was one of the first Japanese citizens known to have reached present day

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. He and his fourteen-man crew, bound for

Edo Edo ( ja, , , "bay-entrance" or "estuary"), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a ''jōkamachi'' (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the ''de facto'' capital of ...

, were sailing off the

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese coast in 1813 when their ship, the ''Tokujomaru'', was disabled in a storm. The ship drifted across the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

, reaching the vicinity of Santa Barbara on the coast of

Alta California Alta California ('Upper California'), also known as ('New California') among other names, was a province of New Spain, formally established in 1804. Along with the Baja California peninsula, it had previously comprised the province of , but ...

, then part of

New Spain New Spain, officially the Viceroyalty of New Spain ( es, Virreinato de Nueva España, ), or Kingdom of New Spain, was an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, established by Habsburg Spain during the Spanish colonization of the Am ...

, in late March 1815. Oguri and two surviving crew members were rescued at sea by the

brig A brig is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: two masts which are both square rig, square-rigged. Brigs originated in the second half of the 18th century and were a common type of smaller merchant vessel or warship from then until the ...

''Forester'', under Captain William J. Pigot. According to the brig's

sailing master The master, or sailing master, is a historical rank for a naval officer trained in and responsible for the navigation of a sailing vessel. The rank can be equated to a professional seaman and specialist in navigation, rather than as a military ...

Alexander Adams, a ship in distress was spotted on 24 March 1815, which proved to be Japanese and had lost both mast and rudder. Captain Pigot sent Adams to ''Tokujomaru'', where he found the three survivors and brought them to ''Forester''. Details about the rescue differ in the accounts written by Adams, Pigot, and others such as the Russian Naval Officer Otto von Kotzebue, in part due to language difficulties. Pigot said that original crew of ''Tokujomaru'' was 14 or 17, but Adams and Kotzebue said it was 35. Fourteen corpses were found in the hold by the crew of ''Forester''. The reported time adrift varied between 13 and 18 months. The exact location of the rescue varied between reports as well, but it seems to have been up to west-southwest of Point Conception. ''Forester'', although flying a British flag was an American vessel, owned by

John Jacob Astor John Jacob Astor (born Johann Jakob Astor; July 17, 1763 – March 29, 1848) was a German-American businessman, merchant, real estate mogul, and investor who made his fortune mainly in a fur trade monopoly, by smuggling opium into China, and ...

, intended to support Astor's Pacific Fur Company (PFC) venture based at Fort Astoria at the mouth of the

Columbia River The Columbia River (Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, C ...

. But due to the

War of 1812 The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It bega ...

the PFC had been forced to sell all its assets in 1813, including Fort Astoria, to the Montreal–based

North West Company The North West Company was a fur trading business headquartered in Montreal from 1779 to 1821. It competed with increasing success against the Hudson's Bay Company in what is present-day Western Canada and Northwestern Ontario. With great weal ...

. Its original purpose lost, Captain Pigot used ''Forester'' for the

maritime fur trade The maritime fur trade was a ship-based fur trade system that focused on acquiring furs of sea otters and other animals from the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and natives of Alaska. The furs were mostly sold in China in ex ...

, in partial cooperation with the

Russian American Company The Russian-American Company Under the High Patronage of His Imperial Majesty (russian: Под высочайшим Его Императорского Величества покровительством Российская-Американс� ...

, which was hunting

sea otter The sea otter (''Enhydra lutris'') is a marine mammal native to the coasts of the northern and eastern North Pacific Ocean. Adult sea otters typically weigh between , making them the heaviest members of the weasel family, but among the small ...

s off the coast of California. Thus the rescued Japanese sailors were first taken to

Bodega Bay Bodega Bay ( es, Bahía Bodega) is a shallow, rocky inlet of the Pacific Ocean on the coast of northern California in the United States. It is approximately across and is located approximately northwest of San Francisco and west of Santa Ros ...

near Fort Ross, then to

Sitka russian: Ситка , native_name_lang = tli , settlement_type = Consolidated city-borough , image_skyline = File:Sitka 84 Elev 135.jpg , image_caption = Downtown Sitka in 1984 , image_size ...

, the capital of Russian America. The ''Forester'' left Sitka in June or July 1815, intending to sail to Japan to return the Japanese sailors, but having difficulty in the

Kuril Islands The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands (; rus, Кури́льские острова́, r=Kuril'skiye ostrova, p=kʊˈrʲilʲskʲɪjə ɐstrɐˈva; Japanese: or ) are a volcanic archipelago currently administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the ...

turned back to Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka, arriving on 12 September 1815. From there ''Forester'' returned to California. A Russian ship took the Japanese survivors back to Japan.

References

Maritime incidents in Japan Maritime incidents in the United States Castaways 1785 births 1852 deaths People from Aichi Prefecture {{Japan-bio-stub

See also

References