Discovery of Local Community’s Value by Evacuee : Cooperation among the School, the Home, and the Local Communities during Evacuation

Abstract

  The purpose of this study is to investigate how teachers and students discovered and realized the value of cooperation among the school, the home, and the local communities during the evacuation of the Elementary School Affiliated with the Tokyo First Normal School (now formally referred to as The Setagaya Elementary School affiliated with Tokyo Gakugei University).

  An analysis of school and local communities historical records, revealed that the evacuation of Tokyo First Normal School was aided by cooperative relationships among or within local communities, which had been established before the acceptance of evacuees. Furthermore, during the evacuation, teachers frequently issued mentioning correspondence details of the student’s daily lives to establish cooperative relationship between the school and students’ families. Finally, while being supported by locals, teachers and students discovered that the local community was kind and sincere, which was unusual in Tokyo before the evacuation.

  These experiences were catalysts to introspect their ways of life for teachers and students. Their perceptions of their relationships with the local communities, on the contrary, were fleeting and rigid. Furthermore, it is proposed that people’s discovery of the value of local communities is insufficient to establish kinship or relationship between people and local communities.