Joseph Heco (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Joseph Heco (September 20, 1837-December 12, 1897) was the first Japanese person to be naturalized as a United States citizen and the first to publish a Japanese language newspaper.Hikoz Hamada was born in Harima province, the son of a local landowner. Following his father's death, his mother remarried. The fatherless boy had been accepted by a temple school for training and education, something unusual for someone of his social class. His mother died when he was twelve, but his stepfather, a seaman on a freighter often away from home, continued to care for the boy. A year later when returning from Edo after a sightseeing journey, their ship, the Eiriki Maru, was wrecked in a severe storm in the Pacific.