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#REDIRECT [[Samuel Wells Williams]]
Williams was a Protestant missionary based in China, and had been to Japan once previously, in [[1837]] aboard the ''[[Morrison]]''. He was hired by Perry's mission in China, along with [[Anon L.C. Portman]], a Dutch language interpreter. While his Chinese-language reading and writing abilities were valuable for reading and constructing official documents, it is said that his spoken Japanese was insufficient; in their respective diaries, Williams and [[Bernard Bettelheim]], a missionary the mission met in Ryûkyû, are harshly critical of one another's language abilities, manner, and approach.
