Plenty of Japanese citizens came to Alaska after 1854, including some of the territory's most prominent residents. Many lived and worked alongside Alaska Natives in the territory's fish processing plants and whaling operations.

One of my favorite individuals is Jujiro Wada, who originally came to the United States to attend Yale University. Instead, he hired aboard a whaling ship that came to Alaska and worked as a shore hunter in Barrow, America's northernmost city.

Wada learned to work dogs, and when the Klondike and Nome gold rushes happened, he returned from San Francisco to Alaska. He worked in Nome, then went back to Seattle before returning to Skagway and Nome again.

In 1902, he became a cook for E.T. Barnette, the founder of Fairbanks, Alaska. When the first gold was found near Fairbanks, it was Wada who mushed to Dawson City to spread the word that started the Fairbanks Gold Rush.

Wada had some run-ins with the law, and by the middle of the decade was running indoor marathon races competitively to raise money. (This was a big thing in Dawson City and the more settled mining camps.) From the May 6, 1908 Dawson Daily News:

All the Japanese boys in town had wagered their last cent of money on their fellow countryman, and their confidence in their man was never lost. Wada was the surprise of the race. Many people believed that he would make a strong showing, but only a few had given the dark-skinned boy credit for the wonderful powers of endurance which he displayed... During the entire race he was off the track but once -- and for only six minutes, the actual time consumed in changing his shoes. While on the run he ate a little raw egg and some tomato, drank a little mineral water, and that was all.

Wada continued traveling and prospecting after he paid off his legal debts. He helped pioneer the Iditarod Trail and mushed across the territory before leaving for Canada after he was threatened by white miners.

He died in 1937 in San Diego.

Wada shows up in Charles Brower's autobiography, Fifty Years Below Zero, Dermot Cole's Fairbanks: A Gold Rush Town that Beat the Odds, and several other books about the Gold Rush period of Alaska's history. There's a Japanese-language book about his life, but I'm not aware of any English-language book-length works devoted to him.