Bernard Jean Bettelheim

It is said that by the age of ten beside Hungarian he could read and write in French, German, and Hebrew, though if his biographies are to be believed, he left home at 12 to become a teacher and continued his studies at five different schools.

He traveled much in these years, practicing medicine in a number of Italian cities, aboard an Egyptian naval vessel, and in a Turkish town called Magnesia, where, in 1840, he began studying Christianity.

[1] During his time in the Ottoman Empire, he held theological debates with local rabbis and published pamphlets on the matter in French; after facing salary disputes in Constantinople and resigning his post, Bettelheim made his way to London, where he hoped to gain authorization from the Church of England to preach to the Jewish communities of the Mediterranean.

Following several months of disputes with the Church of England, who refused to recognize his European degrees, insisted he study at Oxford or Cambridge, and were suspicious of someone who had so recently converted from Judaism, Bettelheim abandoned that particular quest, though he remained in London.

[2] Bettelheim became a naturalized British subject sometime later, married the daughter of a prominent thread producer, and, in 1844, his first child was born; she was named Victoria Rose.

After several months in Hong Kong, studying Chinese and mingling with British missionary society there, Bettelheim departed for Okinawa with his family in April 1846.

[3] Bettelheim arrived in Okinawa from Hong Kong on April 30, 1846, accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth M. Bettelheim, their infant daughter, Victoria Rose (born 1844), their infant son, Bernard James (born November 1845), "Miss Jane", a tutor and schoolmistress, and Liu Yu-Kan, a Cantonese translator, on board the British ship Starling.

The ship was welcomed at Naha by the local port master, who objected to the missionary's disembarking; the Starling's captain did not challenge him, and aimed to keep the Bettelheims on board.

The local officials offered the family shelter in the Gokoku-ji temple for the night, and the priests in residence there left, out of respect for the women's privacy.

Before long, he attracted the attention of the lords of Satsuma Domain in Japan, to which the Ryūkyū Kingdom was a vassal, as well as the Chinese authorities in Fukien, who took up the matter with British officials in Canton and Hong Kong; the doctor's embarrassing activities were obscured from his sponsors and related organizations in London, for a time.

He faced a great many obstacles in Okinawa, and blamed most of these difficulties on the Ryukyuan government, accusing them of conspiring against him, or chose to view them as his being tested by God or foiled by the Devil.

Despite a great personal distaste for Bettelheim on the part of several high officials, an opportunity was seen to somehow take advantage of the situation to press for use of Naha as a neutral trading ground, and as a stepping stone or base of operations from which to apply pressure to Japan.