The younger brother of Oliver Hazard Perry, Matthew C. Perry is credited with "opening" Japan to the West. In 1852 the U.S. Department of the Navy selected him to lead a naval mission to Japan with the purpose of gaining a treaty to protect shipwrecked American seamen and to expand U.S. commerce. Perry presented a letter from President Millard Fillmore to the emperor and began his negotiations only after making an impressive show of U.S. naval force in Tokyo Bay, an example of "gunboat diplomacy." A treaty that provided for Japan to protect shipwrecked American sailors, to sell coal to U.S. ships, and to open two ports to American merchants was signed on March 31, 1954.