Makiko Endo, age 28, teacher.
Dear, Ms. Iwase,
Hello. Nice to meet. I am a teacher from Yokohama. I’ve written the thesis about the literature of the Holocaust when I was a graduated student. [For my graduate thesis I wrote a paper on the Literature of the Holocaust.] For writing my thesis, I visited Auschwitz in Poland and then kept thinking about “what peace is” through exploring literary words. Of course, I did not experience the wars nor the Holocaust, so I ask you to please forgive my ignorance when talking about wars or other historical tragedies. However, I cannot help but think about peace. Where does my feeling come from? Saying “We shouldn’t start wars” or “Peace is important” is really easy but I cannot describe my feeling toward peace by these simple words. Where my feeling comes from is the idea: a life is more important than anything else. We, human beings must love someone or be loved by someone. That is what happiness is. For whatever reason, I must feel sad and a sense of loss when that happiness is deprived of by someone somewhere. I always don’t know what words I should give to my students who are at puberty. I fail to express my true intention or understand what they are thinking, I feel I must learn to be more humble. I often think “Forgive me. I cannot help you.” Nevertheless, I strongly want my students to love others and be loved by others.
In October, my students and I visited N.Y. for a school trip. During our stay, we visited 9.11 memorial; we called it ground zero. Before visiting there, we watched a movie where two of planes were crashed into the World Trade Center buildings over and over again. I was thinking “what should I do to make students not look back at history but also describe what peace is?” Though thinking about this question, I came up an idea that my students draw pictures which represents peace on white T-shits. As well as, why not showing their works to students in the US?
Some students drew olives, doves, canes and daisies as symbols of peace and others drew several connecting heart threads showing love connects forever and 5 students standing side by side with the letters PEACE shaped as stick figures.
Students in the US said “I appreciate that you thought about peace by thinking about 9.11.”
Not only 9.11 but also other conflicts, we cannot judge who is right and who is wrong on our subjectivities because they have their own stories.
Nevertheless, I strongly think it is important for us to try to understand other’s personal and historical memories to build the world in which we can co-exist with others. In order to do that, I as a teacher want to give children chances to think how to make our world more beautiful. One way to do that is shared experiences from those who have endured conflict with the young minds who are experiencing the world for the first time.
Ms. Iawase, even though it has over 70 years after the war, our society is yet so complicated that we feel it’s difficult to reflect the lessons of wars on our living. Current society’s minorities are rejected. As I am watching news I can’t help but think how weak democracy is in the world. As AI is arising in our society, our human roles might be deprived of certain things. I am worried about how children will live in this world in the future.
However, what I want to say is that children should cherish their lives given by parents. To cherish their lives is to give someone love. I want to share my feelings and experiences; that way I am needed by someone with love. I like to imagine a world where we humans are capable of loving one another and there is no need for sin.
Makiko Endo