Jiro Muramats

Who is 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 Western Australia's far northwest. Along with his brother, he was to take control of the family firm of 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 World War II and did not survive.

His wife, Hatsu, returned to Cossack and was its last resident.