Matthew Calbraith Perry plans to visit a far-flung island south of Tokyo where his famed namesake ancestor gave a 31-star U.S. flag to an American immigrant some 170 years ago.

The 80-year-old hopes to travel to Chichijima island in the Ogasawara island chain to meet Takashi Savory, a descendant of Nathaniel Savory, who received the Stars and Stripes from Commodore Matthew C. Perry (1794-1858).

Matthew, who resides in the U.S. state of Maryland, located Takashi in September after reading a translated Asahi Shimbun article about a replica of the original flag being presented to him by Akira Kondo, a resident of Saijo, Ehime Prefecture.

“I was very excited and pleased to learn about the U.S. flag donated by Akira Kondo to you recently,” he said in an email to Takashi, 64. “As a descendant of Commodore Perry, I have been very interested in the descendants of Nathaniel Savory.”

The commodore led his fleet of “Black Ships” to Uraga at the entrance to Tokyo Bay in 1853 and played a key role in opening Japan to the West after a national isolation policy of more than 200 years.

When he visited Chichijima in June 1853, a month before his arrival off Uraga, part of today’s Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, Perry appointed Nathaniel as chief magistrate of the island and gave him the U.S. flag.

Matthew, who has visited Japan many times as a director for the U.S. chapter of the Center for International Exchange, has never been to Chichijima, located 1,000 kilometers from the Japanese capital.

He wrote to Takashi that he hopes to visit the island as early as this year and that he was looking forward to meeting him and seeing the flag.

ORIGINAL FLAG BURNED DURING WAR

Takashi is a fifth-generation descendant of Nathaniel, who was originally from Massachusetts and came to Chichijima in May 1830. He was among about 20 people from the United States, Britain, Italy, Denmark and the Pacific islands who settled on Chichijima, which was uninhabited at the time.

The Meiji government declared Chichijima Japanese territory in 1876. About 70 islanders of Western and other regions’ descent later became naturalized Japanese citizens. They lived side by side with Japanese settlers, and Chichijima’s population mushroomed to more than 5,000 during the Taisho Era (1912-1926).

However, when the United States went to war with Japan in 1941, Nathaniel’s grandson, who was Takashi’s grandfather, and other family members burned Perry's American flag for fear of persecution.

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

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

REPLICA OF FLAG MADE FOR FAMILY

Kondo, 83, a watch shop owner, learned about the sad history of the Savory family through a newspaper article last spring.

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

The flag that Perry gave Nathaniel bore only 31 stars, fewer than the 50 on the present-day U.S. flag, representing the number of states in the union at the time.

Kondo researched the original flag’s design with his colleagues from the Iyo-Saijo indirect tax association, a group of business operators in Saijo, and commissioned a specialist shop to replicate a banner of that design.

He gave the completed replica, measuring 102 centimeters tall and 163 cm wide, to Takashi last summer.

Matthew contacted Takashi and Kondo via his Japanese acquaintances and the Asahi Shimbun reporter who wrote the original article.

Kondo said, “I’m really happy that I received words of thanks from a descendant of Commodore Perry.” Takashi said that he’s looking forward to Matthew’s visit to Chichijima.

In an article for the Center for International Exchange's newsletter published in December, Matthew wrote: "These individual acts of kindness and respect (by Kondo) are important in the current tensions around the world and are greatly needed for world peace."

The center (http://www.manjiro.or.jp/e/) holds an annual gathering of Japanese and American citizens called the Japan-America Grassroots Summit, alternately in Japan and the United States, to celebrate the friendship between John Manjiro (Nakahama Manjiro) and Captain William Whitfield.

Manjiro (1827-1898) was the first Japanese known to have lived in the United States after he was marooned off Japan’s coast. He was rescued by Whitfield who brought him back with him to the United States.

Matthew, who has visited Japan since 2009 to attend the summit, told The Asahi Shimbun, “It was very satisfying to make personal contact with Mr. Savory and Mr. Kondo,” and “I hope some day to meet both of them.”