In Okinawa over the summer, students from Japan and the United States who were participating in the Japan-America Student Conference (JASC) - including Tufts junior Rachel Olanoff - came together for a barbeque. The Okinawans taught the Americans a saying: "Do ichari bacho de," meaning, "We're all brothers."
This phrase encapsulates the basis of the JASC, the oldest non-profit educational and cultural exchange program between the two countries. A month-long conference for college students from the United States and Japan, the JASC aims to promote peace through mutual understanding, friendship and trust, according to JASC.org.
Olanoff participated in the program this past summer, when the theme of the conference was "60 Years after the War," focusing on the state of Japanese and U.S. bilateral relations. "It's not a narrow focus, though," Olanoff said. "It's always about that relation in the context of the entire world."
A major focus of the JASC, she said, is peace. The group of delegates traveled to Hiroshima for an international peace ceremony. "Right before the peace ceremony, it was really cool to see so many international groups of people," Olanoff said.
Olanoff didn't realize how big the ceremony for the 60-year anniversary would be, and she was impressed with the public participation. "Almost every group who visited brought huge strings of 1,000 folded paper cranes," she said. "Everyone contributed and paid their wishes for peace."
The group traveled to Okinawa and stayed in local homes. "It was really amazing," Olanoff said. "We really got a flavor for local culture and Okinawan spirit."
A JASC alum decided to film a documentary on their experience. "We traveled with a film crew that taped us going to an old field hospital and to peace museums," Olanoff said. "We discovered the wartime memories about how Okinawan people suffered. The crew gauged our reaction to that."
The JASC leaders were veterans and civilians from wartime, which contributed to the experience's emotional impact. "We went into caves where people were hiding during the battle," Olanoff said. "We saw pictures and heard stories. The combination of that and hearing from the people themselves made it a much more potent experience."
Despite the conference's focus on the past, current issues also played an important part. "There was a lot of talk about the current American bases," Olanoff said, describing some tension between the Japanese and Americans in the area. Seventy percent of the American bases are in Okinawa, making up a large part of the city itself.
"A part of them want [American] bases out of Okinawa, but it means they have to build an army," Olanoff said. "A lot of people don't like the bases but like the safety that they provide."
The JASC group was exposed to both sides of the issue. "We went to the military base and got American military propaganda there," Olanoff said. "And then went to an activist Okinawan group who didn't want the coral reefs destroyed because of base construction."
Audience participation was encouraged at every stop on the trip. "We had a peace concert," Olanoff said. "They had us hold out cut-out number '9's, which were supposed to symbolize Article Nine and preserving the peace constitution." (A debate is currently raging over whether that article, which was inserted during the American occupation of Japan after World War II and prohibits the use of force, should remain in Japan's constitution.)
Olanoff's friend Saori Namaita, a Japanese JASC Executive Committee member from Keio University in Tokyo, said that the program had a tremendous impact on her perception of her life.
"My personal purpose was to learn about my roots and see if my pro-American views and 'American-at-heart' changed into something different," she said. "Personally, I think it was really successful as an individual experience, and I'm so glad I had this experience at the age of 20."
Though the conference was held in Japan this year, all activities were held in English. "It was a bit of a touchy part of the conference, because English is taught in Japanese high schools but [Japanese is not taught as much in the U.S.], so we couldn't have Japanese spoken," Olanoff said.
Although translation was available, "the hard part of it is to make sure that meaning transfers across both languages," Olanoff said. "It's harder to hear [the Japanese students'] voices on issues because of the translation difficulties."
Cross-cultural navigation was the most difficult part of the JASC for Olanoff. "The biggest challenge for me was learning how to really be respectful to everyone," Olanoff said. "Sometimes it was hard to tell if I was stepping outside of my boundaries and committing cultural faux-pas."
"Next year, we need to be really careful because it will be in America," said Olanoff, who was elected to the Executive Board of next year's conference. Though the itinerary for the conference is not yet set, it will tentatively include stops at Ithaca College, Cornell University and the University of Oklahoma, as well as in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
In order to facilitate communication and strengthen the relationships between American and Japanese students, Olanoff said she is "thinking of having a day where everyone learns Japanese phrases, where the Japanese can teach the American delegates - so it doesn't always feel like it's the other way around."
The JASC focuses on academics in addition to culture. Olanoff, the only Jumbo involved in the JASC last year, said that she wants to see more Tufts students participate. "I think that the international focus of the program is really suited to Tufts, what with the strong undergraduate International Relations program and the Fletcher School as a resource," she said.
One example of the academic side of JASC is the roundtable discussion, at which two executive committee members - one from Japan and the other from America - lead panel discussions about a topic related to the year's theme.
Olanoff's roundtable discussion for this year's conference - the specific location of which has yet to be announced - will focus on immigration and multicultural issues. At the end of the conference, the JASC holds a forum in which each roundtable group presents its work to
alumni.
Some of Olanoff's goals for next year's conference are on the global scale. "It's important to make the partnership between Japan and America tighter," she said. "As leading industrial countries, they can really use their privilege to help underdeveloped countries. This is what Japan and the U.S. can do together for the rest of the world."
The application for the JASC will be available in November. Interested students should contact Rachel Olanoff at Rolanoff_JASC58@hotmail.com.<$>
