The Bonin Islanders, also known as the Ogasawara Islanders or Ōbeikei tōmin (欧米系島民, lit.

[1] They are culturally and genetically distinct from other Japanese ethnic groups such as the Yamato, Ainu, and Ryukyuans as they are the modern-day descendants of a multitude of racial and ethnic groups including the Europeans, White Americans, Polynesians, and Kanaks who settled Hahajima and Chichijima in the 19th century.

[2][3][4] The first documented instance of human occupation of the Bonin Islands took place in 1830, when Matteo Mazzaro, a British citizen from Ragusa, Austria-Hungary (now Dubrovnik, Croatia), who would serve as governor, settled the island of Chichijima.

He was accompanied by Nathaniel Savory, a White American from Massachusetts, John Millencamp, an American, Henry Webb and Charles Robinson, both Englishmen, Joaquim Gonsales, a Portuguese man, and approximately twenty Native Hawaiians, whose personal names were not recorded.

Though Savory was American, his expedition had been commissioned by British forces, making it a British settlement.