Nakahama Manjirō (January 27, 1827 – November 12, 1898)

Called the U.S.’s first ambassador to Japan, a 14-year-old
fisherman by the name of Manjiro was considered America’s
first Japanese immigrant, arriving in the country on May 7,
1843, by way of a whaling ship.

According to the National Endowment of the Humanities,
the boy and his crew were caught in a violent storm, with
their ship eventually washing up on a desert island 300
miles away from their coastal Japanese village.

Rescued five months later by an American whaling ship,
Manjiro was adopted by American Capt. William Whitfield,
who renamed him John Mung and brought him back to the
states to his home in Massachusetts.

In Gearhart Mountain, Oregon, Mrs. Elsie Mitchell and five
neighborhood children were killed while attempting to drag
a Japanese balloon out of the woods.

They were the first and only known American civilians to be
killed in the continental United States during World War II.

The U.S. government eventually gave $5,000 in compensation
to Mitchell’s husband, and $3,000 each to the families of Edward
Engen, Sherman Shoemaker, Jay Gifford and Richard and Ethel
Patzke, the five slain children.

The explosive balloon found at Lakeview was a product of one
of only a handful of Japanese attacks against the continental
United States, which were conducted early in the war by
Japanese submarines and later by high-altitude balloons
carrying explosives or incendiaries.

The April 18, 1942, Doolittle Raid on Japan early in World War
II bolstered American spirits just months after the surprise
attack on Pearl Harbor and the loss of the U.S. territories of
Guam and the Philippines. 

   
The commander of the raid, Army Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle (second from left).

               
CAMILLE BOHANNON

                
MIKE GRACIA