Joseph Heco
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Joseph Heco (born Hikozo Hamada, 浜田彦蔵 Hamada Hikozo) (1837-1897), the first Japanese American to be naturalized as a United States citizen and the first to publish a Japanese language newspaper.
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[edit] Early years
Hikozo Hamada was born in Harima, the son of a land owner. Following his father’s death, his mother remarried. The fatherless boy had been accepted by a temple school for training and education, something unusual for someone of his social class. His mother died when he was twelve, but his stepfather, a seaman on a freighter often away from home, continued to care for the boy. A year later when returning from Edo after a sightseeing journey, the ship was wrecked in a severe storm in the Pacific. The American freighter Auckland picked up seventeen survivors, who became the first Japanese people to reach California.
In 1852 the group was sent to Macao to join Commodore Matthew Perry as a gesture to help open diplomatic relations with Japan. However, Heco met an American interpreter who asked him to return to the U.S. with him and learn English. Then Heco could return to Japan with important language skills when the country was open for trade. Heco accepted the offer and arrived in San Francisco in June 1853.
Heco attended a Roman Catholic school in Baltimore and was baptized "Joseph" in 1854. He returned to the West Coast for further study, when in 1857 he was invited by California Senator William M. Gwin to come with him to Washington as his secretary. Here he became the only Japanese person to be introduced to President James Buchanan. Heco stayed with Gwin until February 1858. He then joined Lt. Com. J.M. Brooke on a survey of the coast of China and Japan. In June of that year, Heco became the first Japanese to become an American citizen.
[edit] Interpreting career
Realising the treaty ports in Japan were scheduled to open on July 1, 1859, Heco left his ship and went to Hong Kong. Here he joined Townsend Harris, returning to Japan on the U.S.S. Mississippi. In Shanghai, Heco also met E.M. Door, scheduled to be the U.S. Consul at Kanagawa. Heco accepted Door's offer of a job as his interpreter. Heco left Shanghai on June 15, 1859 and arrived at Nagasaki. Heco had been asked to stay in the background, but following an incident between an American sailor and a Japanese, he intervened when the Japanese interpreter did not know enough English to handle the situation. The Japanese interpreter was dumbfounded and questioned Heco cloesly. The Mississippi left Nagasaki on June 22 - without Heco ever setting foot on land.
Heco worked as interpreter for the U.S. Consulate in Kanagawa but resigned on February 1, 1860. He became a general commission agent in nearby Yokohama, waiting for the arrival of his partner from California. However, the partnership was dissolved on March 1, 1861 after doing poorly for a year. Heco returned to the U.S. in September 1861 on board the USS Carrington. In Yokohama he met Wilhelm Heine, Francis Hall and Mikhail Bakunin and travelled back to San Francisco with Bakunin in September. In March 1862 he met President Lincoln.
Heco returned to Kanagawa at the end of September 1862 and began work at the U.S. Consulate once again. After nearly a year, he left to establish a trading firm. In 1863, Heco began his publishing career with Hyōryūki (漂流記 hyōryūki) (Record of a Castaway), an account of his experiences in America. From 1864 to 1866, Heco helped publish the first Japanese language newspaper, the Kaigai Shinbun. Today, Heco is regarded in Japan as the father of Japanese journalism.
[edit] Business career
On January 3, 1867 Heco went to Nagasaki to look after the business of an American friend, A. D. Weld French, who was leaving Japan. He registered at the U.S. Consulate in Nagasaki as an American citizen. Later in the month, the Prince of Hizen asked Heco to be his agent in Nagasaki. On May 13, Heco also went to work for Glover & Co. One of the partners, K.R. Mackenzie, asked Heco to help acquire the rights to the Takashima coal mine from the Hizen Prince. Eventually, however, with Heco's assistance, Mackenzie and Glover overcame various problems to establish the first partnership between a native and a foreigner.
In June 1867, Kido Koin and Ito Hirobumi (Chosu Samurai) called upon Heco under the guise of being Satsuma officials, and asked questions about the United States and England, especially regarding the U.S. constitution. In October, they called again and asked Heco to serve as their agent in Nagasaki. He did so for two years without remuneration. Heco later helped Ito get to England with the assistance of Admiral Keppel of the H.M.S. Salamis.
On January 1, 1868 Hyogo was opened as a treaty port and, according to Heco, "Yokohama, Nagasaki, and the China ports all sent their quota of bearded foreigners on the hunt for the Almighty Dollar." Heco described these early days of 1868 as troubled times. "Wild and disquieting rumours of the happenings in Kyoto and Osaka were ever arriving."
When news of the defeat of Satsuma, Chōshū and Tosa clans at Fushimi reached Nagasaki, Satsuma's agent came to Heco looking for protection. The Nagasaki commissioner and opposition forces made an agreement that whoever lost would be allowed twenty-four hours to get out of town unharmed. Eventually, the commissioner and his retainers slipped away on an American steamer.
In February 1868, the victorious opposition forces promised that they would not harm foreigners in Nagasaki. Heco went with Francis Groom of Glover & Co. to Osaka to negotiate the transfer of the ram Stonewall to the Japanese government from the U.S. Minister. That summer Heco was asked to find a Western physician for the Prince of Hizen. He found Dr. Samuel Boyer of the [[U.S.S. Iroquois]]. Heco moved between Nagasaki and Osaka at this time and reported on the rice riots of 1869. In February 1870 the Japanese government began to persecute the 3000 Christians from Urakami, and Glover & Co. went bankrupt.
- "In the month of August the firm I had been serving since 1867 [Glover & Co.] failed all of a sudden. The first meeting of creditors was held at the English Consulate in Nagasaki on the 16th Sept., and on the 19th, the firm laid a full statement of affairs before them."
In October, Heco left Nagasaki for Hyogo and then accompanied Mackenzie to Kobe. He was soon back in Nagasaki, leasing a house on the bund [No. 1 Oura] and began a business as a commercial agent. He also was appointed by the Prince of Hizen to look after his interests in the Takashima coal mine. Visiting the Prince in Kobe, in 1871, he stayed a month. Then in December, he went with Glover to visit Prince Nagaoka of Kumamoto at his castle, but the prince was away at the time. They still, however, received a tour of the castle before returning to Nagasaki.
In May 1872, Heco received an offer to work under Inoue Kaoru, the Minister of Finance. He left Nagasaki in early August to do so. However, he had the opportunity to witness the Meiji Emperor's visit to Nagasaki on July 19 before he left. Heco stayed with the Finance Ministry until the beginning of 1874, when he left of his own accord. In May 1875 Heco went to work in Kobe, where he remained until becaming ill in 1881. Heco died in 1897. As an American he was buried in the foreign section of the cemetery in Aoyama, Tokyo which is currently (2005) under threat of being cleared to make a park.
An English edition was published as The Narrative of a Japanese: What He Has Seen and the People He Has Met in the Course of the Last 40 Years in 1895.
His papers are kept at Syracuse University
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Our Biographies
- Joseph Heco (Narrative Writer) James Murdoch (Editor), The Narrative of a Japanese: What He Has Seen and the People He Has Met in the Course of the Last 40 Years, Yokohama, Yokohama Publishing Company (Tokyo, Maruzen), 1895, 2 volumes
- Oaks, Robert F. “Golden Gate Castaway: Joseph Heco and San Francisco, 1851-1859.” California History 82:2, 2004.
- Hsu, Hsuan L. "Personality, Race, and Geopolitics in Joseph Heco’s Narrative of a Japanese." Biography 29:2 (Spring 2006).
- Yoshimura Akira. Storm Rider. Harcourt, Brace: 2004.
