- Japanese Castaways of 1834: The Three Kichis (historylink.org)
The first Japanese known to have visited what is now Washington arrived in a dismasted, rudderless ship that ran aground on the northernmost tip of the Olympic Peninsula sometime in January 1834. The ship had left its home port on the southeast coast of Japan in October 1832, with a crew of 14 and a cargo of rice and porcelain, on what was supposed to be a routine journey of a few hundred miles to Edo (Tokyo)…