Naomi Uemura

Naomi Uemura (植村 直己) was a Japanese adventurer who was known particularly for his solo exploits.

For example, he was the first person to reach the North Pole solo, the first person to raft the Amazon solo, and the first person to climb Denali solo.

On the 35th day of the trip, Uemura had hunkered down on an ice floe with his malamutes, when there was the roar of breaking the ice and the floe cracked into pieces.

He and his dogs were stranded on a tossing island of ice.

After a night of terror, Uemura found a 3 ft ice bridge and raced to safety.

He persevered and became the first ever to reach the North Pole solo.

Describing his 57-day push, he wrote, "What drove me to continue then was the thought of countless people who had helped and supported me and the knowledge that I could never face them if I gave up."

In this trip, he cooperated with the Canadian Air Force and received his supplies from its helicopters.

After the trip, he questioned such extensive support and decided to carry supplies on his own back.

After the North Pole trip Uemura became the first person to complete a dogsled journey down the entire length of the Greenlandic ice sheet.

In April 1960, he entered the Department of Agricultural Manufacturing at Meiji University's Faculty of Agriculture, and joined the mountaineering club.

Shy, he began climbing in college in the hope that mountaineering would increase his self-confidence.

In 1964, 23-year-old Uehara left Japan with $110 USD (approximately $1000 in 2023 money) and boarded a ship to Los Angeles on a tourist visa.

Then, he worked on a farm near Fresno, but was soon discovered by the immigration officials; even though he avoided deportation, he was told to stop illegal employment and leave the country.

Later, he boarded a ship to Le Havre, France on October 20, 1964 from New York, and arrived at Chamonix later that month.

On November 10, he attempted to climb Europe's highest peak, Mont Blanc (4,807 m above sea level), solo.

On the third day, he fell into a hidden crevasse on the Bossons Glacier; luckily, he survived.

At the end of the same year, he took a job as a ski patroller at the Avorias ski resort in Morzine, near the Swiss border, run by Olympic alpine ski racer Jean Vuarnet, to earn money and use it for his mountaineering journey.

After 2 months of working there, in 1965, he temporarily left the job to join the Meiji University mountaineering club to hike in the Himalayas and traveled to Kathmandu, Nepal.

They hiked Cho Oyu and camped on Ngozumpa Glacier along with Sherpas and successfully reached the peak.

In September 1966, he travelled through Kenya to hike Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya.

After coming back to Avorias that November, he set the 1967 goals to visit Greenland, hike Aconcagua solo, and continue improving his French and English.

Uemura travelled to South America from Spain in December 1967 to hike Mount Aconcagua solo.

Unconvinced that he was capable, the local officials told him to obtain military permission, a guarantor, and an agreement from the Japanese embassy in Argentina; members of the hiking association in Mendoza offered to be the guarantor, and while he was waiting for the military permission, he went to hike Cerro El Plata (altitude 5,968 meters) to demonstrate his abilities.

He also summited an unnamed mountain peak in Argentina, and named it "Meiji", after his alma mater, Meiji University.

After successfully summited Aconcagua, in April 1968, he came to Iquitos, Peru and rafted 6,000 km solo along Amazon river for 60 days, to Macapá, Brazil.

After flying from Brazil to the United States, he came to California again to work at a fruit factory and visited Alaska, attempting to climb Denali.

He was not able to get a hiking permit, so he hiked Mount Sanford instead.

In 1968, Uemura returned to Japan briefly, then went to Mount Everest twice.

Before his 30th birthday, Uemura had solo-climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, Mont Blanc, and the Matterhorn, had walked the length of Japan, and summited during the first (1970) Japanese expedition to climb Mount Everest and subsequent disastrous 1971 International Everest Expedition.

Naomi Uemura was a licensed radio amateur operator, signed as JG1QFW.

He used amateur radio communication during his expeditions.

Uemura was born in Hidaka, now part of Toyooka, Hyōgo, Japan, to a family involved in agriculture.

He was the youngest of seven children.

In August 1970, Uemura climbed Denali (then known as Mount McKinley) solo, becoming the first person to reach the top alone.

Uemura wrote that he almost gave up twice during his 1978 North Pole trip.

On the fourth day of his trek, a polar bear invaded his camp, ate his supplies, and poked his nose against the sleeping bag where Uemura lay tense and motionless.

When the bear returned the next day, Uemura was ready and shot him dead.

He completed the trip from May 10 to August 22, 1978.

A commemorative plaque is located in Narsarsuaq in the south of Greenland.