Alexa Climaldi, a 17-year-old Kaiser High School junior, went to Japan last year and was hosted by a Japanese family as part of the Kizuna Project, a youth exchange program launched by the Japanese government to promote awareness of its recovery from the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami.
This week she was glad to return the favor to 16-year-old Kentaro Fujikura, a freshman from Kozukata High School in the Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan. Fujikura, who hopes to visit the USS Arizona Memorial while he is here, is among the first crop of Japanese students to visit Hawaii through the Kizuna Project.
The program, which started in November 2011 and runs through the end of this year, aims to promote peace and understanding by linking more than 10,000 youth from Japan and 41 countries.
Toyoei Shigeeda, consul general of Japan in Honolulu, said Kizuna’s goal is to build cultural bonds.
"Never give up," Shigeeda told Kizuna Project students on Wednesday at a reception hosted at his Oahu residence. "Going forward, remember that Hawaii is always standing beside you."
Climaldi, who raised $600 by putting on a music concert for the Japan victims during her sophomore year, said the experience of actually going to Japan built new friendships and broadened her understanding of the country and what its people went through.
"I still communicate with my homestay sister and with all of the high school friends that I met in Fukushima. On the news, you see victims, but I learned that they are much more than victims," she said. "I learned that even though bad things happen you can still move on. It was very humbling."
Kaiser High Principal John Sosa said the Kizuna Project had a profound impact on the 23 students from his school who spent two weeks in Japan.
"When this opportunity came up to send our students, it brought this world even closer to us," he said.
Now, hosting Japanese students gives the general student population an opportunity to develop broader awareness, he said.
"Learning the basics of education such as math and science is important, but we also have to learn how to understand other people’s cultures," Sosa said. "We need to teach our young people to pursue peace and understanding."
While in Hawaii, Fujikura hopes to spread the message to students and others that Japan still needs their assistance.
"I want Hawaii people to understand that the Great Japan Earthquake isn’t finished yet," he said. "I want people to learn about what happened and please think what they can do to help."
Iwate’s coastal regions experienced massive destruction from the tsunami and its aftershocks, while people living in the inland regions suffered personal damage and saw disruptions to their public works as well as agricultural and forest industries. Fujikura lives in the less-impacted inland region; however, he said that people living in the coastal region of his prefecture must not be forgotten.
Part of his reason for coming to Hawaii is to help those who still suffer, he said.
"We are living in the same prefecture so we felt that we should do something," Fujikura said.
Former Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle, who spoke at the reception, told the students it is important to keep the closeness between the U.S. and Japan that became apparent in the tragedy’s aftermath.
"This is a time when catastrophe occurred where everyone stood tall to help," Carlisle said. "We are now so close. We need to make sure to always maintain it and the way to do that more than anything else is through people-to-people contact, especially among young people. I encourage you to get as close as you can to people who are here."
Since the tragedy, Japanese people have come to better understand how important it is to give and to receive assistance, said Shigeki Fukazawa, Fujikura’s foreign-language teacher.
"We learned that we are in the same ring of fire and the same ring of partnership so we have to help each other when something happens in that ring of fire," he said.
Fukazawa said the Japanese foreign-language students who are visiting Hawaii have learned much during their trip, which previously took them to Seattle and San Francisco.
"It’s been 11 days since we left our hometown and they have already grown up greatly because of this program," Fukazawa said. "It has broadened their minds and made them more open-minded. They really want to go abroad in the future. This program helped them to acquire English and made them want to do something for the world, not only for Japan."
