To Be Put to Death on Such a Verdict: On Trial in Frontier Alaska

A sensational trial, the precarity of justice, and questions as to guilt.

In 1912, the Japanese foreman at a remote salmon cannery in Dundas Bay, Alaska, was charged with murder in the death of a white cannery worker who was reportedly struck with a Japanese samurai sword. The sensational murder trial that followed would captivate Juneau residents and others across frontier Alaska for many months. As it worked its way through the courts, what appeared to be an open-and-shut case proved full ...