Heart of a Samurai

by Margi Preus

  On the long voyage home, Manjiro mulled over this news. He would go, he decided. He would go to California and use the gold he found there to get himself and his old friends back to Japan.

  In the meantime he set in to teach his parrot, Tori (which meant “bird” in Japanese), more Japanese words. Since she already knew konichiwa (“hello”), he taught her “good-bye” (sayonara). Then “thank you” (arigato gozaimus) and “sorry” (gomen nasai). That way, William Henry would know some words when he came to visit Manjiro in Japan.

  By the time they reached New Bedford, Manjiro was quite proud of the bird’s extensive vocabulary. He couldn’t wait to see William Henry’s eyes light up when he saw the gift.

  • • •

  Everyone aboard the Franklin was on edge as she sailed into the harbor on a fine September day. Surely news of their mutiny would have reached New Bedford. How would it have been received? Would they have heard the mutineers’ side of the story? It was unclear whether their letters would have reached home before other versions of the episode may have been told.

  So when Manjiro saw Captain and Mrs. Whitfield waiting at the pier when the Franklin made port, he was nervous. He also remembered that he had signed on without the captain’s permission. Would the captain be angry? These feelings were mixed with the excitement of seeing his good friend, whom he hadn’t seen for five years.

  With Tori perched on his shoulder, Manjiro approached the Whitfields slowly.

  “No need to worry, John,” Captain Whitfield said. “We heard what happened and everyone understands the circumstances.”

  Relieved, Manjiro smiled and hugged Mrs. Whitfield and clasped hands with his old friend. “I am sorry for leaving without speaking to you,” he said.

  “You needn’t be!” Captain Whitfield said. “I am proud of you for taking the initiative to sign on to a whale ship. I heard you were even promoted.” He nodded to the bird perched on Manjiro’s shoulder. “And you’ve made another friend,” he said.

  “Aye, that I have, but I intend Tori to be a friend to young William.” He looked around for the boy. “Where is he? Is he in school? Does he do well with his studies? Or is he helping with the harvest? I’ll wager he’s as strong as any farmhand there is….” Manjiro paused, noticing Captain Whitfield’s bowed head. His friend had aged. Flecks of white shimmered in his hair, and his forehead was creased with lines. Mrs. Whitfield looked worn and tired, too.

  “Alas, John, I feared you wouldn’t have gotten the news,” Mrs. Whitfield said. “William Henry was stricken with fever and died some time ago.”

  A sudden wind came up, and Manjiro felt it blow right through him. He looked up at the hills of the town, ablaze with their momentary burst of autumn color. The most beautiful things of this earth are the most fleeting, he knew. This knowledge was no comfort now. What was the world without William Henry? The brightness had gone out of it.

  “I bought this bird for William Henry, to teach him Japanese. So when he came to visit me in Japan …” Manjiro couldn’t finish his thought.

  Tori scooted down his shoulder and tapped his head sympathetically.

  “Hello, Henry?” the bird said. “Konichiwa?”

  • • •

  In the days that followed, Manjiro rarely left the house. He watched as Tori flapped aimlessly from one heavy piece of furniture to the next. She had lost feathers; she looked scruffy and thin. It pained him even to look at her. What had he done? He had taken this beautiful bird away from the sunshine and warm ocean breezes and brought her to live out her long life in a dusty parlor. Instead of flitting from one coconut palm to another, she flapped about in autumn gloom.

  The bird made him feel something he usually didn’t: sorry for himself. He, too, had been torn away from his home by forces beyond his control and made to live in a foreign and sometimes hostile environment.

  But what was to be done about it?

  34

  THE DAGUERREOTYPE

  October 1849, Fairhaven

  anjiro stood leaning on his spade, listening to the wind in the trees. It’d be a fine sailing day. With the wind astern, a bark like the Franklin could probably clip along at ten or eleven knots and put a hundred miles between it and New Bedford by dusk. He shook himself free of such thoughts. It would not be right to leave the Whitfields now—he was needed here. He tried to turn his mind back to digging potatoes.

  “Mung!” Terry ran up and stopped to catch his breath. “Come along with me.”

  “I can’t. I’m working,” Manjiro said.

  “No, you’re not,” Terry said. “I saw you. You were dreaming. Now, come along. The portrait man is here and I aim to get my portrait made.”

  “The what man?”

  Terry took his arm and marched him down the road, chattering about the daguerreotype man. “He makes likenesses of people by way of a new kind of invention called the daguerreotype,” he said. “Sometimes they call it ‘photography.’”

  Just outside of town they came upon a brightly painted wagon, where a man was trying to set up a sign that had blown over. When it was upright again, Manjiro read, PRIVATE AND MOURNING PORTRAITS. 25 CENTS FOR 1/16TH PLATE. Samples of the photographer’s work were on display, and Manjiro and Terry stared at them in amazement.

  “It’s wondrous what they do,” Terry said breathlessly. “It’s so exact, it’s almost more real than looking in a mirror. And fast! Not like sitting for days or weeks to have your portrait painted—and who can afford that, anyway?”

  While the portrait man got his machine readied, Manjiro stared at the pictures. There were portraits of families, of husbands and wives, and even recently deceased people—so their loved ones had an image of them to keep. Every detail was there and perfect. As Terry had said, it was like looking at a reflection of someone.

  “Now, listen, John. I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to California to try my luck in the gold fields. That’s why I’m getting my portrait made. It’s for my folks—to remember me by. Who knows how long we’ll be gone!” Terry said.

  “We?” Manjiro said. “Who’s going with you?”

  “Why, you, of course! What else are you going to do—make pennies on a whale ship for the rest of your life?”

  The photographer had Terry sit on a chair in front of an elaborate backdrop and readied his machine—a box on a tall tripod.

  “I don’t know, Terry,” Manjiro said. “How can I leave the Whitfields now? I can’t go and leave them without any family.”

  “You’ll come back! You’ll come back rich!”

  Manjiro shook his head. “No, Terry, if I go, I won’t come back. The only reason I wanted to go in the first place was to earn enough money to get myself and my friends in Oahu back to Japan.”

  “Now, there can’t be any talking,” the portrait man said. He ducked his head under a black cloth that hung from his boxlike machine.

  “You’re asking too much!” Manjiro joked to the photographer. “Asking Terry not to talk—it can’t be done!”

  Terry laughed and the man snapped, “No laughing, either!”

  Terry stopped laughing and winked, flashing a smile at Manjiro.

  “Nor any winking!” The man poked his head out from the cloth and threw up his hands. “And no smiling! Don’t you understand? You may not move your body, hands, face, or mouth, or the daguerreotype will be blurred!”

  A few moments of silence passed and then Terry whispered, “You’re a grown man, John. You must be … what? Twenty-two years old? In our country, young men strike out on their own. The captain and his missus wouldn’t expect anything else. They’ll be having other babies—just you wait and see. No, on second thought, don’t wait. Let’s go!” He slapped his knee.

  The photographer emerged, shaking his finger at Terry. “Listen, young man. I will not abide any more of this. If you continue, the likeness will be nothing but a smear.” Then he turned to Manjiro. “If you will promise to keep him silent, I will give you a discount on a daguerreotype of yoursel
f. You can leave it with your loved ones—it will be as if you’re still here.”

  “That’s a cracking idea!” Terry exclaimed.

  Manjiro did not think a daguerreotype would be the same thing at all, and he declined the offer. Still, he wished he had a likeness of his mother. He turned back to the portraits on display and tried to imagine seeing a portrait of her, tried to bring her face back to his memory, but it was shrouded in shadow, sadness, and longing.

  It was time to go home to Japan. His lay on the Franklin had only amounted to three hundred and fifty dollars. That would not be enough to get him home. But it might be enough to get him to California.

  The photographer came out from under his cloth and shook his head. “I’m finished. I hope the print is not a smear of movement, but if you want to try again, you’ll have to pay again.”

  “No,” Terry said, “I’ll take it however it turns out.”

  When they returned for the finished picture later, Manjiro wondered if the daguerreotype would capture Terry’s continual expression of surprise. But the photographer had been right—Terry was a blur, as if already on his way.

  35

  THE GOLD FIELDS

  Spring/Summer 1850 (3rd year of Kaei, Year of the Dog)

  he streams are paved with gold, it says here,” Terry said. He’d been reading from The Gold Regions of California all the way down the coast of South America. Even as their ship tossed and heaved in the enormous seas of Cape Horn, he read. “There are gold veins in California hundreds of miles long and wide. You only have to scratch the surface to uncover the stuff!”

  From San Francisco, on board a steamship bound for Sacramento, Terry read from Three Weeks in the Gold Mines. “Gold is two times heavier than lead,” he recited.

  “Imagine that!” Manjiro said. “We’re on a vessel powered by steam.”

  “Gold is nineteen times heavier than water,” Terry said.

  “See? That big iron wheel powered by steam—instead of wind—that’s what makes the ship move.”

  “Are you listening to me?” Terry said. “I said that gold is nineteen times—”

  Drawing of a steamboat

  “The speed, Terry! Can you believe the speed?”

  In Sacramento they boarded a train, another wonder that Manjiro had never experienced. While Terry tried to describe a thing called a “long tom” used to sluice for gold, Manjiro drew sketches of the train. Then he gazed out the window as the landscape sped by in a blur.

  “So many forms of locomotion in the world!” Manjiro said. “When I was a young boy in Japan, I knew of only two: fishing boat and my feet. This is the real treasure, right here: railroads and steamships and square-rigged sailing ships. Fast-moving things. Things that could take me home so swiftly. Isn’t it ironic that in order to get home, I have to go dig up the heaviest thing there is?”

  “We’ll have to watch our budget,” Terry said as they bounced along mountain paths on horseback. “One of these fellows told me a jar of pickles and two sweet potatoes cost him eleven dollars!”

  And, as they struggled along on foot, up a pass too steep even for horses, Terry continued, “A box of sardines costs sixteen dollars, a pound of bread two dollars, a pound of butter six dollars … and who knew it would be such hard work? And we haven’t even gotten there yet!”

  At their destination, Terry and Manjiro scrambled down a steep bank toward a stream already swarming with gold-seekers.

  “Here’s a spot!” Manjiro called to Terry.

  The riverbanks were littered with pickaxes, pans, and shovels alongside slouchy canvas tents. The air was filled with orders being yelled, shouting, and arguments.

  “Whoever left this spot must have struck it rich,” Terry said as he and Manjiro waded into the icy-cold water.

  “Gave up, brokenhearted, more like,” said a grizzled man downstream, caked head to toe in dried mud.

  “Remember what I told you,” Terry said. “Gold will sink to the bottom of anything. A river, for instance. That’s why it works to sluice or pan for it. See now, let everything else slosh away and see what’s left in your pan. What’ve you got?”

  Manjiro gazed at the bottom of his pan. There was dirt and gray pebbles and gritty sand, but also something glittery.

  “Gold!” he shouted.

  At once there were a dozen men gathered around him, looking down into his pan—and laughing. Laughing and pointing at him.

  “Fool’s gold!” said one of them.

  “And here’s a genuine fool along with it!” said another.

  “Greenhorn!” they shouted. Laughter echoed up and down the length of the stream.

  Manjiro’s face flushed. Terry patted him on the back. “Don’t worry,” he said. “No doubt they did the same thing the first time they saw the stuff.” He picked the shiny flakes out of the pan and tossed them back in the river. “See how it floats? There it goes to fool some other soul.” He winked at Manjiro. “Remember what I said? Gold is the heaviest thing there is. It sinks.”

  The other men went back to work.

  “Also,” Terry said, “gold does not glitter or sparkle. It has a dull luster.”

  Although Manjiro wanted to climb under a rock in the river, he put his head down and went back to work. Soon he was lost in the rhythm of scooping the river bottom and sluicing away the dirt, the silt and sand, and the sparkly stuff that was not gold.

  Days blended into weeks and weeks into months. Only having lived through those long months on the Franklin without ever sighting whales kept Manjiro from becoming discouraged. Scoop, shake, sluice, shake, sluice, stir, sluice … became the rhythm of his life.

  Other gold-seekers around him gave up. Backbreaking work, bouts of dysentery, standing all day in ice-cold water, and the high cost of living chased many of them away. But more came, and the river was always full of miners.

  One day, Manjiro’s mind was adrift, far away on a ship at sea, yet his body did the same thing it had been doing for months: scooped up river bottom, shook and sluiced, stirred and sluiced, until all the rocks and sand and grit and pebbles were gone, and there was nothing left at all. And again, scoop.

  The day was bright. Terry had staked a claim on another section of the stream. The river was crowded with men standing in the frigid water sluicing and panning, or using cradles or long toms. The clash of shovels and pans, along with splashing, grunting, some idle talk, and a snatch of a song echoed back to Manjiro: “Oh, I come from Sacramento with a washbowl on my knee….”

  But for a moment, all the noise faded away until there was just a quiet roar in Manjiro’s head. He stared down at the heavy, dull-colored lump that remained in the bottom of his pan after everything else was gone. So this is what dreams look like, he thought. Not shiny and glittery. Just a dully gleaming lump of metal, heavier than water, heavier even than lead.

  To Manjiro, this strange, twisted bit of metal meant one thing: He and his friends were going home.

  PART FIVE

  HOME

  Have your whole heart bent on a single purpose.

  —from Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

  Drawing of Japanese villagers

  36

  BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

  January 1851 (4th year of Kaei, Year of the Boar)

  anjiro heaved with every muscle in his back at the oars of the Adventurer, steering, he hoped, toward the islands he couldn’t see but knew lay behind him. He imagined the dark shapes appearing and disappearing in every swell of the sea.

  Everything had fallen into place, for the most part. From San Francisco he’d gone to Oahu. There he’d found his friends—a joyous reunion—and discussed with them his plan. They’d find an amenable captain to take them, and the whaleboat he’d purchased, on a ship bound for China. They would be dropped off near Japan, and they could row the rest of the way in the boat he’d named the Adventurer.

  It had all gone according to plan, more or less, except Toraemon wouldn’t come along, and Jusuke, Manjiro was sad
to learn, had died. But the captain of the Sarah Boyd had agreed to take them on as far as the waters off Japan. Now, on the day of their departure from the Sarah Boyd, it was storming.

  “‘Come back to Japan with me,’” Goemon shouted over the wind. “That’s what you said. You never said, ‘Perish in a storm with me.’”

  Manjiro shook the ice out of his hair and pulled on the oars again. He didn’t know if he propelled the boat toward land, held it steady, or was merely exhausting himself for nothing. But he pulled again.

  “We lived through a storm worse than this one,” Denzo said, “or have you forgotten?” Denzo bailed the water that sloshed over the side while Goemon cowered, moaning, in the bottom of the boat.

  There had been five of them that day ten years ago. Manjiro remembered clinging with his fingernails to the thwarts of their boat while it tossed in the stormy sea. The wind had howled; hail and sleet had poured from the roiling gray clouds. Just as it did now.

  “Toraemon was the smart one, staying in Oahu. Even Jusuke had the good sense to die before having to endure this!” Goemon groaned as another icy wave crashed over them. “Even if we make it through this storm, it’ll be only to have our heads chopped off by the shogun. We should have stayed in Oahu”—Goemon gripped the gunnels of the boat—“or at least stayed safe aboard the Sarah Boyd instead of getting in this little boat.”

  Manjiro gritted his teeth to prevent snapping at Goemon. He remembered how seasick Goemon had been on the John Howland, how he hated the sea and never wanted to be on it again. He had hated Bird Island, too, because it was surrounded by water.