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Father Ando's years of helping foreign immigrants

Naturalised Japanese makes outsiders welcome
Father Ando's years of helping foreign immigrants
Fr Isamu Ando shows off a caricature drawn for him by the daughter of immigrants living in Japan
Published: February 28, 2012 09:06 AM GMT
Updated: February 29, 2012 03:55 AM GMT

It was 1957 when Father Isamu Ando, a 77-year-old Spanish Jesuit, first came to Japan. He has been here ever since, devoting his life to tackling social problems. Over the years, that work has led him to encounter a vast spectrum of human rights needs and challenges. In his seminary days and for many years after, he lived in an apartment in the Adachi district of northeast Tokyo and worked in a neighborhood frequented by rag pickers, who made ends meet by salvaging still-useful items that others have discarded. He went to Vietnam three times during that country's war. People he met there came to Japan as refugees in the late 1970s, and he has been involved in supporting Indochinese immigrants ever since. He has also helped many women who started coming to Japan from Thailand, the Philippines and South America to be entertainers - and who often found themselves mixed up in organized crime. “I remember two Filipinas who had been fired from their jobs,” he says. “They were still owed unpaid wages, so I had to go and visit the headquarters of a gangster group. That was really scary.” On top of all that, he has worked at the Jesuit Social Center in Adachi City for the past 32 years, providing free legal advice to foreigners. The city has seen a marked increase in its foreign population, but its schools have not adapted to accommodate them. Realizing that this was a problem, Fr Ando involved himself in the work of the Adachi International Academy (AIA) in 2008. Staffed entirely by volunteers and financed by four religious organizations including the Jesuits, the AIA offers supplementary instruction in Japanese to non-native students, after their normal school day ends. During lessons, which are held from Tuesday to Sunday each week, children also have the opportunity to study material from any class that they were unable to understand at school. Adults too can go to the AIA for tuition in Japanese, basic knowledge of Japanese life and culture, computer skills and more. About 50 people are currently studying at the AIA, from as far away as Africa and South America as well as Asian countries such as the Philippines and Malaysia. All the children there have encountered bullying at their schools. Many began skipping school during their junior high years and eventually dropped out altogether. To help them complete their secondary education, the AIA has established a scholarship fund. “A priest’s job isn’t restricted to celebrating Mass and praying,” says Fr Ando.  “To put it in Catholic terms, it is to imitate Christ, who was nailed to a cross. We always say, ‘we love Jesus,’ but are we really ‘laying down our lives down for our friends?’ “I personally get the sense that many of the foreigners who come to Japan want to make it a better place. We must continue to do all we can to find satisfactory resolutions for the problems that foreigners face here.”

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