History caught up in a surprising way this summer with a fifth-generation descendant of an American immigrant who settled in an island 1,000 kilometers south of Tokyo in the early 19th century.

Takashi Savory, a resident of far-flung Chichijima island in the Ogasawara island chain, was presented with a replica of the Stars and Stripes flag that his ancestor received from Matthew Perry (1794-1858), commodore of the U.S. Navy who visited the island in 1853.

The original flag was burnt during World War II because his grandfather and other family members feared they would be persecuted as the offspring of Americans, Japan’s enemy at the time, if the authorities found out about it.

“I hope the new flag will help us pass on accounts of the vicissitudes of our island’s fortunes and the meaning of peace,” said Takashi, 63, who is descended from Nathaniel Savory (1794-1874), a native of Massachusetts who settled in Chichijima in May 1830.

The replica was presented as a symbolic gesture by Akira Kondo, a watch shop owner in Saijo, Ehime Prefecture, who was saddened by the Savory family’s decision to destroy the artifact treasured as part of its heritage.

The flag wasn’t the U.S. national emblem that everyone knows today. It bore the markings of the 31 stars that flew 168 years ago, when America had fewer states than it does now.

WAR TOOK ITS TOLL

Western powers were making advances into the Pacific to hunt whales in the early 19th century and set their sights on the Ogasawara island chain as a base for whaling operations.

Five individuals from the United States, Britain, Italy and Denmark, including Nathaniel, joined Pacific islanders to set up a colony of 20 or so immigrants on Chichijima, which was uninhabited at the time.

Perry arrived with a fleet of “Black Ships” off the Uraga district of today’s Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, in July 1853 to call on the Tokugawa Shogunate to lift its policy of more than two centuries of national isolation.

The commodore visited Chichijima the previous month. He appointed Nathaniel as chief magistrate of the island and gave him the Star-Spangled Banner to mark the occasion.

The Meiji government, which replaced the shogunate, set about developing Chichijima in 1875 and declared it Japanese territory the following year. About 70 islanders of Western descent later became naturalized Japanese citizens.

New settlers continued to arrive from Hachijojima island and elsewhere, and Chichijima’s population mushroomed to more than 5,000 during the Taisho Era (1912-1926).

During the 1930s, Chichijima was turned into an outpost of the imperial Japanese military.

When the United States became Japan’s enemy in World War II, Nathaniel’s grandson, who was Takashi’s grandfather, and other family members burned the Stars and Stripes flag.

In 1944, Japanese authorities conscripted 825 male residents of the Ogasawara island chain as civilian employees of the military and forcibly evacuated 6,886 islanders.

One of the conscripts was Swaney, a fourth-generation Savory who was Takashi’s uncle. Despite his American ancestry, he was killed fighting U.S. troops as a Japanese soldier.

“He was still in his mid-20s,” Takashi said in front of his uncle’s tomb in Chichijima. “That was the unhappiest time for us.”

FLAG AS A SYMBOL

Kondo, 83, read a newspaper article about the Savory family’s flag this spring. The newspaper was used as packing material for a carton of precision instruments for watches he had ordered from a manufacturer.

“How cruel,” he said to himself as he smoothed out the newspaper and read the article.

Kondo was aged 7 when the war ended. He knew all about hardships from the early postwar period.

“A national flag is tantamount to love of your homeland,” he recalled thinking. “I want to return the lost flag (to the family).”

Kondo consulted colleagues from the Iyo-Saijo indirect tax association, a group of business operators in Saijo. They made inquiries with museums across Japan and went through old books until they discovered what the original flag looked like.

Kondo commissioned a long-established flag shop to replicate a banner of that design. The replica, which was completed in June, measured 102 centimeters tall and 163 cm wide.

“I never thought it would be this big,” Takashi said, visibly caught up in emotion, as he held the flag that had arrived from Ehime Prefecture.

As a resident of Chichijima, Takashi has lived both under the U.S. military rule of the early postwar period and Japanese administration following the 1968 return of the Ogasawara island chain.

He used to work for the village government of Ogasawara, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Tokyo metropolitan government.

Takashi likes to think that his ancestors told Perry how people with diverse historical and cultural backgrounds were living side by side in peace on Chichijima.

“It was perhaps against the backdrop of the experience at Chichijima that Perry went on to hold talks with Japan without engaging in hostilities,” he said.