The 1961 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding

GENEVIEVE CAULFIELD was born in Suffolk, Virginia, U.S.A. on May 8, 1888. A tragic accident left her sightless at the age of two months when the doctor examining her upset a bottle with his elbow, splashing caustic fluid into her upturned eyes. The left eye was totally impaired; an iridectomy on the right eye five months later saved a faint light perception equivalent to two two-hundredths vision, enabling her to see the shadow of near objects and to detect daylight and the glow of an electric lamp.

Excepting frequent changes of residence and long absences of her father from the home, her mother strove to make Miss CAULFIELD's early childhood a normal one. She and an only brother, younger by a few years, shared the same childish activities. "No effort was made to disguise or escape the fact of my blindness," she recalls. "It was simply there, to be accepted and lived with. . ."

One great concession for which Miss CAULFIELD regards her blindness as a blessing in disguise was the extra amount of reading done aloud to her. Through the years her parents, aunts, uncles, teachers, friends, classmates, and even patients in her uncle's sanitarium took turns feeding an insatiable mind with the works of the masters and happenings of the day. "Even today," she admits, "whenever I get hold of a Braille book or magazine, it takes all the will power I possess not to read it from cover to cover with no thought of other duties or responsibilities."

At the turn of the century, there were relatively few schools for the blind in the United States, and most blind women, especially, were inactive and isolated from the mainstream of life. Fortunately, therefore, when it was time for their daughter to receive formal schooling, the inquiries of her anxious parents led them to the Perkins Institution for the Blind at Watertown, South Boston. Founded by Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the famous abolitionist, tuition and board were free for any rest: dent of the New England States. Promptly entered in the new primary department at Jamaica Plains—"beautifully equipped and as much like a home as a school could possibly be"—the next two years were for the young girl a happy adventure of learning and living a normal life.

The family then moved to Hartford where she attended for one year the Connecticut School for the Blind. Beginning there her formal religious instruction, the school nurse, who looked after the spiritual progress of the Catholic pupils, lastingly impressed upon her young charge that religion is something to be lived, not merely memorized. Next in Albany, New York, which lacked a school for the blind, she accompanied her brother to the third grade of the public school where the third and fifth grade teachers gave her as much attention as a regular pupil.

When the Caulfields returned a year later to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, GENEVIEVE was readmitted to the Perkins School and now learned Braille, began to take piano lessons and made her first attempts at writing. Relying entirely on the sense of touch and directions of the teacher and having to guess at the approximate length of each line, this was a laborious and frustrating task.

As their education advanced, blind students of that time also had to master three versions of Braille, a code of raised dots invented by a French teacher of the blind as a substitute for the line method that left them unable to write. Schooled first in American Braille, Miss CAULFIELD had to learn New York Point when she began to study Latin because the required grammar was only available in that print, and, finally, the English system in order to read books published in Great Britain. It was not until she had nearly finished college that English Braille was universally accepted for all readers of the Roman alphabet.

Graduation to the Perkins upper school at South Boston represented to the blind girl attainment of her first major goal in life. Here such household chores as sweeping, scrubbing, washing dishes and waiting on table, and daily afternoon walks—a girl with a little sight walking alongside a totally blind one—were as much a part of education as regular studies. Soon, however, the family's straitened circumstances dictated another move, this time to Haverstraw, New York, to live with an aunt and uncle who ran a small sanitarium for treatment of alcoholics. The young girl was transferred to the Overbrook School for the Blind in Philadelphia; it was located not far from her grandmother's home, which address she was allowed to use to qualify for free tuition.

Miss CAULFIELD spent nine years at this up-to-date institution, four earning her high school diploma and five more studying music and readying herself for college. The unshakable confidence of the school's principal, Dr. Edward E. Allen, in the students' ability to live full lives in spite of their handicap was to be her lifelong inspiration. Academic work was supplemented by many contacts with the outside world—artists came to entertain, the school glee club performed at churches and clubs, groups of teachers and pupils attended their own churches and symphony concerts, pupils who could see a little were encouraged to take those totally blind on trips around the city. An avid participant in all these activities, GENEVIEVE managed in time to travel alone through three train changes from Philadelphia to Haverstraw.

Completing her high school studies at Overbrook at the age of 17, she returned the following year as a practice teacher at seven dollars a month and might have joined as regular staff but for an article read aloud to her from Outlook Magazine on separate schools for Japanese children in California. This segregation did not materialize, but her sense of fairness and her curiosity has been aroused. She began to read everything she could find about Japan and determined one day to live and work there so that she might learn enough to influence other Americans whose prejudices she felt stemmed from ignorance of another people's way of life.

Fifteen years of arduous preparation for what was to be her life work followed before she was on board the "Iyo Maru" bound for Japan. At Overbrook she completed a heavy four year course of Latin, German, English, Literature, History and Mathematics. Unable to take her college examinations as other applicants did, the questions were forwarded to the Academy of Notre Dame in Philadelphia to be read by one of the Sisters as she copied them in Braille. Then, in the same time given to ordinary applicants, she typed the answers. Problems in mathematics were worked out in Braille and dictated to the Sister. Her reward for passing all subjects was a freshman year scholarship, including tuition and board.

In 1910, she entered Trinity College in Washington, D. C., a relatively new Catholic College for women affiliated with Catholic University, and set out to prove that she could compete on equal terms with people who could see. With the help of a scholarship grant from Overbrook, she took her final year at Columbia Teacher's College—the first blind student enrolled there—and, in 1914 at the age of 27, received a Bachelor of Science degree and a Diploma for the teaching of English.

From two Japanese students at college whom she befriended in an earnest effort to know more of their homeland, followed acquaintances with educators, members of the Diet, businessmen, bankers, military men and tourists from whom she gleaned more knowledge. Japanese students of English who practiced by talking and reading with her soon were joined by a banker and a newspaperman.

After graduation, she worked briefly with the New York State Commission for the Blind, traveling through Westchester County to report on names and addresses, living conditions, occupations and possibilities for further training of the blind. Next, four months of practice teaching at Perkins were followed by a half-year term as a substitute teacher at Overbrook. Of this period of moving about on her own she has noted: "It is, of course, hard for people not accustomed to dealing with the physically handicapped to know what they can do for themselves and what they require to have done for them . . . but the handicapped person must always remember the other's viewpoint." Among the worst problems she faced were such modern devices as self-service elevators.

Registering as a private tutor with the employment office at Columbia Teacher's College, she shortly had Cuban, French, Belgian and a heavy majority of Japanese students. After a year of living close to the University and taking meals outside, she and her brother set up a home with their mother in a seven-room apartment on Morningside Drive and there soon accepted Japanese boarders as members of the family. In 1922, after one of these boarders, a former naval commander and now Captain Masato Sugi, returned to Japan, he and his wife offered Miss CAULFIELD the hospitality of their home. With her passage aboard the NYK Line financed with her small savings and a 50 per cent reduction in fare in acknowledgment of her kindness to Japanese in New York, she landed at Yokohama on July 16, 1923. In the Sugi's easygoing household she determined to live inconspicuously by conforming to their customs in every way possible—she ate Japanese food, tried but discarded a kimono and studied the language. Fulfilling his commitment even after his promotion and transfer to Yokosuka, Admiral Sugi returned to the house in Tokyo on weekends so that Miss CAULFIELD could continue to stay with them.

Her response to the 1923 earthquake was to knit scarves, baby jackets and other warm clothing for homeless victims. Soon two teaching jobs were offered: one at Tokyo Prefectural Fifth Middle School for boys and the other at a settlement house night school for working people. With this accreditation, she soon had many private pupils and a girl companion to help her move around Tokyo. Anxious that Mrs. Sugi should be free to join her husband, she moved in with another family, helping six children with their English, and later joined a family whose son and daughter-in-law had lived with her in New York. Within a year, her income increased sufficiently to bring her mother to Japan. Over the next 12 years, coming to know more of Japanese customs and habits, it was her conclusion that "East is East and West is West, but they are very much the same where it counts."

Adoption of a 14-year-old Japanese girl, Haruko, brought "youth and beauty into the home." The young girl's keen interest in art was nurtured with lessons in flower arrangement and painting. Later, she studied dress designing from a French modiste whom Miss CAULFIELD paid in English lessons. Mrs. Caulfield taught Haruko housekeeping and English and, in her turn, Haruko helped her new "mother" with Japanese. Private lessons continued to support the home that also became a gathering place for young policemen of the district studying law and seeking help with their English. Work with the blind began in the mid-thirties when one of her private pupils—a general in the army—asked her to help 10 patients in his hospital who had been blinded during fighting in Manchuria. For them she conducted two-hour classes in Braille twice a week for two years. The power of the militarists meanwhile was growing. After a disturbing visit from the Kempetai—the dreaded military police—it became increasingly apparent that worsening relations between Japan and the U.S. would cripple her work and Japanese friendly to her would be endangered.

A new challenge had been suggested by Dr. Phon Sangsingkeo (also romanized as Fonthong Saengsingkaeo), a young psychiatrist on the staff of the Bangkok Mental Hospital, and other new Thai acquaintances who reported that little was being done for the blind in Siam. Encouraged by Thai friends, Miss CAULFIELD and Haruko spent a month in Bangkok in the summer of 1936. The official attitude that "blind people can never be taught to do anything" only made her more determined to start a school for these handicapped persons, "no matter how little help was offered." Returning briefly to Japan, Miss CAULFIELD, her mother and Haroko, in February 1937, sailed for New York on a silk cargo ship. A lecture tour in the U.S. organized with help of the Maryknoll Sisters earned enough to leave her with US$800 after paying for passage back to Bangkok. Haruko had gone to Overbrook to observe instruction of the blind, and both she and Miss CAULFIELD had also studied latest techniques at the famed Lighthouse Institute for the Blind in New York.

Returning to Bangkok by way of Europe, she brought a small treasure in her overnight bag—the Thai alphabet which she had transcribed into Braille and had embossed on metal plates at the Perkins Institution. Special equipment shipped directly from America included Braille slates, writing paper, elementary school books and two complete sets of embossed maps presented by the Director of Perkins. Through radio talks, newspaper interviews and a demonstration at the Constitution Fair of typing, Braille reading and writing, knitting and reading of embossed maps, she persuaded Thais that something could be done for the blind. This resulted in creation of the Foundation for Welfare and Education of the Blind in Thailand. The Mayor of Bangkok agreed to provide a small house—his successor reneged on this and Miss CAULFIELD had for a time to pay both for rent and scant furnishings from her preciously few travelers checks.

The first students of the Bangkok School for the Blind were an odd lot. One was sent by his father to learn whatever he could to be a more skillful beggar. Another had a brain tumor and was unfit to learn. A 30-year-old blind and partially deaf princess remained for a year, learning to read and write in Braille and to knit and weave.

The precarious finances were gradually eased by donations of cash and kind. A German ophthalmologist, Dr. Jacobson, treated pupils without charge. A festival at Princess Bichitr Devakul's girls' school raised US$1000 and, with other contributions, Miss CAULFIELD was able to move her effort to a larger house and accommodate 14 pupils, some of whom had special problems and needed to live in. Meanwhile, she supported herself and Haruko through tutoring in English. The blind students also were taught English—this proved a great morale builder since they learned rapidly, won respect for their linguistic ability and were enabled to read extensive Braille literature in English.

Two new allies appeared, in August 1940, in the persons of Nobutsugu Utagawa, former manager of the Japan Burma Association and now with a private Japanese firm in Bangkok, and a Mr. Goshima. The latter had learned of Miss CAULFIELD’s earlier work in Japan’s prisons and now donated 100 baht (then US$40) a month from his own salary and helped raise 4,000 baht from Japanese business firms to form a dormitory fund. The following year Haroko became Mrs. Utagawa; she died three days after Christmas, in 1941, after giving birth to a twin boy and girl. When their father was recalled to Burma on special assignment with the Burma Independence Army, Miss CAULFIELD cared for the two infants.

The outbreak of the Pacific War forced Miss CAULFIELD to continue her work by telephone when she was restricted to her home, but because of her semiofficial status she was spared internment camp and later assigned a pleasant personal guard to accompany her around Bangkok and on daily visits to her school. Miss CAULFIELD turned down two opportunities for repatriation to remain with her work. Unexpected assistance came following a benefit appearance by the blind children before the Women's Cultural Association, when Prime Minister Phibul Songgram instructed the Ministry of Health to appropriate an annual subsidy for the school of 20,000 baht. The pupils gained a new sense of importance when Princess Visakar Svasti, the younger sister of the wife of King Prajadhipok, joined the teaching staff. Educated in a convent in Penang where she had become a Catholic and taken the name Mary, the Princess became a full-time volunteer soon after she returned to Bangkok in 1943. Heavy bombing raids late that year and in 1944 forced evacuation of the school—first to Bangtarn, 50 miles to the south, and then to Hua Hin at the seaside, where it remained for the duration of hostilities.

Peace brought new problems, including locating a building for the school and spiraling inflation which depreciated the value of the government subsidy. Eventually, the Salesian Sisters, who had built a fine school at Banpong, agreed to take over the work with the blind, provided Miss CAULFIELD would train a sister-manager. With the work well begun, the public educated to appreciate what blind persons could do, and the students demonstrating their capabilities, Miss CAULFIELD felt free to leave, in 1947, for Japan with her twin wards and Mary who now was to become Mrs. Utagawa. Soon thereafter she made a lecture tour in the United States and returned to Japan to teach English and advise on training for the adult blind and physically handicapped.

During several flying trips to Bangkok she found that the Prime Minister and his wife had kept an earlier promise to see that land and permanent buildings were provided for the school. The Government subsidy to the school also was increased to 70,000 baht annually—the remainder of the 400,000 baht budget coming from private contributions. In 1952, she moved back to Bangkok to assist in vocational training and help the pupils find work. Four former pupils who studied abroad have returned to the staff, teaching general subjects, drama and kindergarten and handicrafts. Four other pupils learned to be professional masseurs from a teacher brought from Japan. Others are earning their living with handicrafts. From 1956 to 1960 Miss CAULFIELD also made repeated trips to Saigon at the invitation of President Ngo Dinh Diem, organizing a small school there for the blind and a rehabilitation center for boys. In between she made two visits to the United States, lecturing on Japan and Southeast Asia.

Lively and hardly handicapped by her blindness, Miss CAULFIELD has practiced her belief that everyone has a responsibility to act whatever way he can to enrich others by his presence. Her autobiography, published by Harper Brothers in 1960, is a sensitive story of her own life and the people whom she sought to understand and help interpret to her own people. It takes its title as she has taken her inspiration from Saint Luke 17:20-21: "And on being asked by the Pharisees, 'When is the Kingdom of God coming?' He answered and said to them, 'The Kingdom of God comes unawares. Neither will they say, Behold, here it is, or Behold, there it is. For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.’ "

August 1961
Manila

REFERENCES:

Caulfield, Genevieve. The Kingdom Within. Edited by Ed Fitzgerald. New York, Harper Brothers, 1960.

Evening News. Manila, Dec. 2, 1959.

Interviews with and reports from persons acquainted with Miss Caulfield and her work in Thailand, Vietnam and Japan.