Mary and Betsy Come Together to Suzugamine
School
At Suzugamine Girls'
Junior High and High School
|
On the 24th (Friday), Betsy, a second-generation "Blue-eyed
Doll" that shows new Japanese-American friendship, came to Suzugamine
Girls' Junior High and High School (principal, Takeshi Tamagawa) in Nishi-ku in Hiroshima City.
Mr. Gulick, 3d, who is the grandson of Mr. Sidney Gulick, the person who gave the
first-generation "Blue-eyed Dolls," has followed his grandfather's
wishes by giving dolls to Japanese schools for the last ten years. He knew about
Suzugamine's Drama Club and Broadcasting Club creating works about the dolls'
unfortunate fate, so the doll Betsy was given to the school.
"Blue-eyed Doll" was well known as a
children's song. During the mid 1920s, when relations between Japanese
immigrants and Americans began to grow worse, there
were 12,000 dolls that American children sent at the urging of the missionary
Sidney Gulick. They came to Japan in 1927 each carrying a passport and a $99
steamship ticket.
Hiroshima Prefecture was given 356 dolls, and they received huge
welcomes. However, when World War II started, they were destroyed by burning
them and stabbing them with bamboo spears. Besides "Mary" at
Yuda Elementary School in Kannabe-cho, only four dolls now exist.
On the 24th, Kannabe-cho's Tetsuo Kamikawauchi (age 47), who had introduced Mr. Gulick to his friends at Suzugamine,
brought
Betsy and Mary with him to Suzugamine School. After
viewing "Blue-eyed Dolls," a video production by the high school's
Broadcasting Club, the junior high school students listened to a talk by Mr.
Kamikawauchi about the fate of the dolls and about the people who protected the
dolls that survived.
The junior high school students gathered around the platform where
Mary and Betsy were side by side. While exclaiming "cute!" as they
looked at Betsy's change of clothing and her bag (handmade by the wife of Mr. Gulick, 3d), they discussed how "such cute dolls had such a bad time"
and the horrified faces of the dolls that were stabbed with bamboo spears in the
video.
During Mr. Gulick, 3d's message to Suzugamine School, he explained that
"Blue-eyed Dolls" are called "Friendship Dolls." In Mr.
Kamikawauchi's talk, he pointed out that the expression "blue-eyed" is
rarely used in America, and only a very few dolls actually have eyes that are
colored blue.
(The High School Drama Club's "Summer of
Silence," a play about the Blue-eyed Dolls, will be performed on the 31st
(Friday) at 4:30 p.m. at Hatsukaichi Bunka Hall Sakura Pia.)
Article from Nishi-Hiroshima Times, July 31, 1998.
This is an English translation of a
Japanese web page (link no longer available).
Published with permission from Nishi-Hiroshima Times.
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