Sakae Tsuboi

Another book I wish I'd bought the English edition for in the first place! The synopsis describes the book as a fictional account of a young female teacher, with 12 little kids surrounding a lady as its cover. I say, it's another teacher story - bring it on then!


The story revolves around the life of Ms. Oishi (later, Mrs. Oishi), a young lady fresh out of a teacher's school. Because of her lack of experience, and her youth, she's assigned to a village school, located just across her own village in rural Japan.

Set during the start of WWII with Japan entering the Pacific theater as major player, it was the time when the Japanese government required all men to go to the front line and fight for the country. When she's just started teaching, Ms. Oishi had 12 students in her first grade class. Later on, through many adventures, we learned that most of these kids managed stay in touch with Ms. Oishi until the end of WWII, right after Japan's Emperor declared that the country has lost the war.



I don't want to give away much of the unraveling of Ms. Oishi's life - it's been made into a movie in 1954 and there's now a movie village that preserves the old set - but I'd like to share the gist of the book - that it unabashedly supports pacifism without being preachy. You can't help feeling helpless when Ms. Oishi learned about the fate of most of her male students who lost their lives fighting in faraway land. You can't help thinking like she did about how young talents and opportunities for better future were wasted in the name of war. Certainly, when looking at how Japan had come a long way from its past, I can understand why its armed forces are almost nonexistent. The Japanese now choose to pick their battles by winning the war through the advances of technology and education. Maybe they've learned from the past war, after all, but not many countries did..

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