Yokota West ES (formerly Yokota ES) History

Opened: 1946
OPEN

According to Chiyo Araki, a former teacher at Yokota Elementary School, Yokota got a new school in record time. The base requested three regular teachers for improving the school but still continued the combination classes. The first year, the school had its first graduate. The first year, one teacher and the principal taught twelve children in a room behind the chapel lounge. The school included grades one through four.

In the middle of July 1948, the new school was established in its present location under full speed construction. Men worked day and night without rest, and it took one and a half months to complete.

During the 1948 school year, the first civilian principal, Mr. Marks, started the school with four civilian female teachers. The school board and PTC (Club not Association) were formed to oversee the increased school activities.

The Imperial Japanese Government transformed the cornfields and pine groves of Tama Prefecture into a military base called Tama Army Airfield in 1940. The area was used primarily as a test flight center during World War II, and the base remained fully operational until the end of the war. United States intelligence sources that viewed the base from the air, unfamiliar with the actual name, called the base Yokota after nearby Yokota Village. When US forces began operations on September 4, 1945, the name remained. American dependents began to arrive at Yokota Air Base shortly thereafter, on May 10, 1946.

Yokota Elementary opened its doors on September 12, 1946, in Yokota’s housing area on Johnson Air Base with just two teachers and twelve students in a room behind the chapel lounge. Mr. Roland Pennypacker was the first principal/teacher. Chiyo Araki, the other teacher, remembers, “It seemed like a big happy family and everything was simple and easy.”

In the spring of 1946, qualified teachers and administrators were recruited. Japanese nationals, military personnel, and their dependents ran the school until October of 1947 when the first civil service employees arrived. Mr. Marks, the first regular principal, started in a new building in September of 1948 with four female teachers, a school board, a parent-teacher club, and sixty-eight students in grades 1–6.

By 1961, enrollment was up to 1,600 students, with 320 of those students attending school at the Hamura annex three miles away. Hot lunches were served in the cafeteria for thirty cents, and students enjoyed activities that included Japanese culture class, a science fair, a spelling bee, soroban club, good citizen awards, and a student-published newspaper.

The Hino Chamber of Commerce supported our first ever Nihon Matsuri celebration in 1971. All of the Japanese presenters came from the city of Hino that year. Today, 400 presenters come from more than 17 communities to support the continued tradition every year during Golden Week, the first week of May.

In April of 1973, Yokota East opened its doors with two multi-age classrooms, and in turn the school was designated as Yokota West Elementary. In 1976, Yokota West was visited for the first time by an accreditation team from the North Central Association. The school surpassed the organization’s tough standards to become one of just 150 other elementary schools in the United States at the time to earn accreditation. The committee noted positive attitudes of the faculty and students, an outstanding field trip and student exchange program as well as a creative use of old facilities. This report may have sparked the plans for a new school building.

In July of 1981, the old building was torn down. The school was then moved to four transitional sites while the new school was being constructed. Despite the protests of parents and teachers, grades one through four were taught in hospital buildings, grade five was at the adult education center, grade six was at the high school, and kindergarten was taught at the west chapel.

Students and teachers were thrilled to move into a brand-new building on the west side of Yokota Air Base, one that they helped to design, in 1983. The crane, the Japanese symbol for honor, loyalty and good fortune, was chosen as the mascot and incorporated into the décor of the new school building. The classrooms did not have doors in the building’s original design to allow for grade level collaboration in the pod areas. Even after the classroom doors were installed in 1986, teachers and students remember a happy school atmosphere where everyone worked together to provide enriching experiences for students such as ski trips, soroban, carnivals, and school exchanges.

During the 1990s, Yokota West continued to grow and flourish with new technology, standards-based education, school-wide thematic units, and a variety of engaging student programs.  There was a student orchestra, presidential debates, family bingo nights, Learn-a-bration, field day, good citizen awards, Soroban Club, and of course Nihon Matsuri. The school building grew during this time as well. A building with four classrooms built around a large common area now houses the District Superintendent’s Offices, and in 2004, four new kindergarten classrooms and a primary playground were added to meet the needs of the full-day kindergarten program.

 

Information from DoDDS School Information Guides and DoDDS Pacific Region, 1946-1986

 

Share This: