Manjiro Nakahama: The First Japanese U.S. Resident
Written By Bridget Hanley
On May 7, 1843, a 16-year-old named Manjiro Nakahama became America’s first Japanese-born U.S. resident. Manjiro Nakahama, or more traditionally, Nakahama Manjirō (中濱 万次郎, January 27, 1827 – November 12, 1898), was an apprentice fisherman who, along with four others, was stranded for six months in 1841 on the uninhabited island of Torishima, 300 miles off the coast of Japan. The five fisherman, Denzo, Goemon, Jusuke, and Toraemon, and the then 14-year-old apprentice, Manjiro, were rescued by the U.S. whaling ship the John Howland, which was commanded by U.S. sea captain and Massachusetts native, William H. Whitfield.
Image at left: a portrait of Manjiro Nakahama, retrieved from https://www.ndl.go.jp/portrait/e/datas/6123/
Captain William H. Whitfield and the crew of the John Howland were in the midst of a five-year voyage in the Pacific when they discovered the shipwrecked Manjiro and his crew mates. At the end of this voyage in 1843, the John Howland came to port in the then Hawaiian Kingdom’s Honolulu, where Denzo, Goemon, Jusuke, and Toraemon, disembarked. Manjiro, who was then going by the Americanized nickname of John Mung, remained onboard, traveling with Whitfield to his hometown of Fairhaven, Massachusetts.
Image at right: These sketches, which depict the John Howland, were created by Manjirō and signed John Mung. They are part of a set Manjirō produced when relating his worldly adventures following his return to Japan. Image courtesy of the Rosenbach Museum & Library and retrieved from https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-short/manjiro-nakahama-castaway-s…
William H. Whitfield (1804 - 1886) assumed the role of foster father or guardian in Manjiro’s life, providing for his care and seeing to his education until he reached maturity in 1846. 
Whitfield and his wife, Albertina (nee Kieth, 1811 - 1890), treated Manjiro as a respected member of the family and even changed churches following attempts by their own church to segregate Manjiro from the rest of the congregation.
Image at left: William H. Whitfield, retrieved from https://fairhaventours.com/capt-william-h-whitfield/
In Fairview, Massachusetts, Manjiro apprenticed with a blacksmith and briefly attended elementary school before enrolling in the prestigious Fairhaven Bartlett Academy where he studied English and navigation, among other subjects. After Manjiro completed his education 1846, Whitfield aided in securing a position for his ward among the crew of the Franklin, a whaling vessel captained by Ira Davis, which was set to commence a 30-month voyage in the South Seas. In 1847, the Franklin put to port in Honolulu, Hawaii, where Manjiro briefly caught up with his friends and former shipwrecked companions before continuing on his travels.
Map held in the collections of the Tokoyo National Museum. Image retrieved from https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Nakahama_Manjir%C5%8D.
On this map, Manjiro depicted his travels after he returned to Japan, with the lines drawn on the map showing the voyages of the John Howland and the Franklin.
After finishing his tour with the Franklin in 1849, Manjiro returned to Massachusetts with $350 in earnings. His stay in Massachusetts was short-lived however; as he learned of the California Gold Rush and hoped it would make his plan of returning to Japan a reality for himself and his friends. Manjiro never stopped longing for home and to see his mother again, but he reportedly also wished to return in order to help facilitate Japan’s reemergence on the global stage.
Along with the thousands of ‘49s that sought their fortune in the Gold Rush, Manjiro headed to California. In November of 1849, Manjiro left Massachusetts as a sailor aboard the Stieglitz, a merchant ship destined for San Francisco with a cargo of lumber. The Stieglitz arrived in May of the following year.
By 1850, Manjiro was back in Hawaii, having quickly accumulated $600 in wealth from gold mining in California. With his earnings, he bought passage aboard the Sarah Boyd (pictured at left), a ship that would pass near to Japan. He also purchased a small whale boat called the Adventure, which was capable of transporting him and his friends from the ship to the shores of Japan.
In December 1850, Manjiro and his friends Denzo and Goemon, set sail for home. Jusuke had died from heart disease five years earlier, and Toraemon had elected to remain in Hawaii. After ten years away from their native home, Manjiro, Denzo, and Goemon were back in Japan, landing in Okinawa in February 1851.
The three returned castaways were questioned by authorities and then held under house arrest in Okinawa for six months before being moved to Nagasaki for ten additional months of interrogation. They were finally released in June 1852. While they were still under travel restrictions, forbidden from leaving their hometown and most certainly from venturing to sea again, their treatment was quite liberal, all things considered. This was, after all, the era of Edo or Sakoku, a 200 plus year period of strict isolationism in Japan.
During Sakoku, under Shogun rule, any Japanese citizen who left the country for any reason was punished harshly. Returning home was a risky prospect, one that could result in execution, hence the reason Manjiro’s friend Toraemon decided to stay in Hawaii. During this era, violent storms often washed fishermen out to sea, far outside of Japanese territory. Most never returned home for fear of losing their lives upon arrival. Even when the exodus from Japan was the result of such fateful circumstances as a shipwreck, violators were viewed as dishonorable traitors that put the Japanese people at risk.
This belief system was entrenched and supported by more than 200 years of tradition and laws, which makes the next chapter of Manjiro’s life even that much more remarkable. Rather than being further detained or executed, Manjiro was made a samurai in direct service to the Shogun and with orders to educate other samurai on foreign affairs.
In July of 1853, just a year after Manjiro was released from detention, American Commodor Matthew C. Perry led a squadron of ships into Edo (Tokoyo) Bay to deliver a letter from President Millard Fillmore to the emperor of Japan. That letter demanded Japan open it’s ports and begin interacting with the western world again. Perry and his fleet retreated but promised to return in the spring for Japan’s response. These events, among others, made Manjiro an even more vital resource for Japanese leadership, as his knowledge of the United States and U.S. naval capabilities was unrivaled and indispensable.
Manjiro was made a samurai to the Shogun and played a central role in preparing the shogunate for the end of the Sakoku era and in educating Japanese students and teachers in the subjects of English, American culture, and navigation. In fact, he was appointed a professor at the Shogunate’s Naval Training School, helping to bring the Japanese navy into the modern era, allowing for effective trans-Pacific travel by 1860.
When Manjiro was first rescued by Captain Whitfield, he had no surname. Japan was a strict class culture, and fishermen were the lowest of the low. Possessing a surname was an honor reserved for the upper classes. It was therefore not until Manjiro served as a Samurai to the Shogun that he was permitted to take a surname. He chose Nakahama himself, honoring his hometown by doing so.
Manjiro continued to serve the shogun, and later the restored imperial government, in various capacities and also expanded his own knowledge and education to that end. Following an 1870 educational mission to Europe, Manjiro visited the east coast of the United States and Captain William Whitfield for the first time in 21 years.
Manjiro Nakahama Fairhaven, MA Office of Tourism
(1827-1898)
Lived in Fairhaven 1843-1849
Returned to Japan 1851
In 1843, Fairhaven became the home of the first Japanese person to live in America. The ties of friendship, first formed when a Fairhaven whaling captain rescued fourteen year old Manjiro Nakahama from a small island in the Pacific Ocean, have endured to this day and make Fairhaven a popular spot for visitors from Japan.
Manjiro Nakahama was born in a fishing village in what is now Tosashimizu, Japan, in 1827. From a poor family, he became a fisherman at the age of 13. In early 1841, he and four companions were caught in a storm at sea and shipwrecked on the uninhabited island of Tori Shima (Hurricane Island) in the Pacific. Nearly six months after they had been stranded, the young men were rescued by Fairhaven Captain William H. Whitfield aboard the whaleship John Howland. Manjiro’s four shipmates were set ashore at the Sandwich Islands (later known as Hawaii), but the fourteen-year-old, known to the captain and crew as “John Mung,” chose to return with Whitfield to America.
Manjiro arrived in Fairhaven with Whitfield on May 6, 1843. He spent his first night in America at Whitfield’s home in the Oxford Village neighborhood of town. Because Whitfield was a widower at the time, he sent Manjiro to live for a short time with the Akin family who lived just down the road at 14 Oxford Street. Manjiro was tutored by a neighbor, Miss Jane Allen, and he attended classes at the one room Stone Schoolhouse on North Street.
At the end of May, Whitfield remarried and then purchased a farm on Sconticut Neck. Manjiro helped build the Whitfield farmhouse, now located on Crescent Drive. He continued his schooling at the Sconticut Neck Schoolhouse, which is now a private home.
Though most of Manjiro’s schoolmates accepted him, some of their parents were not as welcoming to the young man from a foreign land. When Capt. Whitfield took Manjiro with him to the Congregational Church, he was told the boy would have to sit in the “negro pew.” Whitfield left the church and took his family to the original Unitarian Church at 32 Washington St., where Manjiro was allowed to sit with the Whitfields.
As he got older, Manjiro took classes in mathematics and navigation with Louis Bartlett in the school he ran at 42 Spring Street. Here the boy became familiar with Bowditch’s American Practical Navigator which he later translated into Japanese.
In 1846, Manjiro took to the sea again, aboard the whaleship Franklin. He spent some time in San Francisco during the Gold Rush before joining another ship and eventually returning to Japan.
Upon returning to Japan, Manjiro was at first imprisoned because Japan forbade its people from leaving. However, his familiarity with American customs and the English language became important when Commodore Matthew C. Perry first arrived to “open Japan” to trade relations with the western world. Manjiro rose to prominence in Japanese governmental circles and was made a samurai. He promoted the acceptance of American ideas and technology. (He has also been credited with introducing the necktie to Japan.)
Manjiro compiled A Short Cut To English Conversation, which became the standard book on practical English at that time. He also became an instructor teaching navigation and ship engineering at the Naval Training School in Yedo (now Tokyo). Twice the Japanese government sent Manjiro on diplomatic missions to America. On the second trip, in 1870, he revisited Fairhaven, staying once again, though this time just overnight, with the Whitfields.
Manjiro Nakahama died on November 12, 1898, in his son’s house in Tokyo.
On July 4, 1918, Viscount Kikujiro Ishii, the Japanese ambassador to Washington, presented to Fairhaven, on behalf of Manjiro’s eldest son Dr. Toichiro Nakahama, a samurai sword as a token of gratitude for the kindness shown to his father by the town. The sword was displayed in a glass case in the Millicent Library, even during WWII. The original sword was stolen from the library in 1977 and has never been recovered. Hearing of the theft, Dr. Tadashi Kikuoka of Seton Hall University located another sword of similar origin and presented it to the town as a replacement.
An interesting sidebar to the Manjiro story is that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s grandfather owned a share of the whaleship John Howland, which rescued the boy. In 1933, in a letter to Toichiro Nakahama, the president wrote, “You may not know that I am the grandson of Mr. Warren Delano of Fairhaven, who was part owner of the ship. . . that brought your father to Fairhaven. . . . when I was a boy, I well remember my grandfather telling me all about the little Japanese boy who went to school in Fairhaven and who went to church from time to time with the Delano family.” Warren Delano also purchased and donated the land for Riverside Cemetery where the Whitfield family rests. It’s no wonder Fairhaven felt somewhat torn when the United States and Japan were at war only a few years after that letter was written.
Though the wounds of war took many years to recover from, neither Fairhaven residents nor the Japanese forgot Manjiro’s stay in town in the 1840s. In the fall of 1987, the Fairhaven/New Bedford—Tosashimizu Sister City Committee was formed to further promote international cooperation, friendship and peace between those communities. Crown Prince Akihito, now Emperor of Japan, visited Fairhaven at that time. The group’s name has since been changed to the Whitfield-Manjiro Friendship Society, Inc. The society maintains a museum at Capt. Whitfield’s house at 11 Cherry Street. The house itself is owned by the Town of Fairhaven.
A Manjiro Festival, sponsored by the Whitfield-Manjiro Friendship Society, is held in Fairhaven in early October of odd numbered years. The festival, featuring Japanese and American foods, arts and crafts booths and entertainment, celebrates the sister city relationship and the bond that has survived for more than a century and a half.
The Manjiro Trail
The Manjiro Trail was created by the Whitfield-Manjiri Friendship Society. It consists of eight sites in Fairhaven that are connected to the story of Manjiro Nakahama. Those sites are listed below. Note that some are private homes and are not open to the public.
Washington Street Meetinghouse (1832)
Whitfield-Manjiro Friendship House (date unknown)
Capt. Bartlett Allen House (before 1790)
Dr. Hinohara Bench and Peace Pole
You may download .pdf files of the Manjiro Trail brochure in English or Japanese and learn more about tours of the trail here: Manjiro Trail.
The website of the Whitfield-Manjiro Friendship Society is here: Whitfield-Manjiro.org
Image: “John Manjiro and Bearded Man,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/684e943e612f8fb61f56abab95ba8721.
This image of Manjiro dates to the 1870s, when he returned to Massachusetts to visit friends and “family,” including Captain William Whitfield, who may or may not be the bearded man pictured here.