and crash. She always went out of sight, but came into sight again. She would climb up into the sky and head for Anchorage. The technician and I, with the help of Eskimo workers, processed fresh salmon roe into sujiko. The quality of sujiko there was not estimated to be good in Japan because the pieces of roe were too big -- like 2 or 3 kilograms per bunch of roe -- and they turned out very black in colour. At Tukiji Wholesale Market, they would be good targets for bargain prices. As a matter of fact, lots of them were dumped into the hands of Sabu of Stone-mountain, I heard. The reason for the sujiko turning black was a question. Maybe iron was contained in the water we used; or maybe it was only the nature of the roe of the Yukon salmon. The technician and I tried things like changing the water we used, but we couldn't find out the answer. In the middle of July, the salmon season was about to end. The technician and Mr. Ishiwara were drinking together. I don't know exactly what happened between them, but it ended up to be a fight. It was a big fist fight. The technician had few chances to use his fist though. He tried to grab a knife to make odds even. I kicked it away from his hands. Beyond my sense of understanding, the next year, the technician and Mr. Ishiwara came together to Marshall again. The fight was because they were too close friends, maybe. |