Author inspires students with life lessons on peace and respect.

April 6, 2011

Something was amiss at Higgins Middle School today. The usual crowd of students in casual jeans and hoodies was speckled with boys wearing shirt and tie and girls decked out in dresses and heels! Other than for graduation, it is not often that students don dress-up attire voluntarily. What prompted this rare event? It was the annual visit of Massachusetts author Yoko Yawashima Watkins.

This diminutive, kimono-clad Japanese woman is a celebrity at the school. There were ten students waiting in the library this morning to greet her and ask for her autograph. “She’s my idol,” remarked one girl. When I ask Watkins how it feels to be a star, she answered, “I’m not a star. I’m their friend.”

Watkins has visited Higgins annually for eight years to address the 500 eighth grade students who have read her book So Far From the Bamboo Grove. She is an experience that has been shared with thousands of Peabody students. The first students who met her as eighth graders have now been out of high school for three years.

“Whenever I visit schools, I say that peace must start from each one of us. To do that, first, we must be kind to each other. If we all carry hatred and revenge inside us, then we will never achieve peace in the world.”

Recounting her harrowing experiences as a Japanese girl persecuted in Korea at the time of World War II , Watkins shares stories about her family life in Korea and her parents’ kindness and compassion in the face of adversity once the Japanese occupied Korea. She also describes the bullying she experienced at school. She shares lessons for life: don’t loose your temper, throw away your pride, forgive and show respect.

In addition to reading the novel, students study Japan’s history and culture and prepare signs, posters and artwork that is displayed in the library for Watkins’ five performances. She arrives early to sign each piece of student work and imprints the work with her traditional Japanese stamp.

Sponsored regularly by the Peabody Education Council and the Higgins PTO, the annual event is a highlight the grade 8 curriculum focusing on the Holocaust, genocide and tolerance.

Yoko Kawashima Watkins received The Courage of Conscience Award from the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, Massachusetts, which cited her as an "inspiration to young people throughout America and the world."