Nagoya International School Information

What we have changed to become from then, and where we will surely grow to be from now, mirrors the economical growth of the region and the changing makeup of the international population of Nagoya we serve. What has remained constant, however, is the belief as a community in the importance of doing whatever is needed to ensure that we can deliver the school mission to each student who calls NIS home. It was difficult to envision a school like NIS in the early 1960s. Immediately following World War II, Japan was busy rebuilding and readjusting. The waves of missionaries, military personnel, and employees from foreign companies arriving in Nagoya, an industrial city cradled between two larger metropolises of Tokyo and Osaka, naturally needed schooling for their children as well. After the temporary U.S. military-run Nagoya American School (NAS) closed in 1957, the options for an education taught in English were extremely limited. Lockheed, one of the first American companies to move in to the Chubu region, stepped into the gap and formed a school in the neighboring prefecture of Gifu that ran until 1963. When it closed, the small Canadian mission-based Apostolic Christian Academy (ACA), which operated out of a home in Chikusa-ku suddenly became the only option in the Chubu region for an English-based education. Parents grew concerned and began to think of options and dream of a new school, as ACA was bulging at the seams and it became evident that a non-sectarian school with no other purpose but to serve the entire international community was needed. Creating a School out of Nothing