Heart of a Samurai

by Margi Preus

  Manjiro took a great gulp of tea. This was a big responsibility. It was important that he understand!

  “The day we found you, I had sent men to look for turtles near your island. We didn’t know you were there, but when the men saw you, they knew you must be fed—or die.”

  Manjiro nodded. That was true.

  The captain continued, “So they brought you back to the John Howland and I agreed to take you aboard, with the intention of bringing you back to your homeland, if that were possible. But I suspect you may be from Japan. If that is so, your country does not treat foreign visitors kindly. Once a ship named the Morrison tried to enter Edo Bay in order to return some shipwrecked sailors like yourselves, but before they could even explain the reason for their visit, they were fired upon—repeatedly—and were forced to retreat.

  “I can’t afford to lose the John Howland or jeopardize the lives of my men,” the captain said. “Stories are told of how even your countrymen, once they have gone beyond their shores, are not allowed to return. They say they are imprisoned, tortured, even executed! I will not send you home, only for you to die! Do you understand now why we cannot take you home?”

  Manjiro nodded, biting back tears.

  Then Captain Whitfield asked Manjiro to tell about his family.

  “I have three sister and one brother. I have mother, no father. My one brother older but he weak. I take care family.” He stared down at his teacup, tears trembling in his eyes. Of course, he was not taking care of his family.

  “Ah,” the captain said. “You were the breadwinner for the family.”

  “Breadwin?” Manjiro looked up.

  “You brought food to the family.”

  “I try, but no good,” Manjiro said. He hung his head again.

  “It must be very hard for you to be so far away,” the captain said. “You miss your family. Your family must miss you very much, too. Can you tell me about your homeland?”

  Manjiro stared into his teacup. He longed to describe the green, rounded hills that rose from the jagged rocks and cliffs of the coast. He wanted to tell about the steamy summer days when the only sounds were the waves rushing up on the beach and the shrill cry of the kite or the warbler’s curious song. If only he could explain how he loved to walk the narrow lane that led to his family’s hut when it was dappled with sunlight or shining with rain, how friendly was the creak of the door when it opened and the gentle thud it made when it shut. How cool and pleasant it was inside, with his mother sewing or cooking and his brother and sisters playing happily beside her. How could he tell the captain he had run away from this, and how deeply he regretted it?

  He did not have the words.

  Yet when Manjiro finally looked up, Captain Whitfield’s eyes showed he had understood the longing Manjiro felt.

  “Someday, son, I hope you will be able to go home. I am sorry it cannot be soon,” he said. The captain picked up a funny-looking musical instrument. A violin, he called it, then played something on it that Manjiro realized must be music. It was a strange sound, a little sad.

  As he listened, Manjiro’s eyes drifted around the room, taking in the many unusual objects, finally resting on an open book on the captain’s desk. Maybe the captain even knew how to read!

  As if understanding his thought, Captain Whitfield picked up the book and began to read aloud.

  Manjiro had a hard time following, but he was sure it was a poem. It had a “shipwrecked brother” in it who saw footprints and got up and started doing something. The gist of the poem, he thought, was that we should do the best we can with whatever fate the gods give us in our lives, and perhaps we can inspire others who come after us.

  Manjiro stared at the captain. He had never imagined that a barbarian could appreciate poetry. Or play music. Or express kindness.

  Then he realized his mouth was hanging open, and he quickly shut it and ducked his head. His eye stopped at a small portrait of a woman on the desk.

  “That is—was—my wife,” Captain Whitfield said quietly. “She passed away before we shipped out.”

  “You have childrens?” Manjiro asked.

  The captain shook his head, coughed, and said, “No.” He paused. “No,” he said again.

  “You have no childrens; I have no father.” Manjiro said, and their eyes met for a moment.

  When Manjiro left the room soon after, he tried to identify what he was feeling. He was no longer afraid. He was no longer angry. He was, perhaps, a little amazed. A little surprised. And maybe even a little bit happy.

  7

  SHIP LIFE

  s the days went on, Manjiro learned how to shorten sail, sheet home, trice up, and trim and make sail. He learned how to scrub the deck with soft sandstone tools known as “holy stones.” The main deck was scrubbed with a “bible” and the hard-to-reach corners with a “prayer book.”

  “They aren’t really those things,” Itch said. “A bible is a holy book, see, and a prayer book is, too. You wouldn’t really scrub a deck with them.”

  Manjiro spent the day puzzling over that and over all the words he’d learned that had more than one meaning: The bow was the front of the vessel. But it was also what he did when he bent from the waist when meeting someone. The fins on a whale’s tail were called its fluke. But a fluke also meant a stroke of luck—like the fact that Captain Whitfield had sent a boat to fetch turtles on Bird Island that day. That was a stroke of luck—a fluke. Or was it fruke? R’s and L’s were impossible. What was the difference between grass and glass, for instance?

  Aye, I, and eye. See, sea, and C. Weigh, way, and whey.

  Would he ever be able to learn this strange language?

  As his English improved, and as he became more useful around the John Howland, it was easier for him to get to know the crew. He made friends with many of them, including the men who had rescued them from the island. They had all seemed so big and so hairy and so fierce when he’d first encountered them, but now he knew them as mostly kind and pleasant men. He had ceased to identify them by their skin or hair colors; now he knew them by their names and personalities. He knew that Edward was learning to play the pennywhistle, and Parden made beautiful scrimshaw pictures. Mr. Q. was big but gentle, and Josiah really liked to eat. Biscuit was an old salt who always knew the juiciest bits of gossip. Isaiah, one of the men who was so very black, always seemed to have something funny to say—though Manjiro didn’t often get the jokes, the others laughed. Francis was the quickest up the rigging and taught Manjiro how to climb the ratlines to the crosstrees. These men came from countries all over the world, but most of them came from a place called America.

  “What is ‘America’?” Manjiro asked as he worked at scrubbing around the tryworks.

  “Vast heaving!” Edward exclaimed. “But have you never heard of America?”

  Manjiro shook his head, and the deckhands put down their “bibles” and “prayer books” to gather around the boy who had never heard of America.

  “Where did you come from? Did you live your whole life on that bare rock from which we plucked you?”

  “Oh! I’ll bet he’s from that country that locks us out and their countrymen in,” said Francis.

  “‘Tis sealed and shuttered,” said Parden.

  “Many’s the whaler that could have used its ports to make repairs or take on fresh food and water, but never a soul can tread the shores of Japan,” said Mr. Q., tossing a scrubbing stone from hand to hand.

  “I’ve heard tell they put shipwrecked sailors in tiny cages,” Edward said, “afore they kill ’em!”

  “They’re godless cannibals,” Jolly grumbled from his post. He hadn’t bothered to gather with the others, but he was listening just the same, Manjiro noticed.

  “No need to take it out on the boy,” Biscuit said. “‘Tisn’t his fault.”

  “They’re all alike, them people,” Jolly growled. “You can’t take the savage out of savages.”

  “But how is it you never learned about America?” Edwa
rd asked.

  Relieved at the change of subject, Manjiro said, “We never heard of it. What is it?”

  “Why, she’s only the greatest nation on earth, isn’t she? She has the finest vessels, the smartest captains, the strongest men, and …” Francis winked at Manjiro, “the prettiest young ladies in all the world.”

  “That’s not what you told that raven-haired maid on the Canary Islands,” Biscuit said.

  “She was an exception,” said Francis.

  The others laughed.

  “Boy,” Parden said, “if ye think buttons and pockets are a wonder, then yer eyes would pop and yer mind swim if ye beheld the wonders of America.”

  “Will we ever go there?” Manjiro said.

  “Will we go there?” Itch laughed. “Who do you think we’re collecting all this whale oil for? Why, it’s for our own dear kin, to light their lamps, to oil their machines, and to supply a hundred fine things with all the parts the whale provides, such as—” Itch broke off and the other men were suddenly silent. Captain Whitfield stood over them, squinting down at them with one blazing eye. As one, they leaped back to their work.

  Later that evening, Manjiro found Captain Whitfield standing at the taffrail gazing out at the silver-tipped waves.

  “You are come from America, too?” Manjiro asked.

  “Yes, indeed!” Captain Whitfield said.

  “It is land of wonders,” Manjiro said. “The mates tell me.”

  “Ah,” said the captain. “So it is. They call it the land of opportunity.”

  “What is opportunity?”

  “It means … possibility. It means, with hard work and discipline, a man with hopes and dreams can see them come to fruition. I wonder …” Captain Whitfield paused for a moment and then went on. “What are your hopes and dreams?”

  “Hopes and dreams?” Manjiro said.

  “What do you hope to do with your life—who do you hope to become?”

  Manjiro had never thought of such things. He had always known what work he would do. Of course, he would have liked to bring honor to his family, and he remembered how he’d once said he wanted to be a samurai. But that was not a real dream, because it could never happen. Now … well, now he didn’t know.

  “Future is like ocean,” he said. “Big mystery, many danger, much beautiful. It full of …” He didn’t know the word to describe what he was thinking, so he just stretched his arms wide.

  “Opportunity?” Captain Whitfield said.

  Manjiro nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Opportunity.”

  8

  THE INVITATION

  December 1841, Oahu, Sandwich Islands

  he day started off like any ordinary day. Manjiro was sitting on the foredeck trying to untangle a line while Itch read to him from the Polynesian, Honolulu’s newspaper. “Arrived: November 20, 1841. John Howland, New Bedford, twenty-four months, fourteen hundred barrels,” he read.

  “What does it mean?” Manjiro asked.

  Drawing of Oahu with ships in the harbor

  “Ah, well. It means this here vessel, the John Howland, having sailed from New Bedford, Massachusetts, arrived in Honolulu after twenty-four months at sea—six months with you aboard—carrying fourteen hundred barrels of spermaceti whale oil. Nineteen whales already. A fine start, isn’t it?” he said merrily.

  Manjiro knew that the ship would sail for perhaps another year or more before heading for home.

  “D’ye fancy the sailing life?” Itch said.

  Manjiro looked up. How could he explain how his heart lifted when the sails unfurled? How the sails seemed to him like great wings with which he could fly across the ocean?

  “You were lucky to have been rescued by this captain,” Itch said. “Not every captain is as fair-minded and generous. There’s some who would have made slaves out of you, I warrant. But not Whitfield. He’s an honest and fair-minded man, pious and plainspoken. There be no drink aboard his vessel, and there be no whale chasing on Sundays, neither. And no flogging. He’s no hypocrite, like some whose names I could mention. They claim to be godly men, yet treat their crew like dogs. Some ship owners provision their vessels so poorly that a poor sailor can barely keep flesh on his bones.”

  Manjiro was happy to hear Itch say what he believed to be true—that Captain Whitfield was a good man. He wanted to ask Itch all kinds of questions about the captain, but he stopped when he saw Denzo and the others hurrying toward him.

  “We have good news!” Denzo said. “The captain has found new homes for us on this island!”

  Manjiro swallowed hard.

  “Aren’t you happy?” Goemon said. Goemon must be relieved to be done with sailing, Manjiro thought, and he nodded.

  “We might have a chance to try to go home, too!” Jusuke continued. “Ships from here sometimes sail close to Japan, we have heard.”

  “But there is something else,” Denzo said, then cleared his throat solemnly. “I have had a conversation with Captain Whitfield”—in the previous weeks, Denzo had finally picked up enough English to communicate a little with the captain—“about you.”

  Oh, oh, Manjiro thought, I’m in trouble. He looked down at the knotted line in his lap—line he, himself, had tangled. He made many mistakes. He remembered that just the other day he had dropped a bucket overboard. It had floated for a few moments before sinking to the bottom of the harbor. He was sure to be punished.

  “Captain Whitfield has asked me if I would allow you to travel with him to America, to live with him as his son,” Denzo said.

  Manjiro’s heart leaped. The captain’s son! “What did you say?” were the first words from his mouth. Then, remembering his manners, he bowed and said, “Excuse me, Denzo-san. That is to say, might I beg to know what you answered?”

  “I do not feel it is right to split up our group,” Denzo said. “We have suffered much together. And, as the leader of this group, I am responsible for your safety and well-being. How would it look if we were to return to Japan—without you?”

  Manjiro bowed his head. He hadn’t thought of these things.

  “On the other hand …,” Denzo said, and paused. Manjiro held his breath. “The captain has been so good to us, I do not feel that I can refuse him.” Manjiro looked up and waited. “I told the captain the decision is up to you.”

  Manjiro opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Thoughts collided in his mind. To see America … but to possibly miss a chance to return home to his mother and his family. To learn a thousand new things … but to go to a strange place where people might hate and reject him. To feel again the lift of his heart when the sails filled with wind and the ship seemed to soar over the ocean … but to have to say good-bye to his comrades with whom he’d shared so much …

  “Denzo-san.” Manjiro bowed and stammered. “I … uh … I … don’t know what to do!”

  “You do not have to make your decision right away,” Denzo said. “The John Howland does not sail for several days.”

  Jusuke winked at him. “Perhaps you should take advice of your pillow.”

  It was the same saying in English almost, Manjiro realized. Once, his friend Itch had told him to “sleep on it” when he’d had a decision to make.

  Americans might not be so terribly different from us, he thought. “Yes. I will take the advice of my pillow,” Manjiro said. “I will sleep on it.”

  But he could hardly sleep. Manjiro spent the next few days trying to make the right decision. One afternoon he walked on the beach with Goemon. While he picked up pretty shells—shells he hoped someday to give his mother—he thought about his choice. He looked at the indentations his feet had made on the beach and thought of the captain’s poem.

  “Goemon,” he said, “maybe one day we will leave footprints in the sands of time.”

  “What are you talking about?” Goemon said.

  “There’s a poem Captain Whitfield is teaching me. It’s by a person called Long Fellow. I think that means he is very tall. The poem goes like this:<
br />
  “Lives of great men all remind us

  We can make our lives sublime

  And, departing, leave behind us

  Footprints on the sands of time.

  “Then there are some other verses, but I don’t remember how they go. It has ‘forlorn and shipwrecked brothers’ in it, though, and more footprints. The last verse goes:

  “Let us, then, be up and doing

  With a heart for any fate

  Something … something … something … something …

  Learn to labor and to wait.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Goemon said, kicking at a stone.

  “I think it means that we can do great things in our lives—things people will remember.”

  “No, we can’t!” Goemon said. “We are just humble fishermen. Only big important people—the shogun, the daimyo, maybe this captain—they can do great things.”

  “That’s what I used to think, too. Back home, I always knew that I would just be a fisherman. I never questioned it; I know we never asked ourselves what—or who—we wanted to become. Why should we? We always knew. But what if we could do important things, too? Captain Whitfield said that if I work very hard, someday I could become a captain of a ship!”

  “That’s as stupid as when you said you were going to become a samurai!” Goemon said. “You shouldn’t want to be what you can’t be.”

  “Captain Whitfield said any smart, ambitious person can become a captain.”

  “Not you.”

  “Why not me? Captain Whitfield says he personally knows a former slave who is the captain of a whaling ship now.”

  “Captain Whitfield says this, Captain Whitfield says that. You listen to everything he says. He makes you think wrong thoughts. You listen to the foreigners; you believe them. You’re like them,” Goemon cried, his voice breaking. “I don’t know you anymore!”