Municipal council honors late founder of Japan-Saipan exchange program

The 17th Saipan and Northern Islands Municipal Council is leading the effort to honor Yasuo “Zorro” Miyazawa, who founded the Japan-Saipan Bridge of Peace and Goodwill and Participate & Learn Program and was named by the council as the Saipan-Japan Goodwill Ambassador for Peace.

A ceremonial tribute and remembrance of Miyazawa’s four-decade journey in cross-cultural experiences will take place on Saipan this week, with the participation of Seisa Gakuen High School principal Hajime Kaneko, Seisa Study Abroad Program director Kuniko, and Marianas High School principal Jonathan Aguon and vice principal Romolo Orsini. MHS is Seisa Gakuen’s sister school in the Marianas.

The Saipan council first bestowed on Miyazawa the honorary title of Saipan-Japan Goodwill Ambassador for Peace in 2014, a title he carried until his passing.

His Bridge program is a study abroad platform for high school students from Japan to Saipan and students from Saipan to Japan in cross-cultural learning experiences for nearly four decades that Miyazawa founded in 1984.

In one of Miyazawa’s published writings, School to Turn Your Life Around, he asserts, “It is difficult to prove what cannot be done. [For] when you examine it thoroughly, you will find that it can be done and that nothing is 100% impossible. The gap between ‘I want to’ and ‘I can’ is bigger than the Mariana Trench. If you decide that you can do it, you will have the strength to overcome the obstacles.”

According to a municipal council news release, Miyazawa’s philosophy of learning was underpinned by the cultural traditions of Japan’s Kyosei and Saipan’s Inafa’maolek, a simple principle that espouses to “understand each other, leave nobody out, and make friends”—ast uttered by Miyazawa on March 23, 2022, a day following his last celebration of Seisa’s 50th anniversary in Japan.

Today, over 8,000 Bridge alumni living on Saipan and Japan have participated in this legacy program—a program that has become an iconic event widely anticipated each year by Seisa students coming to Saipan, as well as students from MHS meeting their Japanese brothers and sisters and Saipan students always looking forward to the ski trips and other learning opportunities through Seisa’s “Participate and Learn Program” in Japan each year.

“Indeed, the Bridge program is one of humanity’s living treasure that has been passionately driven by a simple man, who 40 years ago today, still dedicates himself to mankind’s universal values of peace, goodwill, and charity—values that inspire our forefathers yesterday, the same values that inspire us today, and I am positive core values that will forever be refreshingly enshrined and memorialized in a beautiful musical lyric by the late pop artist Michael Jackson in his musical rendition ‘We are the world,’” reads a message delivered during Seisa’s 50th anniversary in Tokyo.

The council’s memorial tribute reads: “Miyazawa inspired many to believe and work for lasting peace and friendship between Japan and Saipan, a vision of a man who see the very ocean that sometimes appears to separate us as a bridge that connects all of us, here and now—as one people in peace, friendship, and goodwill journey in human relationships that transcend and traverse today’s generation, a journey that shall continue for generations more tomorrow, in a relationship of peace, friendship and charity…”

The municipal tribute concluded, “May peace, friendship, and charity reign within us and through us all and unto others. And may the iconic Japan-Saipan Bridge of Peace, Friendship and Goodwill program at Marianas High School and Seisa High School, a program that has extended to San Antonio School, bring lasting success, prosperity, and friendship to us all for all times in Zorro’s memory.” (PR)