Heco, Joseph, 1837-1897

Joseph Heco (1837-1897) was a Japanese-American journalist and newspaperman.

Hikozo Hamada, the farmer's son who would become Joseph Heco, was born in 1837, toward the end of the Tokugawa Era, a time of the closing of Japan to foreign influence. A few years after his father's death, his mother remarried. Fortunately the fatherless boy had been accepted to a temple school for training and education, an unusual occurrence for someone of his social class. His stepfather, a seaman on a freighter often away from home, loved and continued to care for the boy when the mother subsequently died during his twelfth year.

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