Camera and if you could just give us a slate of a clap
It's good. Thank you. Okay, so it's good start with just telling us your name on what class of CA you are and where you live now
Okay, my name. I'm talking to you. Yes, please. My name is Linda Holdland. I graduated from
Canadian Academy in 1974 and I live in New York City, but I'm going to Tokyo tomorrow
Perfect answer. Okay, so just a little bit about your background, your family background
Like why your family was in Japan when they were there if you moved where from and how what years you were at CA
Okay, my parents were
Missionaries in Japan. They were Lutheran missionaries
So I was born in Kyoto and then we lived in Yamaguchi-ken and Eihime-ken and my parents made the then
Rather unusual decision to send us to Japanese public schools. So I went to Japanese public school through 8th grade and then
9th grade was an American school and then
10, 11, 12 I did in two years at CA
You know
So I was a I was a kind of a strange person at CA
You know, I mean if you go through Japanese school wearing those uniforms in provincial Japan through 8th grade
It really makes you quite
Japanese despite my looks which are obviously quite American
And of course, I was taller than my teacher when the 6th grade, you know, which is really in politics in Japan to be taller than your teacher and
So, you know Canadian Academy was
So then so so I guess I was there
73 and 74
You know, I think I think it was sort of my first sort of
Well, you know, I was thinking back, you know, because you I got your questionnaire and
I think CA I know it's an odd thing to say but CA was the place where I found out I was smart
In 3rd grade in Japanese school, I got the best grade on a kanji test and the teacher brought me up to the front of the class and
Basically said the guys you can do it. Why can't you and that was the end of my I mean
You don't get to both drop an atomic bomb and beat them at their own kanji test, right? That's like not fair
So that was the end of good grades for me in Japanese school
and then I got to CA and I looked around and I were like, oh
everybody here I get to compete with and
and
You know, it was like I shot out of a bottle and so my most memorable experience is sitting in
Dr.
Kessel
Chris I can't quite remember his name. Dr. Kessler. Dr.
Kessler and
I was it was senior English and
and he we were reading start we were reading nausea see I remember this part very well and
He said in the book it posited author posits that anything that violates a perfect moment is immoral
and I said
well, it's the passage of time immoral then and
that resulted in
The teacher writing a recommendation to Yale which accepted me saying if she had a last name
I would think she was descended from Socrates. Oh
like
Okay
So CA is the school. Sorry. Can you hold on one second? Um, do we do any to change the car?
Or did you just hit me on the shoulder? I'm sorry. I thought I thought I got a signal. Thank you for a member
I thought I got a signal for you. I was getting nervous. I'm sorry. Sorry continue. So so dr.
Crissel was the professor. He was um, ornery
cantankerous and
Brilliant and he had the presence of mind to
You know praise a young girl
who
Really wasn't clear about her position in the world if you come out of that much Japanese school and missionary background and
And at that time I think it was still very unclear to me whether I was that well, I didn't feel either American or Japanese now
I know that I'm both
So it gives me very solid ground to stand on but I didn't have that I hadn't carved that out for myself yet
so
So I remain grateful to dr. Crissel
Great. Um, I feel like we covered a bunch of questions about which is great. Um, I guess um, I
I wanted to hear a little bit more about your experience in Japanese school and then the transition into say just like maybe like
The the shock or like the experience maybe within that transition moment like that year or something
Yeah, just the differences and how how you how did you feel about it? Did it was it hard for you? Did you enjoy it?
Well, I would say that the defining event of my childhood to place in Japanese school
It was either third or fourth grade. I'm not quite sure and
the teacher
wrote on the blackboard the words
Atomic bomb and defeat and
You know, I'm not quite sure there is a way to teach a ten-year-old about the atomic bombs
But all the kids turned around and look I would said America
so all the kids turned around and looked at me and
and
I mean, what are you doing your ten years old? I mean, I I thought I thought it was probably my fault, you know
And so that I in a sense that moment was sort of the end of my innocence
I didn't I wasn't old enough to know words like complicit
But it forever put me
outside and of course, it didn't really want to make me run to the American side either because who would do such a thing
and
I mean, I I still think that you know who would do such a thing, but when you think about it. I mean, I guess my parents
It didn't occur to them to warn us I guess
But it probably didn't occur to them. I mean, it's really one of the fundamental
contradictions of my childhood, you see
Which is that my parents felt a need to go over and convert them into a
better religion
But the schools and the children were good enough for me to be raised with
You know, I love my parents and I respect them a lot
but I think
They were coming from a 1950s American mindset where the sort of the fundamental baseline racism is
white people are better and
Americans are even best and
So I grew up in the middle of that sort of swirling massive contradictions
I mean, there's a Leonard Cohen song isn't there that says give me Christ or give me Hiroshima
well, I guess I wound up with Hiroshima and
so my most recent film I've made now three films dealing with World War two and
post-war US Japan relations because
the yawning gap between what I learned from
Japanese people not just the Japanese school, but about their experience of the war and the defeat and the American narrative of victory is
To me it seemed insurmountable. So the three films that I made Wings of Defeat
Ampo and now things left behind about Hiroshima are my attempt to
I don't know, I mean you can't bridge the gap, but feel maybe fill it
So now that I've done with my World War two trilogy I'm making a movie about
animals
Naturally
Okay, great. Thank you almost talked. I was supposed to talk about the first year at CA
Just I just wondered just that to transition into that having grown up in a Japanese school system
I did the same thing. I'm just wondering what your experience was like
Maybe you remember the first day at Sige or the first you know the first while you were you know
I don't have a lot of memories from my childhood period
But I must have worked like a dog because that's one thing you get
At least when I went to Japanese public school, you had to work like a dog and just even to master those kanji
It means you are very very accustomed to studying very hard
and
I
Must have I mean Yale really taught me how to
Think and write for myself for my own ideas, but I'm sure that
You know the English class. I just mentioned had a lot to do with helping me with that as well
But I remember, you know in the old days the school was up on the hill, so
I think it was my sister and I
We ran a little operation out of a suitcase where the the dorm food was like I
Mean it was cafeteria food
So we would buy na-men and Simbae and snacks like that and we would sell them it up at a modest
Missionary like profit
We would go shopping and so I guess that was our
That was our sort of way of staying Japanese because it was a little kitchen in the dorm where you could cook a little bit, so
So we had a little operation going. That's a cute little
Are there any other events or experiences you remember from your your two years that see that that you remember fondly or
It's not my phone and foot. I'm sorry. I
Actually have a really great story to tell about Mrs. No who taught Japanese
for many many many many years at Canadian Academy and
She I remember she she also ran the Kabuki and it was Kabuki
Sort of semi-professional. She had been
You know, she had been a man. She would have tried to become a Kabuki actor. Her passion was
Boundless and they were really really cool productions
And I remember for some reason I remember cello and gut gut going
Jin Jin Jin Jin Santorin Jin. I don't know. I just have a memory of that during a Kabuki performance
but you know when I made ample which is the film that that
Portrays resistance to US military bases in Japan through a treasure trove of art that I excavated from
Museum vaults throughout Japan
I
arranged for its premiere to be at the
Yasuda the great Yasuda Hall and Tokyo University on June 15th of
2010 which was a 50th anniversary of the death of the martyr Kamba Michiko and
And uno sensei heard about it on the on the I don't know how she heard about it, but she heard about it on the news and
She's in a wheelchair now. She's Genki
She and her husband came up from Kobe to Yasuda Hall and my sister Janet was there and Janet remembered her too and she said
I never talked about it. It's CA, but I marched in the 1960 demonstrations as a Christian and
I
Was pretty special. Yeah
gosh
Okay, let's cut and restart just because 70
Give us another slate
Thank you. Um, how about now looking back at your experience in Japan?
But more probably specific the CA because of the purpose of this particular video
What do you you know, what do you now reflecting take away from those years?
I didn't do have memories of relationships
So what is it like did you learn things or learn something about yourself or anything that you now?
Looking back at your time at CA think about
You know I I think I
Think it was I mean even
There was definitely like I was definitely not part of the mainstream cool kids
But I think already then I realized
That that's not what I wanted out of life and I hung out with I
Mean I had close female friends, but I also hung out with like these
Asian geeks a lot and
I think it was sort of the
beginning of my exploration of
Well as I said before sort of am I American and my Japanese what is my I mean I have an American passport, but I
Don't like the Olympics because I don't believe in nation-states really and
I believe that that kind of nationalism
Leads to war
And I think that CA was sort of a really nice
Sort of incubator for me to begin to think about to begin to find my way in the world
Beyond Japanese
Is there any
thing you hope for
For like just to graduate the school like the the future of the school to like the future students
You know just for me today is that you're like the seventh person?
I'll have very different stories and I'm doing very different things
But I'll kind of you know see a in the smaller bigger way has kind of I see how it's kind of shaped a person
And I'm wondering you know if you have have any
Hopes for like the school as in this in Japan raising this foreign community
Well, you know, I would just I cannot emphasize how important bilingual
Tri-lingual education is
Did you read in the New York Times that it's proven now scientifically that?
Bilingual minds that are active every day
delay the onslaught of
the onslaught the onset
Bilingual minds that are actually used every day
Delay the onset of Alzheimer's by 10 years
Because if you have a bilingual mind it means that you have to have a metamind here. That's controlling both languages
and it makes you smarter and
I think it also makes you
More inclined to
Be able to accommodate
nuanced
understandings if you filter experience through two languages at the same time
so I would say
Try to teach as many languages and learn as many languages as possible
and
Just quickly a couple of other things
Um, what sort of activities where you like you it was Kabuki and activity see it off at all
Well, what do you sports of where you're an artistic?
You know what what kind of did you engage in any activities besides go on class at CA or?
And no worries and you mentioned the one English teacher that you remember the members of the any other members of that
Community that you they left an impact on you maybe a classmate or just a teacher or the people who worked at sea
There was a lot of Japanese people as well Reagan was actually by older sisters age
but Jean and I really bonded she was also a missionary's daughter and
She had been to Japanese school I think through the first or second grade and we really bonded and other than my younger sister Janet
Jean is the person that I've stayed the closest to
still speak regularly and
We both lost our moms early, you know a lot of the missionary kids at CA
they lost their moms
Either cancer or suicide in the early 60s. Oh, I could count like ten of them and I think
It had a lot to do with
American women trying to
Shrink themselves into the female public space that was allowed in Japan. I don't think it was an accident
Do you think the missionary community and
In Kobe had a like a different experience from some of the other like a harder
Maybe experience of what was your experience like growing up as a missionary kid?
Amongst the Japanese thing and the CA thing and I guess that's like a bigger
On part of your upbringing
Well, I
Mean my parents were always in rural. I mean provincial Japan
So my knowledge of Kobe was only from I mean, I can't really say that I know Kobe because I mean the one thing actually that
Alexandra Monroe and I used to take the train
To go to the monthly temple
flea markets in
Kyoto there was toji
Which I think was on the 15th of the month and then there was another one and they were the great temple sales and that's where I
started
15 I started yeah, I I because I skipped a grade. I wound up graduating it when I was 16 and
And Alexandra and I shared some kind of artistic
appreciation for
Japanese a sense of I think a sense of Jimmy certainly my my sense of Jimmy comes from
Growing up in a Japanese wooden house, and I don't even like primary colors
That's it for my questions
I'm just wondering if you can if there's any other maybe specifically CA thing that you we haven't covered yet that you would like to share
Um, it seems like you're one of the yeah, so you're the one of the unique people who
Had an awkward see experience in the way that you know, it was a shorter time
But if you have any other memories that you would want to leave us with
Do you remember graduation or leaving did you go to did it come to the states after graduation?
You know what I was leaving, you know leaving the CA like maybe well
What happened was that?
Because I was so young when I applied to Yale
They turned me down the first time, but I was determined to get in and so I spent a year
Not going to college, but apprenticing throughout Japan
So I worked on a dairy farm in Hokkaido, and then I apprenticed with a
die a
dire
somemono in Hama Matsu, and then I apprenticed with a weaver in Matsuyama and
Then I've heard that Yale was accepting me and by the time I got there. I was so happy that I had
Done those apprenticeships because when I got to Yale and encountered obnoxious
wealthy
Entitled people I could stand my own ground because I knew that I could do something they couldn't gosh
Okay, um, I think we're good. Thank you. Let's cut. Oh
Good good point. Um, oh one word just the one word
I didn't ask you because I but maybe if you just could you know, you're some up
What maybe your CA experience and a word or a little phrase?
What what would it be do you think and and maybe why I?
Can't do that. I don't you know, I kind of
Kind of thought in my yeah, yeah, okay. That's fine. Thank you. All right. Let's cut gosh
