On June 27, 1841, the ship encountered five Japanese fishermen who had been cast away on the small uninhabited island of Tori-shima, one of whom was the 14-year-old Manjirō Nakahama.

Manjirō's four friends found employment there, but he begged to remain with Whitfield and continue on the voyage back to Fairhaven.

In the interim he arranged for Manjirō to board with the family of his friend Eben Akin and asked Jane Allen, a local teacher, to tutor Manjiro in preparation for formal schooling in the autumn.

[2] After William and Albertina's marriage, Manjirō lived with them as a member of the family, first in their house on Cherry Street in Fairhaven and then at their farm at nearby Sconticut Neck.

In his later years, he became active in local politics, serving as a selectman of Fairhaven from 1871 to 1873 and as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1872 to 1873.

[1]In 1870 Manjirō was a member of a Japanese government commission sent to Europe to study military science during the Franco-Prussian War.

Afterwards he went to the United States, was formally received in Washington, and then made his way by train to Fairhaven where he spent the night with Whitfield and his family at their farm in Sconticut Neck.

[4] Twenty years after his death, Nakahama's eldest son gifted a 14th-century samurai sword to the people of Fairhaven in gratitude for his father's rescue and the education he had received in the town.

After a wreath-laying on Whitfield's grave, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States presented the sword in a ceremony on July 4, 1918.

[1] Calvin Coolidge, at the time Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, gave the welcoming address, concluding with: This sword was once the emblem of place and caste and arbitrary rank.

On hearing this, Japanese members of the society began raising funds to buy and renovate it as a gift to Fairhaven.