Non fiction

The True Happiness Might Lie Next to You

I returned home to Kume Island in Okinawa during the spring vacation. During that period, I had a memorable event in my life.

It was a nice weather, so, I went out to the gateball (*1) field as usual and I was picking some cherries there. After a while, many oba and oji (*2) in my neighbourhood came out to the field and came close to me as soon as they spotted me.

They were over 90 years old already and most of them were teachers in the past. I was just curious about the educational system and education in their childhood, so I asked many questions about it to them one after another.

Then I found that the shortage of school teachers was the main educational problem all over the place in Okinawa at that time, because most of young men went to battle during the World War Ⅱ. To resolve the teacher shortage, women who graduated from high school got an intensive on-the-job training and made a big role in education. In addition to it, they taught me about the wartime education including the Imperial Rescript on Education and thought controls. Sometimes, I had some troubles in listening to what they were talking about because of their strong uchina-guchi (*3), but I did understand that they were keen to tell what they had gone through during the war.

In the end of the conversation, an over 90-year-old oji who was a former veteran from Yamato (*4) gave an important message to me. He said, “From my point of view, children of today are very, very happy, because to receive an education is so easy and they assume that going to school is nothing special. How happy they are…”

I just wonder how many children and people would really get the meaning of this message and how many years will it take for me to appreciate the word …

I’ll study hard for me to be able to do that, so please, please live much longer, I desperately wished and muttered in my mind...

*1: It is a Japanese croquet, which is mainly for the old.

*2: Oba means the elder women and Oji means the elder men in Okinawan

dialect.

*3 It is an ordinary term for Okinawan dialect

*4 It is a Japanese strongest vessel during World War Ⅱ.

Chihiro Furuya