A museum in memory of the first Japanese to live in America, will open to the public on 7th May, the Japanese Consulate General in New York has said.The museum in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, is the house in which Manjiro Nakahama, also known as John Manjiro, resided during the mid-19th century.
Manjiro, a fisherman, stayed in the house after being rescued by an American whaling ship in 1841 in the Pacific. The house was formerly owned by William Whitfield, captain of the ship.
A Japanese civic group led by terminal-care physician Shigeaki Hinohara, collected donations to open the museum.
The museum has been renamed the Captain Whitfield-Manjiro Friendship Memorial House.
On learning that the house was due to be auctioned, Hinohara and other well-wishers began collecting donations and acquired it in November 2007 for about 50 million yen.
The civic group hopes the museum can help retrace the footsteps of Manjiro and commemorate people-to-people exchanges between Japan and the US.
Manjiro was born in a fishing village in present-day Kochi Prefecture, in 1827.
In 1841, he and four other fishermen were caught in a storm at sea and stranded on a small island in the Pacific.
Six months later, they were rescued by Whitfield's whaleship the John Howland.