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From the Olympics Toward Tomorrow

Shinano Mainichi

Realizing peace through conversation in English

A generation of survivors from more turbulent times

A sound that seemed to tear up the sky approached. Firebombs exploded, loudly sounding out. Every time they came the streets would light up and people would burn. So thought a fifteen year-old girl inside a dark air-raid shelter on March 10, 1945, the day of the great Tokyo bombing raids.

Keiko Iwano (age 67) of Inada, Nagano City was born in Tokyo. In 1942, the year after the beginning of the Pacific War, she continued her education by entering a private girls high school within the Tokyo metropolitan area. She was interested in the English learned in her classes. Her classmates complained before tests of having to "study the enemy's language." But she refuted them, saying, "I like it. I think we'll need to be able to speak English when the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere comes into power."

"The Japanese are the children of God. Westerners are children of the apes. That's what we were taught as soon as we could understand anything, and we believed it." She was raised under a militarist regime during her most impressionable time, and English study was "for her country." But the war situation was getting worse and the students at her school were drafted to work at a factory in nearby Kawasaki. English classes were of course cancelled.

She had a pointed knife with her, to be used should she be taken prisoner. She was determined to die if need be in that air-raid shelter. "Studying English and the piano" could have possibly been a wish sparked by the thought of her "being alive tomorrow."

After the war she married and moved to Nagano. Iwano had raised four children and was in her fifties when she seriously started studying English.

It was a bit frightening at first to attend English conversation classes. She couldn't understand a word of what her American English teacher said and her "mind was just totally blank." She was scared to even be looked at. It was shyness and plain fear. "I was 'allergic' to foreigners." But upon continuing the course she found that her "out of place feelings when talking to foreigners went away." She went on a trip overseas and gained even more confidence.

Her teacher said to her one day, "America sure did a terrible thing to Japan back then, didn't they..." Iwano replied with a simple smile. "I'm so happy that the day has come that I can be taught to speak English by an American."

Local retired persons and others welcome foreign athletes with English and various gestures at a World Cup Bobsleigh meet cultural exchange party, quickly becoming friends. (February 26, 1997; Asakawa Elementary School, Nagano City)

In Nagano City, where most of the Olympic activity will take place, English conversation schools are flourishing. In classes held at a local community center, sixty-year olds (and higher) planting themselves in the first row is a common spectacle. There are also those who value the time they have to study English for pleasure, truly intent on learning the language.

In March 1996 Asakawa district, where the bobsleigh and luge venue is located, held a welcoming party for athletes from around the world attending the Olympic test-run event. Katsumi Satoh (age 82) got to know one of the foreign athletes and took a photograph with him, standing with their hands around each other's shoulders. He says, "That was a fun time. We don't speak the same language but what was in our hearts was still communicated. I'd like to do it again in the same way during the Olympics."

Although he enjoyed it immensely, Satoh didn't have the chance to study much English during his school years when he was drafted and the busy reconstruction period after the war. After retirement his life took a sudden change. In 1990 he lost both his wife and oldest son to illness and was left to live alone. During this time of hardship he thought of the shortness of life-- "I can't just let life pass me by." He began going to an English class put on by a welfare organization and then later continued his studies at a local community center conducting classes.

Now English is a part of his life. A surprising amount of vocabulary to be studied daily is written on a small note pad he carries. Satoh keeps his journal in English as well. He is currently reading foreign travel guidebooks to brush up on his knowledge of countries overseas.

Satoh says, "My world is now much larger. I really want to know more and more about foreign countries." He'd like to "run like a buffalo" in the time he has left, said Satoh in an English speech at his class.

In June 1991 Iwano attended the festivities surrounding the IOC General Meeting in Birmingham, England to support Nagano's successful Olympic bid. She open-heartedly spoke with IOC members, trying to get in a little PR for Nagano. She was there when Nagano was chosen to host the Games. "It's like a dream that my English ability was, even to a small extent, able to be so helpful on such a stage." The deep emotion even now continues to renew her.

There are eight months left until the Games. Iwano says, "If foreigners need any kind of help, I'd like to give it to them. I'd really like them to think that Japanese are a kind people." A generation of people who survived turbulent times are doing their best to make up for time lost and warmly welcome the entire world.

No part of the article, photographs, or illustrations presented here may be printed or used without permission.

Copyright 1999 The Shinano Mainichi Shimbun