EASC Newsletter: October 2001

• In Memory of a Nation's Loss
• San Francisco Peace Treaty Luncheon
  

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  In Memory of a Nation's Loss:
  Japanese Students Send Paper Cranes to New York City
  

Japanese language classes were unusually silent for a few minutes in late September. Not the normal silence that comes with trying to remember the correct use of wa and ga, but because the students were folding paper cranes as a symbolic remembrance of the September 11 disasters.

Soon after the terrorist attacks, EALC professor Yasuko Ito Watt learned that Yasumi Kuriya at the University of Iowa had given her students the task of folding paper cranes to send to the Red Cross in New York. Purdue University Professor Kazumi Hatasa contacted a number of Midwestern colleges and universities, proposing that they join together to send enough cranes to the Red Cross to represent the estimated number of people who lost their lives. In just over a week IU students, faculty, and staff made 10 strings of cranes, each containing 100 individual cranes. Japanese students and faculty from Carlton College, the University of Iowa, Grand Valley State University, Calvin College, Jefferson High School, and Tippecanoe Middle School also took part. In total the schools collected over 10,000 cranes to send to New York, along with their thoughts and condolences.

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Remembering the Pacific Peace Treaty

On September 13, a gathering hosted by EASC commemorated the 50th anniversary of the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, a signature moment in the foundation of the modern international peace network. Coming just two days after the World Trade Center bombing, commemoration of a key event in international peace took on added significance.

The Bloomington luncheon was part of a series of commemorations organized around the country by A50, a private Japanese initiative with the purpose of showing appreciation for the United States' friendship and cooperation. A50 attendees at the EASC event included Hirotsugu Iikubo, Founder of the A50 Movement and Chairman and CEO of Decision System, Inc., Masayuki Tadokoro, Professor at the National Defense Academy, and Tomomi Sukagawa of Keio University.

The events in Bloomington, sponsored by theJapan-America Society of Indiana (JASI), began with a visit to the Lilly Library, at which Breon Mitchell, Lilly's director, showed the guests a number of Japan-related documents. This was followed by a luncheon at the University Club in the Indiana Memorial Union, hosted by EASC Director George Wilson, Associate Director Jacques Fuqua, and JASI Executive Director Theresa Kulczak. Marsha Bradford from the City of Bloomington and Japanese students Susumu Yoshida, Noriko Miyazaki and Ryan Yoshimoto also attended.

The luncheon began with a moment of silence for victims of the September 11 tragedy. This was followed by a series of toasts given by Iikubo, Kulczak, and Patrick O'Meara, Dean for International Programs. Iikubo also presented a gift of Japanese books to the Lilly Library on behalf of the A50 Movement.

The San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed September 8, 1951, bringing a formal end to World War Two hostilities and ending the five-year foreign occupation of Japan. The Treaty symbolized Japan's reentry into the global community of nations, led to its admittance to the United Nations in 1956, and is commonly recognized as the beginning of the "Era of the Pacific."

Japan-America Society of Indiana: http://www.in-japan.org/
A50 Project: http://www.us-japan.org/jasc/a50/a50.htm

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