I visited the Alumni webpage for the school I attended from first grade through my sophomore year of high school, Okinawa Christian School, and found this photo of the steps to our High School. Remember these steps, Raju?
The school was built on the top of a ridge. A terrible battle was fought at that site during World War II. The Japanese soldiers were on the top of the ridge and picked-off the U.S. soldiers as they tried to take the ridge. No one would build on the site for years. Our school opened there in 1964 or so (I can't really remember) and we boys used to go around finding human bones and rusty helmets and the bomb squad was up there every few weeks to defuse some unexploded ordinance left over from the war found by a student. One day Kazuo hit the softball over the ridge and went to find it. The bell rang and the rest of us ran off to class. He came in some fifteen minutes later, holding a skull and said, "Teacher, I found someone's head!" The six grade boys were trying to put together a skeleton from the bones they were finding.
What was your school yard like?
3 comments:
Padre, amazing. My schoolyard was an open area made of asphault with baskeball goals at one corner. Period. Nothing so interesting as yours, that's for sure.
There was the boys' side and the girls' side. That was it.
Musta been a Catholick school!
Actually Sue, it was originally a school for missionary kids, and then became a school for folks outside of the military bases who wanted their children to receive an education in English but not attend a Catholic School. It was run by members of the Church of the Nazarene, Assemblies of God, and Southern Baptists churches on Okinawa. I've spent my entire life trying to eliminate the terrible theology I was taught there!
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