The poorest fishermen in Japan climbed down a cliff in a storm to save a ship full of Americans. An American diplomat wrote it down. The report is still in the U.S. State Department's files. July 1892. The American merchant ship North American left Kobe for New York, loaded with tea. A storm tore her sails apart, and the wind drove her onto the rocks of a tiny village on the coast of Tokushima. The ship rolled onto her side. The crew climbed the masts. One mast snapped. The shore was a cliff. The waves were too big for any boat. The villagers came anyway. Someone on the ship got a rope out toward the rocks. A villager caught it with a long pole and tied it to the root of a tree. Then they pulled the sailors in, one man at a time. The first officer later told the American minister in Tokyo that villagers were lowered on ropes from 100 feet up the cliff, into the surf, to drag exhausted men through the waves. The ship broke apart right after the last man came ashore. The minister wrote that these were fishermen in the most desperate poverty. After the rescue, they competed with each other to give the strangers their small household treasures. He called it a story of courage and humanity rarely, if ever, surpassed. Then he asked Congress to send them money. Not a medal. Money for boats and nets, so they could keep fishing. I don't know if Congress ever paid. But America wrote it down. And kept it for more than 130 years. I am Japanese. Thank you for remembering what my people did.