Tatsuda retained his love of Japanese food, America

The shock of being interned despite there being no evidence that they were disloyal to America caused the Japanese who returned to Ketchikan to change. Gone was the community center, gone were trips back home, gone were the Japanese culture and language lessons for their children.

“We were raised to be good American children,” Bill Tatsuda said in a 2005 interview. “The only thing we retained was our love of Japanese food; we called ourselves Sushi Japanese.”

The Tatsudas were one of five Japanese families that returned out of the 12 local families that were interned. The others resettled elsewhere.

In another interview in 2021, Bill noted that there was one good outcome of the war internment.

“Many of the local Japanese lost their properties during the war,” he said. “But friends of my parents — particularly the Inman family — stepped up to look after our store and our home. It was still waiting for the family when they came back. Everything I have done since then was to help repay that.”

He also noted that his family rarely spoke about the time at Minidoka, preferring only to refer to how much they enjoyed spending time with other Japanese families from the West Coast that they met there.

But, if the family’s Japanese culture had been somewhat muted, its desire to run the best grocery store in town had not. Tatsuda’s, which had been operating since 1916 in the Stedman area, would continue on as a downtown institution until a 2020 rockslide seriously damaged the store, causing it to cease business after more than a century in Ketchikan.

And no one had a greater role in the long-term success of Tatsuda’s than Bill, who died earlier this month at the age of 77. He would work at the store from the early 1950s right up to its closing in 2020.

Bill — known to pretty much everyone as either Billy or Junior - Tatsuda was born on Dec. 24, 1947.

According to a 1979 interview in the Ketchikan Daily News, he said that he had begun working in the family store when he was five years old because his father, Bill Sr., told him that he would not get his allowance unless he did. He was also paid, with a bottle of Coca-Cola, when he spent time stocking the bottom or lower shelves, which were the only ones he could reach.

“Grandpa (Jimmie Tatsuda) used to tell me that if ‘you don’t work, you don’t eat,’” Bill Tatsuda told the Daily News in 1979. “That was a good learning opportunity.”

He continued to work at the store through high school, remembering later that he sometimes helped deliver groceries to some of the remaining infamous ladies of nearby Creek Street. When he turned 16 in 1963, he got his driver’s license and began making deliveries all over town.

He was the senior class president and senior speaker for the Ketchikan High School Class of 1966.

He had a lengthy bio in the 1966 Kayhi yearbook: Four years in the Student Body Association with terms as vice president and president, one year in Pep Club, Four years in Latin Club, two years in Debate Club (both as president), three years on the Kayitems staff, one year in chorus, two years in band, two years in Kaytones, one year in pep band, and two years in the Thespian Society.

He and Sheila Weston were dubbed as “class brains” by their fellow seniors.

He then attended Antioch College in Ohio and received a bachelor’s degree in administration and accounting in 1970. He spent one year as an exchange student in Japan. He later noted that that was when he learned his family was pronouncing its last name “wrong.”

“I met a lot of Tatsudas over there,” Bill said in a 2015 interview. “They pronounced it “Tats-da. Not Tat-soo-da!”

According to the 1979 story, he passed his CPA exam in Ohio, but decided he didn’t want to work as an accountant and ended up returning to Ketchikan to help out with the family store.

But that was only one of his interests. He opened the Warehouse of Music in 1972, a local music store that specialized in rock and other music of Tatsuda’s generation, in contrast to the other local music stores that focused on music from the 1940s and 1950s.

Tatsuda originally had a partner in the music store, but he said he soon realized there was not enough money to go around, so he bought his partner out. He operated the music store until 1979, when he sold the business.

“The record shop was an adventure for me, but I found myself working at the supermarket during the day and the record shop at night,” he said in 1979. “I just didn’t have any free time.”

He also had a wife, Carol Wilson, and two children, daughters Robin and Katherine, he said, and it just made more sense to make the family grocery store his “full time business.”

When the new, larger Tatsuda’s opened at the corner of Stedman and Deermont in 1974, Bill was the first manager, a position he held until he turned the store over to Katherine in 2014.

Over the years, he took on other businesses, including the Little Dipper, JR’s Grocery, Gas at Last, the Ward Cove Grocery and the Lighthouse Grocery in addition to Tatsuda’s IGA.

He was also involved in multiple local organizations including the Ketchikan Children’s Home, the Rotary Club, the Greater Ketchikan Chamber of Commerce, the Peacehealth Community Health Board, the Ketchikan Yacht Club, the Kanayama Exchange Program, Grow Ketchikan, the Dribblers League, First City Players, the Ketchikan Area Arts and Humanities Council, and many others.

 He even stepped out from behind the scenes to compete in the local Divas and Divos Contest (winning in 2019) and to host events such as the Wearable Art Show — with his daughter Katherine.

 He also became a world traveler in his later years, with his second wife Xiao Nan, visiting dozens of countries all over the globe, regaling the folks back home with photos of African safaris and other adventures.

 He was also known for his fishing exploits.

 “He spent hours fishing with his dad, daughters, and union negotiator and close friend, Jerry D’ Ambrosio,” Katherine said recently. “He loved to take people out fishing, especially king salmon fishing. He took meticulous notes of his fishing trips. He would log the date, time, tide, fishing gear used, location, depth, and type of each salmon caught, along with the name of the person who caught it. One of his fishing logs shows that between the years of 1982 and 2015 over 2,300 fish were caught on his boat.”

 But his main focus over the years was the challenge and opportunity of running one of Ketchikan’s three larger grocery stores. He was very proud of the fact that his store provided a training ground for hundreds of local youths over the years, but he was even more proud that employees at his store often made it a life-long commitment, staying at Tatsuda’s for decades.

Along the way, the store supported dozens of local charities and fundraisers as it paid back the locals that had supported the family during the darkest days of World War II.

“He had a ‘never say no’ policy,” Katherine, who worked with him at Tatsuda’s for 30 years, said recently. “He would donate food and merchandise to fundraising auctions and events, spaghetti-feed medical fundraisers, school and youth activities, etc. He allowed local groups to sell fry bread, raffle tickets, and other goods outside the store to assist in fundraising efforts.”

 Bill was also extremely proud to turn over the Tatsuda’s operation to his daughter in 2014.

 The 100th Anniversary celebrations in 2016 were another high point. The century-old business had survived two fires, the war, and many other events that would have humbled many stores, not the least was the fact that most grocery stores in Ketchikan had fairly short “shelf lives” over the years.

 Even after he turned over the store to his daughter Katherine, he never stopped working. He was at the store nearly every day of the week stocking shelves, helping customers, prepping the weekly ad orders, and pricing sale items.

 “Those were the things he loved to do,” Katharine said. “His plan was to work at Tatsuda’s until we hauled him away or he died stocking shelves.”

 He good naturedly referred to the many questions about “retirement.”

 “What else would I do?” he once replied to customer who asked about retirement. “Although I think Katherine might change the locks one of these days!”

 He continued working at Tatsuda’s until the landslide closed the business in 2020.

 But that just left him more time for fishing and traveling.

 He died on April 11, 2025, in Seattle after a short illness.