(Japanese) This was not the ship that broke in two when Amano was riding it; this was his fishing boat. It was a boat he built and used to fish tuna in the seas of…not Panama…Costa Rica. They say that the one who taught the people of Costa Rica to eat tuna was Amano.
Apparently, they are a people who didn’t eat fish. After that, Costa Rica wasn’t enough; he came to Ecuador to fish for tuna, too. Sometimes, he would go into areas for which he did not have permission. When he did that, he said he would escape. He said it was a really good boat at that time. He made two of those boats, the Shimizu Maru, in Japan. His story is right over there. His son wrote it. Yep. So if a police vehicle ever called out a notification to him, he would escape just like that and go back, he said.
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
Interviewee Bio
Miyoko Amano (nee: Watanabe) is a Nikkei Nisei born in Lima, Peru. In 1954, she married Yoshitaro Amano, a businessman and a researcher of the Andes Civilization. Taking over the vision of her late husband, she is currently the President of Amano Museum—established from the Yoshitaro’s private collection of artifacts—renowned for its extensive research into the Cancay Culture. (October 2009)