Reconnecting with the family of Toshio Sato Kato, Elon’s first international graduate
Masaharu Kato recalls how his childhood home in Japan would fill with the sound of his mother’s voice as she played the piano and sang. Toshio Kato would sing in both English and Japanese, including a song about the highest mountain that Masaharu remembers as particularly moving. “Depending upon the songs she would sing, he would cry when she would sing,” Masaharu’s son Yusuke Kato said. “Toshio had a beautiful voice and she loved to sing, and Masaharu has a good voice, too.”
Now 90, Masaharu also remembers fondly his mother’s connection to a small college in North Carolina halfway around the globe from Wakuya, the rural Japanese town where she was born in 1898. That connection is embodied in the deep maroon and bright gold Elon College pennant Masaharu still has today, more than 100 years after his mother graduated from Elon in 1920 as valedictorian and as its first international graduate.
Sitting in the lounge of the grand Imperial Hotel in Tokyo one day in October, Masaharu unwrapped the pennant and held it up high, proudly displaying the college’s seal for President Connie Ledoux Book. He had planned to gift the pennant to Elon, but after pulling it out leading up to meeting Book in Tokyo, he grew sentimental. He still plans to give it to the university, but not now.
The pennant is just one way that the memory of Kato, who passed away in 1968, is carried forward by not just her family but also her alma mater. The October meeting in Tokyo between the Katos and Book was a reconnection between an important figure in Elon’s history and an extension of her legacy for years to come.
“She was courageous, and she inspired so many — even today, she is still inspiring,” Book told her son and grandson during the visit.
From Japan to Elon
Toshio Sato — her maiden name — arrived at Elon in 1914 when the college was only 25 years old and one of very few co-educational colleges or universities in North Carolina. She was 16 years old and became a student at Elon through her connection to Alice True, a member of the college’s board of trustees who met her while traveling in Japan for missionary work.
She excelled at Elon and immersed herself in campus life. She emerged as a campus leader, being elected president of the Young Women’s Christian Association during her final year and serving in student government as secretary of the senior class and president of the Student Council, which at the time was the self-governing body of women students at Elon. The 1920 Phi Psi Cli yearbook noted that “To know her is to love her … our beloved classmate came from a faraway clime and broke all records of scholarship, loyalty, and devotion to duty.”
Sato graduated as valedictorian in May 1920, having navigatedcollege during a time marked by a world war and a devastating global influenza pandemic that claimed the lives of millions around the world as well as multiple members of the college community. She then returned to Japan with a passion for education she would later pass down to her children, as well as a more global perspective.
Return to Japan
Sato’s arrival in Yokohama in 1920 was notable to the local newspaper, who reported on the return of a young Japanese woman wearing western clothes and questioned how her extended stay in the United States may have affected her connection with Japanese culture. It was a slight and an insult that would stick with her for years, her son and grandson told Book. “She was always complaining about the newspaper,” Masaharu said through Chika Kurasawa, a 2009 Elon alumna now living in Tokyo who helped translate at the meeting with Book.
Two years later Kato would write a long letter to Dr. J.O. Atkinson, who had been a faculty member at Elon and was editor of the Christian Church’s weekly newspaper, the Christian Sun. At the meeting in Tokyo, Book presented her son and grandson with a facsimile of the handwritten letter, which details her work as a teacher at the Utsunomiya girls’ school where she had been a student years before, as well as photos of Toshio from the University Archives and Special Collections.
In 1922 she married Kameichi Kato, taking his last name. He, too, went to college in North Carolina, having graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Masaharu said his parents made sure their children understood the value of education. Masaharu earned his doctorate in civil engineering and spent his career working on highways in Japan. Yusuke also has his doctorate in engineering, and he teaches at the prestigious University of Tokyo.
Thank you for remembering Toshio and finding us.
Toshio Kato remained connected to Elon, periodically sending letters to mentors on campus and also receiving visitors from Elon during their trips to Japan. Book shared with Masaharu and Kusuke a print of a photo from 1939 when Elon benefactor Lucy Ethridge visited Toshio in Japan, with Toshio smiling with her arms wrapped around two of her sons, one of which is Masaharu.
Kato served as a translator after World War II, working at U.S. Army and Air Force bases until 1960. She became a master of the traditional Japanese tea ceremony and an expert flower arranger. She also spent her last 20 years in the Tokyo home where Masaharu now lives and passed away in October 1968 watching the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Mexico City on television. Each October after his mother passed away, Masaharu’s family would bake a homemade apple pie in her memory.
Yusuke Kato compiled a presentation about his grandmother’s life that drew from family photos and memories but said that much of the time she spent in the United States was a bit of a mystery. Book helped fill in some of the gaps with documents from the Elon archives and information about Elon’s history. She lamented not having even more to share about Toshio’s impact on Elon. “Unfortunately, we did not capture her time at Elon as fully as we would have today,” Book told Masaharu and Yusuke.
Before parting ways in Tokyo, Masaharu unwrapped the pennant that signified his mother’s continued connection to Elon, and his connection to her memory. Only slightly showing signs of its age, the pennant retained its strong colors as he held it aloft for Book to see.
“Thank you for remembering Toshio and finding us,” Yusuke said.