THE GALVESTON DAILY NEWS, TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 1940.
South Sea Island Ruler Learned 30 Years Ago How to Cultivate Pearls And an 'Iowa Man Commercialized It
New York, Aug. 12.—JP
Dusk softened the glittering facets of the tropic sea and a gentle breeze riffled the fronds of a bamboo tree. Raucous shouts of homeward bound pearl divers filled the air. Stirred thus from his thoughtful scrutiny of the divers, Kitamura
arose from his vantage point beneath the tree and, heart pounding madly, strode purposefully to his thatched Polynesian hut.
That day—it was 30 years ago today—a rich new Industry was born. That day the South Sea Islander conceived the Idea of cultured pearls.
For years Kitamura had watched with Interest divers in his native Celebes Islands in the Dutch East Indies combing the waters for pearl bearing oysters. Why, he finally reasoned, should not one speed up the bivalves' production of pearls by impregnating them with a seed pearl or grain of sand when young?
The oysters could then have a head start with the artificially Injected Irritant. Instead of waiting long years for nature's haphazard method so to bless them. Kitamura called a conference of his friends; simply stated his Idea, taught the natives how to Insert the seedling, did this to the oysters and sat back to wait.
They waited seven years for the first mollusks to bear a pearl. 15years for the slower ones; periodically, however, the oysters were hauled up, tended and cleansed inside
to ensure the finished product would be perfectly round and of uniform color. Just about the time Kitamura’s last oyster was being examined and the glowing gem-of the-sea removed,
A young man on the other side of the globe—in Davenport, Iowa, to be exact—heard about cultured pearls and be took himself to their birthplace. The rest of this "story speeds through 15 years and loses, with the advent of the white man upon the scene, some of its romance.
Joe Goldstone did visit the Celebes Islands and did see that hero was the of origin of a great trade. In short order, he became king of the cultured pearl industry as represented by the Imperial pearl syndicate, an off-shoot of the American Jewelers bureau. Goldstone
now has offices in New York, Chicago San Francisco and Padang, Sumatra, in the Dutch East Indies, The trade flourishes But though romance went out when commercialism entered, thte little islander probably would never have dreamed of his plan without
the knowledge that the white man would come and pay for those pearls.