Joe Ashby is interviewed by Ron Inouye in Sitka, Alaska on June 12 and 13, 1992. On Tape 1, he talks about his family history; growing up in North Dakota; various jobs in Portland, Oregon; joining the Naval Reserve; work on ships; moving to Sitka in 1944; his interest in history; wartime in Sitka; Sitka businesses and residents; rationing; isolation; native and non-native population; the role of women in the war effort; the pulp mill; discrimination against and integration of natives; Sheldon Jackson school and college; social organizations; basketball; bars; churches; telephones; radio stations; and Army surplus marine radio.

On Tape 2, Ashby talks about canneries, Filipino and African American populations of Sitka, history of the Pioneers of Alaska, the Pioneer Home, the evolution of Sitka's historical society, local artifacts and historic pieces,work at the Cold Storage in Sitka, managing a marine supply store, other marine supply businesses, local native boat builders, fur trappers, subsistence activities, fish camp, native participation in the wage-labor economy, halibut fisheries, canneries, fish traps, statehood, his experience with tuberculosis, a job in realty, and Sitka's growth due to the establishment of the pulp mill and coast guard base.

On Tape 3, Ashby discusses surveying with the Park Service, working as a tax assessor and undertaker, collecting and gathering antiques, selling antiques, a Chilkat blanket he sold to the Park Service, old houses, the native corporation and village land, historical photographs and paintings of Sitka, Finnish families, Russian families, intermarrying of natives and whites, the cold storage plant at Pelican, Toivo Anderson, Henry Yuriana, old timers like Johnny Panamarkof, historians who did research in Sitka, symposiums hosted in Sitka on Russian America, Soviet historians and their perspectives, Russian voyages across the North Pacific, his "retirement," a symposium in Russia he hopes to attend, the role of the museum in children's education, Mrs. Smith, and a Tlingit fish camp/summer camp run by Robbie Littlefield.

On Tape 4, Ashby talks about significant individuals and families in the Sitka area, such as Andrew Hope, Johnny Littlefield, Alexander Andrews, Frank Price, Esther Littlefield, Nancy Ricketts, Tilly Paul, Frank Kuehn, and Ted Kettlesen. He tells how several Sitka area landmarks and streets got their names, and discusses Sitka's cemeteries, the mortician's burial records, the Steers brothers, technological advances in fishing and canneries,Harry Bridges and the effects of the longshoremen's strike, prophylactic shots for military men, brothels and prostitution in Sitka, and the shift from 100% single men to include women and/or family men in logging camps and aboard fishing boats.