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By Root 1373 0

Japanese diver, was not happy at what he regarded as a mere little adventure by the captain, for they would lose at least half a day’s work, and he was being paid a bonus percentage of the shell take. On the pearling grounds when the skipper was not aboard, the diver had control of the boat and when the diver was below, his tender guided the boat’s movements, dictated by the diver below. Yoshi could disagree with Tyndall’s wish to attempt a first dive, but Tyndall was owner and pearling master and his sea skills were respected. Before signing on, Yoshi and Takahashi Ono, his tender, had made their own enquiries. Some Malay crews were considered lazy but Ahmed had a solid reputation and his fierce loyalty to Tyndall was considered a credit by the two Japanese, and the word was about that the master ran a tight, efficient ship.

Yoshi went and sat in the shade and waited. Tyndall would only try this once, he reasoned.

He was contemplative as the tender and Ahmed set out the gear for Tyndall’s dive. A placid man, Yoshi’s calmness came from an acceptance of knowing his path in life. The old samurai who had opened a small school in his village after the overthrow of the shoguns had taught Yoshi that success came from hard work and knowledge, and also from attending to one’s fellow man by being loyal, trustworthy and kind. As a schoolboy he had dreamed of the world beyond his village. Japan was changing, turning from feudalism to embrace ideas and ways of the western world, with merchants replacing warriors as the men of high esteem.

Yoshi’s village in Taiji on the coast of Wakayama Prefecture on Honshu was as different as the distance that separated it from the Kimberley coast. It was five years now since he had last wandered among the dark forests of elm and ash, fir and pines that grew in a solid green wall almost to the edge of the rugged steep cliffs over a sea-swept rocky shoreline. As the land was impossible to farm, the villagers made a precarious existence as fishermen and whalers. Yoshi still recalled the dreadful day when, as a young boy, he watched the abler men of the village row out to capture a whale calf, only to have their boats smashed by the enraged mother who, hearing the cries of her calf, charged and smashed the boats, killing all the men.

Many young men left the village to find work elsewhere and some found their way to north Australia on small boats working the waters for seafood delicacies and pearl shell. Their natural ability as divers, their innate understanding of the sea, and their strength of will and body, earned them a big reputation and thus began a traditional link between an island of Japan and a remote part of the great Australian continent. Soon master pearlers right across the north were bidding for their services.

Throughout his teens, Yoshi heard tales from returning divers and yearned to join them in what seemed to be a great and rewarding adventure. So when agents of the Thursday Island pearlers came recruiting one summer, Yoshi signed up and was indentured. He learned his trade with the Torres Strait fleet, then contracted with a pearler moving west to the newer and richer grounds of Western Australia. He missed the coral and palm-fringed islands of the Torres Strait, but accepted the rough and barren Broome landscape with equanimity. The rewards were good. There was money to spare to send back to his brothers and sisters, to secure some property in the village. Whenever he was ashore he went to the small temple built by the tight-knit Japanese community in Broome and burned incense and offered prayers for his mother who had died during his first year abroad. Yoshi had yet to make a trip back home to his village, but such absences were not uncommon among Japanese divers. When he did go back it would be with the money to afford a wife whom he would bring to Broome.

Yoshi was now in his late twenties, a senior diver with many years good work left in him, provided he was careful. And there were few divers on the coast as wary of the hazards as Yoshi. He had one rule … never take unnecessary