"But in that time Japan refused to accept ships from Macao, even at Nagasaki, because Portuguese priests, who longed for martyrdom, used Macao as their point of departure. My father’s contacts in Macao dried up, or moved to Manila. By that time he was no longer in the silver business anyway. So he began to trade between Manila and a certain smuggler’s harbor in northern Honshu, near Niigata. His fame spread as far as Rome, and soon Jesuits began to arrive in Manila from Goa in the west and Acapulco in the east, and to request him by name. He would take them up to Niigata, where they would be met by Japanese Christians who would take them up into the mountains to preach the Word of the Lord and serve holy communion in secret. But at the same time my father would bring aboard other Japanese Christians who had fled from this persecution. He would convey them down to Manila where there was, and is, a large community of such persons.