Les and Sadie Lowrey return to Okinawa after 50 years
My wife Sadie and I plus our three teen age daughters went to Okinawa in the summer of 1965 sent by the United Christian Missionary Society. Our job was to teach English Conversation at Okinawa Christian Institute; and our assignment was for one year. The school was a two year college sponsored by The United Church of Okinawa (the Kyodan). During our first year there Miss Itoko Maeda,who had founded the school, was returning to the US and Mr. Osamu Taira was taking over as President of the college. He had been trained for this position in the US, and he became the youngest college president in Asia. He asked us to stay for a second year and we agreed. So did the UCMS.
My wife Sadie and I plus our three teen age daughters went to Okinawa in the summer of 1965 sent by the United Christian Missionary Society. Our job was to teach English Conversation at Okinawa Christian Institute; and our assignment was for one year. The school was a two year college sponsored by The United Church of Okinawa (the Kyodan). During our first year there Miss Itoko Maeda,who had founded the school, was returning to the US and Mr. Osamu Taira was taking over as President of the college. He had been trained for this position in the US, and he became the youngest college president in Asia. He asked us to stay for a second year and we agreed. So did the UCMS.
It was a wonderful and exciting time in our lives. The students had already had several years of English language study by teachers who didn’t speak English. The had a reasonable vocabulary of English words, but had difficulty pronouncing, and could not put a sentence together. They were English majors and anxious to learn. By the end of one semester many of them could carry on a basic conversation. After two years they were reasonably fluent.
We corresponded with some of them for a few years, but gradually lost touch. About two years ago Don Sarton, Vice President of The Christian Church Foundation, decided to go to Okinawa and visit the site where his father had been killed in the fmal days of World War II. He asked me to put him in touch with someone who could show him the Island. I contacted Minoru Oshiro who had been a teacher at OCI when we were there. Thus began a correspondence with some of my former friends and students. So in November 2006, I went to Okinawa for a reunion with former students. Daughter Janna Merrick went with me.
Well, those 20 year old students were now nearing retirement age. They showed us around the Island, including a visit to the Prayer and Peace Memorial Park where there is a wall similar to our Vietnam Wall that lists all 230,000 people killed in the Battle of Okinawa. Both the Japanese military and U S military are listed along with all of the civilians they could identify. Like Don Sarton a year earlier, we found his father’s name listed along with about 12,000 US military.
OCI, which changed its name to Okinawa Christian Junior College nearly 40 years ago, is still referred to as OCI by the former students. It is in a new location and shares a campus with Okinawa Christian University. The two schools now have about 800 students—up from about 100 forty years ago. We visited on their festival day.
The climax of our week was our last night when they arranged a dinner party for us at our hotel. Some 20 of my students from 40 years ago came plus a few faculty and the President of the University and College. I’ll confess that I could not recall all of their names! But I remembered at least half of them quite well. What a great evening it was. There were speeches, gift giving, an impassioned prayer by one former student who is a minister today, and the evening ended with the whole group singing several Okinawan songs and concluding with “God Be With You Till We Meet Again”. They sang all four verses in Japanese; I sang the first verse four times in English!
The President of the University was amazed that former students had kept in touch with one another for 40 years. The former students all looked beautiful—much more so than 40 years ago. Some of them had maintained their English better than others. What have they done with their lives? One is Superintendant of Education on a neighboring island, one grows chrysanthemums for the florist trade, one is a minister, one taught English in elethentary school~for 35 years, another has worked on a US military base for many years. One of the boys married an American girl and now lives in Texas. One of the girls married an American missionary and lives in Fuokuoka, Japan. Four of the boys married girls they met at OCI. Most of them have children and grandchildren now.
I don’t know how many are practicing Christians, but they sang “God Be With You” with more feeling than I have ever heard it sung in our US churches. We wonder sometimes if missionary work has any lasting values. True, governments change, wars come, and time itself destroys some of our work. But I am convinced that the two years we spent in Okinawa so long ago has had as much lasting value-perhaps more—as any work I accomplished in about 50 years as pastor of churches here at home.
W. Leslie Lowrey