Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry Memorial Ceremony

The final event of the Japan-America Friendship Festival. JASNE, Navy League of Newport, City of Newport RI, and the Shimoda delegation will hold a solemn ceremony at the gravesite of Newport-native Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry on Sunday morning. Commodore Perry is most famous for his 1852-1854 expedition to Japan and for signing the Treaty of Peace and Amity (aka the Kanagawa Treaty) with Japan on 31 March 1854. That treaty was the first treaty the “closed nation” of Japan signed with another country. It opened the country to trade with America at two ports. Perry’s Black Ships entered the first one—Shimoda—in May 1854.