In their letters to home and in memoirs about their college experiences, many international students delved into their engagement and frustration with American students. Fumiko Mitani (Japan), class of 1926, wrote in a letter to the Alumnae Association in 1929 that “Life in Japan is never as busy as America. I think the Americans are crazy in their busyness.”. Martha Cramer, class of 1917, and a student from the United States, wrote in the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly in May of 1931 that international students “[had] the inevitable homesickness, [and had] to endure the joylessness of unfamiliar food”. Barbara Passe (Germany), class of 1941, wrote about “omnipresent peanut butter” in her recollections of Mount Holyoke in 1991.
Pictured above is a letter from Fumiko Mitani (Japan), class of 1926, describing her experiences at Mount Holyoke, 1929. Fumiko was written about extensively during her time at Mount Holyoke. She was the featured student for ‘The Youth’s Companion” piece on international students at Seven Sisters colleges. Fumiko served as the president of the Cosmopolitan Club, was an avid athlete, and a published poet during her time at Mount Holyoke. In 1926, Mitani won the Sarah Streeter Cup, which was an award given to the senior with the “best physical examination”. She was the first international student to win the award.
“These colleges are trying to train good American citizens, grounded in the right sort of patriotism, which is interpreted as including an intelligent comprehension of all nations. In the realm of the intellect and in the search for truth, there are no national boundaries; it is the one place where they are obliterated. We hope that our colleges will provide that type of education and the right kind of environment which will weave that invisible web of international understanding on which the world must largely depend if humanity is to be saved from the final catastrophe of another world war.” – Mary Hume Maguire, class of 1918, writing for the Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly, in a piece entitled “Internationalism In The Women’s Colleges of the East [Coast],” May 1931
Pictured above is a Calendar of Sayings by Yoshi Kajiro (Japan), class of 1897. These sayings were derived from Mary Lyon’s founding principles for Mount Holyoke. After graduation, Kajiro went on to found Sanyo Eiwa’s Women’s School, which is now Sanyo Guken University in Okayama. Her fondness for Mount Holyoke remained with her throughout her life, and a chapter of her biography is entitled “A Lifelong Bond: Yoshi Kajiro and Mount Holyoke College.”