Prologue

Meeting taote sinoto

“Hey, an amazing Japanese man is working here. Would you like to meet him?” It was the mid-1980s, and I was visiting a friend who lived in Tahiti. “He is exploring all the islands of the Pacific Ocean, excavating sites and studying ancient Polynesian culture. Just recently he was researching the moai statues on Easter Island. Can you believe that he went there with just shoyu and wasabi for provisions? He makes his own sashimi! Two or three days from now he’ll be back on Huahine. I’m sure you’ll be astonished by his stories about his research and adventures!”

When my friend told me about this man, the first image that came to my mind was Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark. I didn’t picture Harrison Ford, exactly, but a brilliant, resourceful, rough-and-tumble explorer from the past—a swashbuckling adventurer roaming the South Seas to find the hidden treasures of Polynesian chiefs.

According to my friend, he was called Taote Sinoto. The name didn’t sound Japa nese to me, and I had no idea how to write it in kanji. By chance I knew that taote in the Tahitian language means “doctor.” Given a name like that, I concluded he must be an eminent person in the Pacific.

For many years, I had avidly read accounts of early South Sea expeditions, such as the journals of Bougainville, Cook, and others. I never suspected that among these famous Pacific explorers would be someone from Japan. I wanted to meet Taote Sinoto, but I was intimidated by what my friend had said about him. I therefore declined my friend’s offer to introduce us. However, the exotic name—Taote Sinoto—made a lasting impression on me.

Several years later, I was in Honolulu to photograph Hawaiian artifacts at the Bishop Museum, which has the largest collection in the Pacific, and to write an article. While I was photographing a reconstructed heiau there, a curator came up to me and asked if I would like to meet the museum’s foremost authority on Polynesia. When I asked who that was, he replied, “Dr. Sinoto.”

“Ah, I know that name!” I blurted out. It had never occurred to me that the Japanese Indiana Jones of my imagination was a museum-affiliated scholar. I asked the curator what Dr. Sinoto was like. He replied that, as a young man, Dr. Sinoto had planned to study archaeology at an American university when World War II ended. On his journey

The fish-shaped nameplate over Dr. Sinoto’s office door at Bishop Museum was made by his son, Akihiko, as a middle-school student. The poster on the door is for the annual Heiva Festival in Tahiti, a month-long celebration of tradi tional culture, dance, music, and games. A painting by artist and musician Bobby Holcomb is reproduced on the poster.

to California by ship in the summer of 1954, he stopped over in Hawai‘i to participate in an archaeological dig. As a result of that unplanned stopover, he met Dr. Kenneth Emory and ended up staying in Hawai‘i, working at first as Dr. Emory’s research assistant. It wasn’t long before Dr. Sinoto made the groundbreaking discovery that ancient fishhooks could be used to reconstruct the chronology of human habitation in Hawai‘i and across the Pacific. After this revolutionary finding, he continued—undaunted by dangers and hardships—to explore every place in Oceania: Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, the Marquesas, the Society Islands, Easter Island, New Zealand, and elsewhere.

His archaeological research overturned the prevailing assumption that ancient artifacts could not survive in the tropical heat and humidity of the Pacific and, therefore, nothing could be used to establish a timeline of human habitation. His work also paved the way for the development of new theories about Polynesian migrations. Additionally, Dr. Sinoto undertook the restoration of significant ancient sites and structures that had long been in ruins or abandoned.

What an exceptional person, I thought. I can’t miss a second opportunity to meet...