Joseph Heco

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, their ship, the Eiriki Maru (栄力丸), was dismasted and blown off course in a severe storm in the Pacific.

The American freighter Auckland picked up seventeen survivors from the sea and brought them to San Francisco in February 1851.

[1] In 1852 the group was sent to Macau to join Commodore Matthew Perry as a gesture to help open diplomatic relations with Japan.

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, D.C. as his secretary.

[2] Realizing the treaty ports in Japan were scheduled to open on July 1, 1859, Heco left his ship and went to Hong Kong.

In 1863, Heco began his publishing career with Hyōryūki (漂流記 Record of a Castaway), an account of his experiences in America.

[citation needed] 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.

In June 1867, Kido Koin and Itō Hirobumi (Chōshū 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.

Heco later helped Itō visit England with the assistance of British Admiral Henry Keppel of the H.M.S.

In February 1868, the victorious forces of the Boshin War of the Meiji Restoration 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 CSS Stonewall to the Japanese government.

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 a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Joseph Heco, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 30+ works in 100+ publications in 5 languages and 1,100+ library holdings.