Due to Japan's strict isolation laws during the early 1800s, fourteen-year-old Manjiro and four other fishermen shipwrecked on an island wondered if they would ever be allowed to return. Manjiro became the first Japanese person to arrive in the United States, and eventually took part in one of the most important events of the nineteenth century, the opening of Japan.

Rhoda Blumberg author of Newbery Honor Book Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun, expertly relays Manjiro's exciting true story in this lucid historical nonfiction.