Jiro Muramats

Jiro Muramats was a pearler who lived in Western Australia's remote town of Cossack.

Born in Kobe, Japan in 1878, he moved as a boy to the states far northwest. Along with his brother, he was to take control of the family firm as J. & T. Muramats which imported and traded goods to that region until the 1940s. He also owned pearling luggers which operated in that port, despite a number of racist policies of the state. A period of revitalisation in the pearling industry became one of defiance by a number of operators who did not join the national government's voluntary "Northern Territory Pearling Ordinance" in 1931. Muramats had been granted naturalization in Victoria, Australia, but amendments to acts in Western Australia disenfranchised many people from non-English ethnic backgrounds. He was interned during the second world war and did not survive.

His wife, Hatsu (Noguchi of Nagasaki), returned to Cossack and was its last resident.

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