For three inner-city Chicago teens, vivid memories of traveling to Japan with their Japanese-born schoolteacher, as part of a program initiated by a former prime minister, was a turning point that forever changed their lives.
Erionna Tucker recalls the two trips she took while attending Langston Hughes Elementary School — a public school whose children range in age from kindergarten to junior high school — as if they were yesterday. She was in the seventh and eighth grades, and Japanese language study at the school was compulsory.
Now the 19-year-old continues language studies at DePauw University in neighboring Indiana, with hopes of one day becoming a Japanese translator.