Don Mattox
(1969-70)
"Tsugi wa Odarwara de gozaimasu," the conductor's voice called as the Shinkansen moved noiselessly over the tracks. July 1969... a lifetime ago. Yet long-lost faces, names, and voices have come flooding back into my consciousness... and I am homesick. Homesick for Mr. Harker's fatherly fussing, for Tone Kimura's hearty laugh, for the faint morning haze lingering over Izu-no-Oshima, for the quaintness of the sushiya to which we sometimes escaped when the day was done. Perhaps it was only yesterday after all... and perhaps that is why I can hear Nakayama-san so clearly now... "sa, shi, su, se, so..."
LIOJ was a wondrous place. If it was a window on the world for its students, it was no less an intimate window on Japan for those of us who taught there. I have long feared stirring to life those memories, so boundless and precious, that I carried away with me less than a year later when the long arm of the American military draft plucked me so unexpectedly from the school that I had grown to love so deeply. Yet, now that those memories have been resurrected, I find myself surrounded by long-lost companions. It is a blessing I never imagined.
I hope that those students and colleagues whose paths crossed mine during my short time at LIOJ will recall with fondness the times we spent together. That they and the hilltop school we all called home affected my life would be an understatement. The affect was profound. I want to thank them all... so very long after the fact... and to encourage each of you who now walk those halls to carry on with pride.
As Segami-san said with such faith in May 1970, "See you a little bit later."
May 2003
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