A Japanese Who Met Lincoln
There was one Japanese who met and shook President Lincoln by the hand in 1862.
It was Hikozo Hamada who was also known as Joseph Heco since he acquired nationality of America in 1858.
In October 1850, when Hikozo was 13-years old and called Hikotaro, he joined a voyage of a cargo ship from a port in Western Japan to Edo (presently called Tokyo). When the 17 crew was returning on board the ship, a great tempest attacked it to carry the Japanese ship off coasts of Japan far and far to the east on the Pacific Ocean.
But they were rescued by an American commercial ship called the Auckland sailing from Hong Kong/Shanghai to San Francisco. The American ship arrived at San Francisco in February 1851.
Then the 17 Japanese mariners were sent by the US Government to Hong Kong and then Macau via Hawaii in March 1852. But the Japanese captain leading the group died from a disease in Hawaii. So, the 16 poor Japanese sailors arrived at Hong Kong, waiting for black ships of Commodore Perry of the US Navy.
Commodore Perry was ordered to sail to Japan and conclude a diplomatic tie with Japan governed by the samurai shogun, though Japan had been a nation of isolation over centuries. (As samurai leaders did not like Christian influence in the Japanese society, they closed the country except to China and the Netherlands in the early 17th century.) Perry wanted to use the 16 Japanese mariners as a means to make communications easier with the shogun government in Edo. Samurais would not have been alarmed so much, if his fleet should have kindly handed victims of a Japanese wrecked vessel.
But the arrival of Perry's fleet was delayed. So, through various incidents, all the Japanese mariners, except one, ran away from an American naval ship where they were staying in the port of Macau. (Most of them could finally return to Japan on board a Chinese ship.)
But Hikozo and other two Japanese got on board a ship heading for California with an American who wanted to work and make fortune in California. In California Hikozo worked honestly and hard to be known to a prominent banker called Saunders who also served as the head of the custom house in San Francisco.
This banker eventually took Hikozo with him to the East as Saunders' family lived in Baltimore. Hikozo was truly lucky to be helped by this kind banker. He went to school and church staying in the house of the banker. Then he was baptized, following advice of the wife of Saunders. And then he was naturalized in the US in 1858, since Saunders recommended Hikozo to do so for his future return to Japan as the samurai government of Japan did not allow Japanese who converted Christianity abroad to return home.
And subsequently Hikozo found a job in a ship sailing to Japan, so that he left the Saunders in Baltimore and went back to San Francisco and to Japan eventually in 1859.
When he came back to Japan, Hikozo was personally employed by Townsend Harris, the first United States Consul General to Japan. Hikozo worked as interpreter to be involved in some significant diplomatic occasions. But some samurai factions and samurai feudal lords were against the policy of the shogun government to open the nation. So, some samurai launched terror on foreigners and their servants who then mostly lived in a restricted port area near Edo.
Hikozo could have been a target of terror since he looked like a betrayer to the eyes of such anti-Western samurais. So, Hikozo decided to sail back to the US for the time being. He actually left Japan in 1861.
On this occasion Hikozo got big support from key citizens in San Francisco. They recommended Hikozo to travel to the East and get a reasonable job from the Federal Government. So, Hikozo traveled to Washington DC and New York with some help from a Senator and his old mentor Saunders. In this course, Hikozo was introduced to Secretary of State Seward and President Lincoln in 1862. Hikozo was officially appointed to a translator of the US consular office in Japan. Accordingly Hikozo sailed back to Japan while President Lincoln was fighting the Civil War.
Hikozo came back to Japan in October in 1862, but he left the consular office in September 1863. Since then, Hikozo made his own business or he was sometimes employed by prominent Western and Japanese merchants. He once even worked in the Ministry of Finance of the Japanese Government. But Hikozo never traveled to the US anymore. He didn't even become a leading figure in the Japanese society though he acquired many such influential friends. Hikozo opted to live rather quietly in his later life in Tokyo.
Hikozo adopted a Japanese surname, Hamada, and married a Japanese woman. He eventually died in Tokyo in 1897 at the age of 60, though he was still an American legally.
Hikozo wrote two books in his life time: one in Japanese in 1863 and another in English in 1895.
(As Hikozo could read but could not fully write decent written Japanese, it is thought that he gave dictation when he prepared a draft of the above Japanese book.)
In the English book titled the Narrative of a Japanese, he presented a letter he received from US Secretary of State Seward as a response to an emergency letter Hikozo wrote to Seaward when he heard of the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865.
The narrative of a Japanese; what he has seen and the people he has met in the course of the last forty years./Chapter 5.
July. In the course of this month we heard of the murder of President Lincoln, and of the attack on Mr. Seward, Secretary of State, in Washington. Upon receipt of this intelligence, I at once wrote to Mr. Seward, tendering my sincere condolence to him, and through him to President Lincoln's family. In reply I received the following autograph letter.And one Japanese mariner, Sentaro or Senpachi, who sailed to Japan with Commodore Perry in 1853 would not return to Japan on the occasion. But years later, he came back to Japan with a family of an American missionary priest as a kind of American, too. Senpachi was later personally employed by an American professor who came to Japan for teaching. Senpachi died in Tokyo in 1874, of course, as a Japanese.
Washington Sept. 25, 1865
My dear Mr Heco,
I have just received
your letter of the 31st of July and
I thank you for remembering
me among the troubled concerns
yet in the midst of the pleasing
? of your far away native
Home. Our father in Heaven
has allowed our country to
be afflicted, but He has never–
theless remembered mercy, and
our nation is rescued from danger.
He has been pleased to visit
me with trials, but he has
graciously enabled me to
pass through them. Let us in
all things submit ourselves to
his will. He is omniscient and
omnipotent, we are blind and
powerless.
Faithfully your friend
William H. Seward
Joseph Heco Esquire
Kanagawa
? of ?
(Refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Heco ;
http://www.baxleystamps.com/litho/heco_1950_2vol.shtml ;
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_narrative_of_a_Japanese;_what_he_has_seen_and_the_people_he_has_met_in_the_course_of_the_last_forty_years./Chapter_5)
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Rom 6:4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Rom 6:5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:
Rom 6:6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
Rom 6:7 For he that is dead is freed from sin.
Rom 6:8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: