On April 15, 1937, Helen Keller and Polly Thomson (her “eyes and ears”), landed in Yokohama Bay after a two-week voyage across the Pacific aboard the Asama Maru. Other than starting Helen Keller International in the United States, Keller’s greatest societal impact can be found in Japan, where she visited in 1937, 19. Before Sullivan, Keller had been a temperamental and terrified 7-year-old, but as she recounts in her 1903 autobiography, 'The Story of My Life,' Sullivan, or “Teacher,” rescued her from a “dark, soundless silence.”įrom that epiphanic moment at the fountain, the “little bronco” would go on to live an enormous life, traveling to over 30 countries and being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 before passing away four years later at the age of 87. It wasn’t until Anne Sullivan, a determined 20-year-old teacher from the Perkins School for the Blind, brought Keller’s hand under a fountain and palm-spelled the word 'water' that she began to interact with the world that surrounded her. Born in Tuscumbia, Alabama in 1880 to a former captain of the Confederate Army and a “Memphis Belle” 20 years his junior, Keller lost her sight and hearing from a severe illness (some say scarlet fever or meningitis) at 19 months old. I made it about five steps before giving up.

I did attempt to place myself on the tenji buroku, or the bumpy yellow lines for the vision impaired on Japanese sidewalks, close my eyes and plug my ears. Often, when I write, I try to put myself in the subject’s shoes and imagine seeing life from their perspective or hearing the sounds around them.

Light in my darkness by helen keller