What a coincidence that Shipwrecked was donated to my library just as Sara and I were putting the finishing touches on our Kensuke’s Kingdom book club packet, for which we are using this same cover!
In the Author’s Note for Shipwrecked, Blumberg says she became fascinated with Manjiro while doing research for her book about Commodore Perry.
“Instead of accounts of landmark events and world-famous leaders, here is the story of a poor fisher boy who became a famous samurai, a rescued castaway who became the first Japanese person to live in the United States. Manjiro subsequently worked on New England whale ships, then risked his life when he returned to Japan as an outcast. . . .
His life reveals much about the social and political climate of Japan and the United States during the mid-nineteenth century. Manjiro’s ordeals, adventures, and accomplishments seem sensational, melodramatic, and fiction, but they are true.”
Manjiro was nine years old in 1836. With the death of his father, he became responsible for supporting his mother, three sisters, and two brothers. Because his father had been a fisherman, he had to be a fisherman as well. That had been a law in Japan for hundreds of years.
When Manjiro was fourteen years old, he was hired onto a fishing boat. On his first trip out, their boat was damaged by a fierce storm. They were blown off course and rode out the storm for a week. On the eighth day, a strong current carried the boat to a truly deserted island. They survived on the island for five months eating seaweed, raw albatross meat, and whatever shellfish they could find clinging to the rocks. The only fresh water was what they could find trapped in hollow rocks after it rained.
This was the time of the Great Peace, the 250-year period of a strict closed-door policy in Japan. The Japanese people were forbidden contact with anyone from another country. Foreigners were not allowed to come into the country, and Japanese people were not allowed to leave. If they did, they were considered to have been poisoned by barbarians and were not allowed to come home.
Manjiro and the six men with him were rescued by a whaling boat, the John Howland, captained by William H. Whitfield. Though the John Howland sailed near Japan, it was too risky for Captain Whitfield to sail close enough to take Manjiro and his friends home, because the Japanese would try to destroy the ship. Even if Whitfield had been successful in getting them close enough to put them ashore, because of their contact with the foreign ship, the Japanese men would likely have been put in prison rather than being allowed to go home.
When the ship eventually docked at Honolulu, Manjiro’s friends decided to stay in Hawaii, but Manjiro chose to stay with Captain Whitfield’s ship. After two and a half years away from home, Manjiro arrived in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He “was the first Japanese person to set foot in the United States.”
Captain Whitfield had no children, so he took Manjiro in as a foster son. He sent Manjiro to school when he was sixteen. After two and a half years of school, Manjiro was an apprentice to an oil-cask maker, then he went to sea again. On this voyage, after some tragic events, he became first mate.
When Manjiro heard news of the Gold Rush in California, he decided to try his hand at mining. After two months of panning, he had $600, which was enough to attempt returning to Japan. He stopped in Honolulu and picked up two of his friends who also longed to go home, then waited for a ship that would dare to take them to Japan.
Once they were back in Japan, they were imprisoned for six months and went to trial eighteen times. Because of Manjiro’s experience with Americans, and because he spoke English so well, when Commodore Matthew Perry came to Japan and demanded an audience with the emperor, Manjiro was sent to interpret. He proved to be an excellent ambassador and was instrumental in helping open Japan to the western world.
Manjiro’s life was full of exciting twists and turns. It is truly incredible that a lowly son of a fisherman rose to the level of samurai, and his life is an example of industry, diligence and perseverance earning him respect everywhere he went.
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