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Director, Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center
Fumiko Ishioka
April 2003
Developing an Alternative Newspaper by and for the People
Educating Children About the Importance of Peace
In March 2000, a worn-out brown leather suitcase reached the hands of Fumiko Ishioka. Painted on the outside in large white letters were the name of the owner, Hana Brady (misspelled as "Hanna"), her birthdate, and the German word for orphan, "waisenkind."
The Story of the Suitcase
Ishioka, who had started activities to help children understand the importance of peace by learning about the Holocaust, was hoping to display some actual artifacts of the tragedy at the recently opened Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center. So in the fall of 1999, she visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland and requested the loan of artifacts left by children who died at the concentration camps there. Six months later, the suitcase suddenly arrived.
The members of Small Wings, a volunteer group consisting of children from elementary school through high school that meets regularly at the center, grew interested and wanted to know more about Hana. Encouraged by the children's voices, Ishioka contacted museums around Europe and the United States in search of more material and even traveled to Hana's native Czech Republic. Thanks to her hard efforts, coupled with several strokes of luck, in a few months' time she learned that Hana's older brother George had survived the Holocaust and was living in Toronto, Canada. In March 2001 George visited Japan and saw his sister's suitcase for the first time in 57 years.
A Canadian broadcasting station covered this story as a radio program titled "Hana's Suitcase," and a book of the same title, written by the program's director, became a Canadian bestseller in the children's literature category. The Japanese version of the book, translated by Ishioka, was released in July 2002 and has already sold around 27,000 copies. A French translation was also published in the fall of 2002, and the book is slated for translation into more than 10 other languages. When Ishioka first visited Toronto with the suitcase in October 2002, there was even talk of producing a film based on the story. But she takes a cautious attitude: "I don't want them to make the film too dramatic. I want to pass this story on with the greatest care, so if a movie actually is made, it could be years from now."
An Untiring Devotion to Peace Education
Fumiko Ishioka was born in Tokyo in 1970. After graduating from Temple University Japan in 1992, she moved on to a postgraduate program in development studies at the University of Leeds in Britain, where she studied human rights and gender issues. In 1997, back in Japan, she was invited to join a nongovernmental organization that aimed to create an Anne Frank exhibition center for children. In October of the following year the Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center, which doubles as an exhibition space, was opened on the first floor of an apartment building in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and Ishioka became its director.
The expenses are covered solely by membership fees collected from the approximately 100 members and by donations. But raising donations has been difficult given Japan's economic conditions, and in April 2003 the center had to close the exhibition room. It now loans out exhibition panels on such occasions as school festivals and municipal events, and Ishioka traverses the country with Hana's suitcase to give special classes and lectures.
When conditions worsen in the Middle East, the center occasionally faces criticism for its activities. Once, when Ishioka spoke in Canada, she was rebuked for the actions of the Japanese military during World War II. Still, it is the conviction to undertake peace education transcending politics and religion that has kept her going. "My question is how people of different races and religions can bring about peace at a personal level. I want to contribute, from the position of educator, to the creation of a society in which people can understand each other's pains."
The story of Hana's suitcase will likely be included in a high school English textbook to be issued in two years. Moreover, interchanges have begun between the children of Small Wings and Canadian children who have read the book. Ishioka is currently visiting Canada, taking along with her some letters written by the Japanese children.
Contact information:
Tokyo Holocaust Education Resource Center
Phone: 03-5363-4808
E-mail:holocaust@Tokyo.email.ne.jp
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