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TI: So when you, when you got through all that, what did you learn about special education in Japan?

HL: It was, that's another thing that's interesting is education kind of reflects the society. Okay, here we have to get our kids ready to go out and apply for a job and so on and all that. There they usually place them in jobs, so they don't have to hassle this getting the kids ready to, to fill out a form and how to do interviews and all that because what they will do is they will find a place and they will place them, and then they would be expected to function there. And so their whole emphasis would be different, and the one thing I found out in Japan was semantics. When you say something, make sure the other person and you are on the same wavelength, because if you say, well, we do it differently, their back went up just so fast 'cause they felt I was criticizing. And I would always have to backtrack and say, now look, this is the way we do it because this is why we have to do. You don't have this problem. You have a different problem and so you have to teach to that, and that's what you're doing, so we do it differently, but we're getting to the same place. And another thing that was interesting was you talked to these teachers and they could not understand what coeducation was. To them coeducation meant you had to have the same number of men and same number of women, same number of boys, same number of girls. And I said no, no, no. I said I went to a college that was eight hundred girls and five boys, and it was still coeducational. [Laughs] And they could not understand that. And another thing they had difficulty with was the concept of democracy, because they could not, they could not distinguish between anarchy and democracy, and so I spent more time going over, well, you know it means there's responsibilities, there's this and that and that this is privilege, with that it's responsibility, and that it isn't that you do what you feel like doing. But, but so one thing I learned in Japan is when you're talking to somebody make sure they know what you're talking about.

TI: Because you may assume they, they know, but they really may be on a whole different wavelength in terms of what --

HL: Yeah, and just like the same word, like when we say sekinin it means a certain thing, but to them it's a different meaning because they grew up in a different culture. And our sense of responsibility, we think of it in a certain way because this is the culture we grew up in. And so I found that the only thing you can do is keep on saying, "What do you mean by that? Give me an example." I'll give example about what I mean and sometimes we've been arguing and arguing and find out we're talking about the same thing except that the words meant different things.

TI: I know from a business context, early on American businesspeople would have a hard time working with Japanese businesses, I think for the same thing, these communication where American would say one thing and they would think that, because the Japanese would nod their heads, that they understood, but they're thinking something totally different.

HL: Yeah, you have to, I found that you always had to go back and say, "Now what do you mean? Give me an example. I'll give you an example." And then when you did that you finally came to a point where you knew what each other was talking about.

TI: Well, and you had the advantage of speaking Japanese. At least you could speak in Japanese and get that hammered out.

HL: Yeah.

TI: I mean, oftentimes you have most Americans speaking English and then they're speaking Japanese with an interpreter going back and forth and losing things back and forth, and that's even much harder.

HL: Oh yeah.

TI: Interesting. But, but going back, so was there anything that you brought back to the United States in terms of learning from Japan about special education, or anything else from Japan in terms of education?

HL: Yeah, there was a lot of things they did that was interesting. You couldn't, I can't say that you could use it directly, but you can take off on it. And one of the things I thought that was kind of interesting was that it's, they always balanced physical exercise with learning. I mean, first thing you did when, in the morning, everybody got out on the playground and you went through these calisthenics, but it was a matter of you get your body ready kind of thing, which I thought was kind of interesting that we don't do that here, which we could do a lot more of.

TI: Just to get the blood flowing.

HL: Yeah. And then there's togetherness about doing things together out on the playground. You get a, get a sense of cohesiveness.

TI: So these are things that you observed, but, but it was hard to really bring back and utilize 'cause it'd be so radical in terms of if you all of a sudden in the morning had everyone out there on the...

HL: Can't you just see how that would've gone over, particularly in the '50s and '60s? [Laughs]

TI: Yeah. No I know. Or even, but then I think back to Bailey Gatzert, Miss Mahon and in elementary school having this kind of platoon, this was pretty radical, pretty different.

HL: Yeah. But then it was, but that was very disciplined, too. I think that's the thing that you get more from, like in Japan it's the sense of discipline, self discipline as well as...

TI: What was Miss Mahon's background? When you say discipline, so it's almost like she created something that was very disciplined that, and ordered, that a Japanese population would lend itself. I'm curious where she picked that up.

HL: I don't know. She was there forever.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.