“They say that when I entered Santa Beatriz School I didn't speak Spanish, only Japanese,” my uncle Noboru tells me, while he caresses an injured leg and goes back sixty years in his memory. The same exercise, perhaps impertinent, that I ask my aunt Ritzuko and my mother Fumiko. My family seemed to have been born adults, since it is the first time we talked about their past. Suddenly it turns out that they had childhood and went to school, when being Nikkei was something else.
Santa Beatriz had until primary school, they studied double shifts with a lunch break, and in the summer they had classes in the mornings to reinforce the previous year. Noboru – I am happy to refer to my family in this article – does not have any photos of the school, but he makes a detailed memory of the premises on León Velarde Street, which is still there.
“We were few students, about 24 per grade, so we studied men and women, which was rare at that time.” That's what Noboru tells me, categorical and serious as always, but I can see emotion in the quick movements of his hand, the kind that he doesn't show in meetings and that I also see for the first time. Were you that excited as a child?
Although today the trend would be to reinforce Japanese customs, those were different times. It was more like integrating into a different society. Therefore, classes were in Spanish, and English was barely taught. Why would Japanese be taught if it was their mother tongue, the one they spoke at recess? “I studied with two girls who were not Nikkei. There was no difference in how we treated them, we were all very friends,” my aunt Ritzuko reveals to me. The truth is, I have some doubts, and I ask you:
–How did they do it if you spoke in Japanese?
–They learned, then. And they also taught. My friend Radishi, who came from Huánuco, taught us words in Quechua.
I think I hear a little girl giving explanations, as if Ritzuko were seven years old again. With that childish joy he changes his mood and, happily, tells me how beautiful the dining room was, “because we had lunch there, we didn't go back to our homes like in other schools, and the food was Creole, sometimes a little Japanese something.” . He speaks quickly, especially when he remembers “the warmth in the treatment that director Temoche gave them, he sometimes punished us, but he always told us why, he always taught us with love,” he says.
Class of 1950 from the Santa Beatriz school to which Ritzuko Sameshima belonged. (Photo: Taken from the Golden Book “Jishuryo” 1928 – 1978).
Interculturality from the entrance
The Santa Beatriz in the fifties still had a lot of Japanese, from the five minutes of daily exercise before entering classes, “at the rhythm of gymnastics, always guided by one of the students,” explains Noboru. Did I see or imagine that he moved his arms, his waist, as if repeating those childhood exercises?
It was an apprenticeship from the most basic, like when you learn a trade from a master. “We students organized ourselves to clean the patios, the bathrooms, erase the blackboard,” Noboru continues. They also participated in free expression scenarios, “we all went up on stage to do something, anything, sing, dance, recite, and we all had to go out. If you didn't know, you learned,” adds Ritzuko.
I know that they were both great athletes, Ritzuko as a volleyball setter and Noboru as a goalkeeper in the Leoncio Prado club. Today, sedentary, they don't give me more details about the undokai , great sports festivals. Modesty? Or were they not as good sports as I once heard?
There is one last detail that touches them both: “If we studied well, they took us to the beach,” Ritzuko remembers. “Once we went for a walk to Huampaní,” recalls Noboru. Yes, they were children, they enjoyed these excursions, “we went with our obento ,” says one of them, I don't remember who.
When they finished primary school, Noboru went to the Melitón Carvajal Great School Unit, and Ritzuko to the Commercial High School. The two assure that they did not feel any major differences.
–We were five Nikkei who stood in a gang, although also with other kids. There is always someone who wants to grab you, but if you defend yourself, nothing happens – says Noboru.
–The majority of the Santa Beatriz then went to the Lyceum, there were four or five of us, men and women, and we got along well with everyone –Ritzuko agrees.
I'm sure they weren't victims of bullying or anything, but I'm still intrigued by the mention of their Nikkei groups. I don't insist on the issue, they are still my uncles.
Local of the Santa Beatriz school. (Photo: Taken from the Golden Book “Jishuryo” 1928 – 1978).
The one who arrived late
My mother did not study at Santa Beatriz because her brothers “went to school accompanied by neighbors, but when it was my turn to go to school there was no one to take me,” she says. That's why he studied at the Cristóbal Colón Fiscal School, block 17 of Jirón Washington, two blocks from my obaachan Fumie's flower shop.
If my mother had been born earlier she would have studied high school at Lima Nikko. The thing is that this was expropriated in 1942, like many Japanese properties. My mother studied in the same place, but now converted into the Great Teresa González de Fanning School Unit.
Thus, my mother is a classmate of Gerardo Maruy, Father Manuel Kato or General Yamagawa, because they were the same classrooms, only more than a decade later, when the school was already only for women. The wooden pavilions and the baseball field remained, although that sport was no longer practiced. The cement parts were indeed construction of the Odría government, as if marking a difference in times, which were synthesized in the spirit of the new school.
But there was no plaque that gave an account of the Lima Nikko, nor did the teachers say so. “I knew about his story because at home they told me that I was going to study at a school that was expropriated during the war, that's what my dad repeated,” says my mother (it's hard for me to refer to her), longing for my ojiichan Seichi. .
–Would you have liked to study in a school for Japanese? –I ask him.
–No, because in those years we were proud to study in a large school unit. You had to take an exam to enter, and when you studied at a private school it was said that you were lazy – my mother comments on the prejudices of the time.
–And did you feel discriminated against?
–No, on the street I felt Peruvian. At home I felt Japanese, because of the ojiichan – yes mom, you miss him. Me too, although I didn't know him.
I feel that the words of those who decided the education of my mother and my uncles are missing from this chronicle: my ojiichan and my obaachan . They are no longer in this side of life and it will remain a mystery why they chose a Japanese school or not. I only know that my family's longing turned them into schoolchildren again, into children who remember their parents, to my surprise and joy.
* * *
Educational timeline
The Lima School (Lima Nikko) was founded in 1920 in Jesús María and was the first authorized by the Ministry of Education of Japan in all of Latin America. It was the largest Lima school of its time, and housed up to 1,800 students. It was expropriated in 1942. In 1952 it became the Teresa González de Fanning Great School Unit within the development plan of President Manuel A. Odría.
The Santa Beatriz School (Jishuryo) was founded in 1928 in the house of Mr. Jaime Kishi, moving in 1930 to the premises on León Velarde Street. During World War II its director, Motozo Nonomiya, was deported to Japan, but the school survived the expropriation and still functions as an Early Education Center.
At the suggestion of the Japanese consul Iwamura Zenzi, the directors of the Santa Beatriz school and the La Unión Stadium Association decide to build a school in the same stadium, in the Paracas district, in Pueblo Libre. In 1971, the school began its classes with 41 students and today it is one of the most important in Lima.
In the first port there are also Nikkei schools. In 1926, the Callao Nihonjin Shougakkou, called José Gálvez Egúsquiza, was founded. This would later merge with Minato Gakuen.
* This article is published thanks to the agreement between the Peruvian Japanese Association (APJ) and the Discover Nikkei Project. Article originally published in Kaikan magazine No. 71, and adapted for Discover Nikkei.
© 2012 Asociación Peruano Japonesa
