By: Fr. Rudy Fernandez SJ

A Filipino Jesuit teaching in Japan for a half a century, decided to tell the truth to the students-with beautiful results.

Summer Camp
One of the most important items of the summer curriculum for the junior high students is the summer camp. Our school has a campsite by a lake up in the mountains about fifty kilometers from the city. The boys stay at the camp for four days. Half of them stay at the unfurnished log cabin with just straw mats for sleeping and half of then stay in tents. After a couple of days they exchange places, those in the cabins go to the tents and those in the tents to the cabins.

I Went Too
This year, I went too, I went to the summer camp, this time with the second year students, 14-15 years old. That may well be my last time. Teachers 57 and over are not required to go, though they are always welcome id they offer to. I am now 65, and I have been going to summer camp for over thirty years now.

Climb Mount Kammuri
Activities vary from day to day. This year on the first day boys worked: gathering firewood for the campfire, repairing trails and steps leading to the cabins, digging holes for garbage. On the second day the boys climbed Mt. Kammuri, a 1,339 meter high mountain in the area. Taking their lunch with them they left at 8:45 and the last weary group struggled in at about 4:00 pm. On the third day there was a sportfest: sumo, tug – of –war, volleyball and orienteering.

Campfire of Songs
During the campfire the boys sing songs, put on skits and other stunts. There is no electricity in the camp. No TV, radio, after dark the only light the boys have is their flashlight. During their free time the boys may fish, or play ringtoss or cards or whatever game they can improvise.

The Last Night
On the last night it was my turn to give the final talk after the campfire. They had just been having so much fun I did not know if I could hold their attention. I started with “To everything there is a season: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to laugh and a time to weep; a time to  shout and now, a time to be silent...” I told the boys not to take for granted but to be grateful and I gave the example of how other had worked hard to make this beautiful camp site. Then I told them to be aware of their own individual history. Being young, their history is still short, but their dreams and hopes are long, and someday those would be their history. I asked them to allow me to go back to when I was about their age.
Healing our Memories
At my age now, I said, my history and my memories are longer than my dreams. I told them of the war reaching our shores and hones when I was twelve in 1941. my father dying when I was fourteen because the Japanese Navy had refused to give him leave  to take supplies to the sick people of Culion Island in a small fishing ship. Instead they had forced him to load his cargo onto a Japanese ship, which was sunk by an American submarine off Mindoro. My hating the Japanese for that. I told them about Japanese soldier trying to break into our house and shot by a guerilla soldier in the thigh, how the Japanese soldier blew himself to bits with his grenade rather than be captured. This was when the battle for Manila was till raging in 1945, How my mother suddenly cried out over the dead soldier: somewhere in Japan someone-a mother, a wife, a child will be wait, waiting and wondering why this man doesn’t come home. Just like us Papa, she said.

Became a Jesuits
How I had not paid much attention to those words then. How at seventeen I become a Jesuit. Then came the call from Rome for volunteers to Japan when I was nineteen, and so here I am with you tonight.

Instant and Spontaneous Clapping
There was a hush I had never felt before in any talk I had given. it was like I was all alone with the dying  flames of the campfire. I was wondering if the boys had all fallen asleep. Until I said, that’s all and they instantly and spontaneously clapped their hands. And they dispersed, a couple of boy s shyly shook my hand.

Next Year
The next day after breakfast we prepared to go back to the city. We folded the tents and stored away the tables and benches used in the dining quadrangle. We gave the whole camp site a thorough cleaning- the cabins, the toilets, grounds. Later in the bus going ti the city I wondered if maybe I should to go again next year and share myself and my history with still another group of boys.