"When I was young, I had a dream of going abroad. 

I always had this dream: Leave the Island. 

When I chose to work with education I knew that, financially, my family couldn't afford my studies of Higher Education. I wanted to be a teacher of Physical Education, but I knew that financial issues wouldn’t allow me to follow this course. So I finished high school and started working in the school office.

I had studied and I worked there for 18 years. 

When I was 23, we had a volleyball competition and it was the first time I could get out of Okinawa. I got into a boat, went to Kagoshima and then by train to Tokyo. It was the first time I left the Island. At that time, Okinawa wasn’t a part of Japan and I went as a representative of Okinawa, not as Japanese. So it was an international trip. When I came back, I realized that Okinawa was very late, I was surprised by our delay. When I returned to Okinawa, I married and had five children. At that time there were no nurseries here. So I decided to start a nursery. In 1971, I went through the process to set up this unit. I did it because I felt in trouble, I had nowhere to leave my children and needed to work. 

What keeps me working all these years is the joy of raising and educating children. It is the joy of creating an easier city to live. That moves me. With taking care of these children, I am helping parents and I am also creating employees, guiding people to be able to care and educate these kids. It's a joy for me. 

This is what I think every day: 'by educating children, staff and parents, I am building a better city’.  

When I was a child I din’t like to study. But my experience with the school is very unique. I was 7 years old when the war started, so I was educated before that. When the war was over I could go back to school, but that wasn’t an option anymore, because I had no money. Our family had no clothes or food, so I hardly studied. I worked a lot. This is a characteristic of the people here. We suffered a lot. When the war ended, we didn’t have what to wear. So our education was dedicated to create workers. I don’t remember actually studying, I worked. 

I remember one teacher who really left a mark in my story. When the war began, he was very concerned about our safety. He trained evacuation techniques with us. On October 10, a plane bombed the entire city. He came into the class with a watch and said, ‘Don't forget this day. Today we’ll put into practice everything we learned. Take great care, because now the danger is real…" 

At that time, we were not in school anymore. We were in a small office in the village. The school had been devastated.  That day I understood what it means to be a teacher: You care for every life. You worry about each one of the students. This is how I think today. I'm a teacher and parents trust the lives of their sons to me. I get their lives in my hands and that's what moves me. Being a teacher means to be responsible for these lives. 

When I was a kid, one of my classmates had mental problems. The teacher always pointed a colleague to follow him on the way ho his house. But this colleague had problems to contain urine and feces and sometimes couldn’t help himself on the way home. Well, even though he indicated someone to follow the boy, our teacher was behind him and the friend, cleaning the streets. Today I support the idea that special kids should be with the others, so that other children can learn how to handle them, so they know how to take care of a friend who needs help. I think my mission as an educator is this: integrate kids with special needs and educate others to live with them. I want to help them to develop the 'caring about the others.' 

I believe that everything I teach and taught, I learned from the dedication of this teacher who worried about us during the war. With him, I learned to value each student individually. 

Okinawa is an Island country. When I think of education, I think that the key role is 'to expand horizons'. The ideal education is wide. There is a song that I really like, it says that although the sky is very wide, it doesn’t matter were we are, we can always see the sky. 

Every year, on Mother's Day, we sing another song that says that the mother is the mirror of the house. 

When I started kindergarten, many children had lost their fathers in the war. Mothers had to play many roles. Therefore, I teach them to really appreciate mothers. 

The nursery is seen by many people as an extension of the house. Many people think that is a place where we spent the day playing with the children. But is not like that. As I am here for a long time and I have over sixty years, people think I can handle all this time because my work is easy, because I spent my life playing with children and not working. No one ever told me that, but I feel. I feel that many people think that my job is just that: play with children. On the other hand, I think people really trust me as an educator. They give me their children and know that they can leave them in my hands, because nothing bad will happen to them. In short: Parents look at me and they see a person responsible and reliable, able to take care of their children, but that, in a way, stays playing with the kids all day. We know it's not just that. 

I hope these kids I educate become people who contribute to society. I don’t expect them to be rich or become doctors or business people, I don’t care if they will have prominent professions. Basically, I want them to be able to use their skills. I want them to apply everything they know in the carrier they decided to follow. Even conducting basic services, I hope they are able to do everything with the skills developed, being independent. I just hope that they are good citizens, that they are good for the society in which they live. 

People who want to become teachers need to believe in children. 

This is my message: no matter what the conditions, above all else, we must love children and and believe in them."