Reading Journal — Heart of a Samurai
Below is my summary of the reading
One day, Manjiro was out fishing when the wind started howling and their ship broke and they had to drift until they saw a bird and they guessed that it meant land. So then they drifted to the land and there was only birds. So they had to feast on raw birds every day. One night, the night when Denzo gave them wooden planks to sleep on, 2 boats came. Then they took them to their captain who took them aboard the John Howland and took Manjiro to Massachusetts. It took three and a half years to get there. And when they did get there, they had 2,761barrels full of whale oil. Manjiro was now sixteen, and when he walked into Fairhaven, at the final few blocks, captain Whitfield started whistling. When he got to his house, he saw that it was empty, so he sat down on the sidewalk and Isaachar/Itchy’s father saw them and they asked them to come in. They were cooking steaming chowder for dinner. They went to bed after dinner. The next morning, Manjiro’s father said he was going to New York to look for a person that he wanted to have as a wife.
When he came back, he got a new wife named Albertina. She smiled a lot and immediately, Manjiro liked her. They made a nice farm and they built a nice house with glass windows and wool carpets. They had a horse named plum duff. One day he fell off plum duff and he tumbled into a field of alfalfa. He looked up and saw a person. He introduced himself. He told him that his name was Terry. Next he asked what happened. So Manjiro told him. By afternoon, they found the horse and agreed to shorten the name to Duffy. One day Manjiro went to school. The school name was Mrs. Allen’s school. He learned reading, writing and penmanship. He learned all that stuff with little kids. At the end of school, he would do chores. But sometimes he would work on the farm with Terry. At the end of school one day, Captain Whitfield told him next year he would be trying a school named Bartlett school of navigation where they learn secrets of navigation and other things. On the first day, he got taunted a lot. One day, he had a horse race with the person who taunted him. The guy had the fastest horse in town(the dudes dad.) Manjiro lost.
That day, he learned that his father was going to go to ship life again and he would be at the cooper store for apprenticeship. They usually got ill ‘cause there were cracks that let snow in and they didn’t have food. One day, Davis, one of his shipmates found him and asked him if he wanted to sign on a ship named the franklin as a steward. He said he would be sailing in the Japanese waters and he might be able to go home. So he said yes but on board the franklin, Davis was mean. They sailed to California first. Albertina already had a baby and he was about three years old. In California, he found a parrot and he bought it. He taught it Japanese so he could learn some Japanese. But when he got home, he learned that William Henry had died. One day, Terry and Manjiro went to California, and Manjiro got one peice of gold. After that day, he was sailing home with his friends on the Adventurer. When they got home, they were asked questions. Then finally they were able to go home.
Summary: The story is interesting because the Americans were nice to them. Manjiro made friends on the John Howland. He even accepted to be Captain Whitfeild’s son. I like the story because Manjiro turned into a Samurai; and Samurai is cool.
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