Who would have guessed that during the 1960s, student protesters at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., spent a night on the table on which the Portsmouth Peace Treaty was signed?
That's one of the tidbits I ran across while reporting a story for the New Hampshire Sunday News.
"Tables and chairs" is an account of the furniture that was in Building 86 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard during treaty negotiations between Russia and Japan in August and September 2005. It's not really a story about furniture -- it's a tale of human triumph and loss, a look at the complicated dance that is the relationship between Japan and the United States.
In 1905, the U.S. government was eager to recoup expenses for the fancy fittings it had purchased for the treaty negotiations, and it sold the furniture at auction as soon as the ink was dry on the treaty.
While in Japan last month, I met with Masayoshi Matsumura, president of the Russo-Japanese War Association. He's the man that found the table and got it back to Japan, though it took him 17 years.
I would guess he is in his 80s, but he remembers the events of 1971 with crystal clarity. We sat at a coffee shop outside his home in Narashino City, an hour's train ride from Tokyo. Licensed tour guide Sumiyo Terai kindly translated and made sure we all had cake and coffee.
Mr. Matsumura discovered the table's whereabouts in 1971 from Portsmouth historian Thomas C. Wilson, who was an avid collector himself. The table had been purchased for $100 by Rear Admiral Charles W. Parks, a civil engineer at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and an 1884 graduate of Rensselaer. Parks bequeathed it to his alma mater in 1930. That's how it ended up in the board of directors' meeting room that hippie RPI-ers occupied in the 1960s.
Rensselaer's president eventually agreed to give the table to the Japanese, but only if Matsumura and company raised a hefty sum for a fellowship for Japanese graduate students.
"Now there are many foundations," Matsumura said, "but in those days it was quite difficult."
But he did it. In 1988 the table was shipped to what Matsumura described as the "Williamsburg of Japan," the Museum Meiji-Mura in Japan's Aichi prefecture, a two-hour journey by train from Tokyo.
Matsumura is still triumphant about getting the table back to Japan. But the fact that he didn't get one of the chairs -- specifically the one sat in by lead Japanese negotiator and iconic figure Jutaro Komura -- still sticks in his craw.
According to Matsumura, he told historian Thomas Wilson the chair was at the Emma Willard School for Girls in Troy, N.Y., (not far from Renssalaer). Without saying a word, Wilson went behind his back and bought the chair for $500, according to Matsumura. That chair is now in the possession of the Portsmouth Athenaeum and is part of a centennial exhibit at the Portsmouth Historical Society's John Paul Jones House Museum.
Of course, there were a dozen chairs around the treaty table, and I asked Portsmouth Athenaeum Keeper Thomas Hardiman if he knew of the whereabouts of the other chairs. Various worthies -- many in New Hampshire -- are said to own them. One turned up on e-Bay recently that was almost certainly a fake.
So we've come full circle, from 1905 to hippies to e-Bay. Find out more by checking out my story. I'd love to hear your comments.