If anyone is interested, please contact me. I don’t think I am far off.

NOBODY has any clue where they came from linguistically, and there are apparent skeletal connections to Western North America and Latin America. Based on the DNA analysis, the standard assumption is a Russian or Mongolian origin, but the language is totally unrelated to Russian and Mongolian – which would fit many beliefs regarding the origin of the Jaredites. It would be quite natural for those who believed their ancestors had crossed the great waters in the past (Nephite or Jaredite) to attempt to return to the land of those ancestors – and Northeast Asia would fit the course described for Hagoth’s ships’ journey.

(I also agree that it is not apparent Hagoth himself ever sailed with the ships. In fact, in verse 7 he appears to have been building ships before the first one returned. He very well might have been nothing but a contract builder and travel agent for a group of people trying to leave for uninhabited land.)

Good old Wikipedia has some basic links. I’m not aware of any good works written from a Mormon perspective – as it most likely is just wishful thinking on the part of Japanese missionaries and church members.

What about the LDS tradition that Hagoth, the Nephite shipbuilder who failed to return home, was an ancestor of the Polynesians? Years ago I compiled a large body of shared culture traits that indeed suggest historical links between those islands and various parts of the Americas, and this has been supplemented by others. Yet the evidence does not allow our pinning down any single time or place for a migration of trade that would persuasively explain the similarities. It remains impossible to demonstrate any clearcut connection between the two areas, although debate continues. Having been a missionary in Polynesia, I am well aware of the Hagoth theme in LDS tradition, but the evidence available does not support it as historically based fact. Neither can we rule out the possibility of a rare voyage between the mainland and the islands. Most of the evidence cited one way or the other is either weak or unclear. Those who choose to believe that Hagoth reached Polynesia must rely mainly on faith rather than on reliable evidence. The Book of Mormon itself, of course, says only that the man and his mates disappeared from the knowledge of the people in Zarahemla. For all they knew he might have died at a ripe old age on the west Mexican coast without a suitable vessel in which to make the return voyage. And neither do we know. (p. 269)

This is a taste of how it goes:

1. Now behold the times were accomplished and the days of Hagoth were numbered, and the number was great, for ninety and two years had passed since he was born in the land of Joshua and forty and nine had passed since he, led as he was by his curiosity, brought the people up out of the land of the Nephites.
2. Therefore he called together the people of Hagoth, all of them round about from the whole island of Hagoth, and also those who dwelled on the islands of Lib, and of Gergish, of Perionti, and of Lehi and also the islands which were beyond the island of Lehi. Thus all the people of Hagoth were called together, who were descended of those who set forth from the land of the Nephites in ships, save it were those dwelling on the islands of Ubal, of Mirom, and of Sheriandi and those islands round about.

I think the white-skinned Ainu of Japan were the descendants of Hagoth’s groups – at least that was the legend on my mission. After all, modern Japanese as reformed Chinese is a very good possibility of how reformed Egyptian could have evolved. That’s an absolutely fascinating topic.