Japanese Exchange Students Cancel Palo Alto Visits

Japanese exchange students from Palo Alto’s sister city, Tsuchiura, canceled their annual visit to local middle schools Sumday, because of the massive 8.9 earthquake and deadly tsunami that devastated Japan on Friday.

Sixteen corresponding Palo Alto families were to house the Japanese students for nine days. Jordan and Jane Lathrop Stanford middle schools had prepared a welcoming ceremony that was called off. Palo Alto City Council members were to honor the exchange students with a proclamation on Monday.

None of the Tsuchiura middle-school students were injured, said Keiko Nakajima, who teaches Japanese at Jordan and JLS middle schools. But Nakajima said some of the exchange students suffered lost roofs and collapsed walls in their homes.

One eight-grader, Kenjiro, was to stay with Jordan Middle School student John Carter. Kenjiro has been living in his father’s car since the quake. “I’m very fine,” he wrote to Carter. “But my house is soppy (sic). So I am in my father’s car. I want to see you.” The two boys share a similar interest in baseball and have been corresponding for several months, Carter’s mother, Catherine Carter, said.

A 6- or 6.5-magnitude tremor hit Tsuchiura, Bruce Ishimoto, a parent coordinator of the exchange program said. “The water is off, the electricity off, roads have caved in,” he said. “There is talk of evacuating,” he added, because of a nuclear plant that exploded in nearby Fukushima. Tsuchiura is 36 miles northeast of Tokyo in the Ibaraki Prefecture.

Neighbors Abroad, a volunteer group that organizes Palo Alto’s official sister-cities exchange program, coordinated the efforts.

“It was very difficult, not only for the host students,” Nakajima said of the earthquake. “All my Japanese class students made posters and prepared what we were going to do when they come. Now I have to tell them it was canceled. It’s so sad,” she said.

Palo Alto students traditionally fly to Tsuchiura in July for a return visit, Ishimoto said. While the Japanese have extended their welcome, the July plans are up in the air as families assess the damage done to the area, Ishimoto said.

“My family is OK,” wrote an e-mail that Hillary Freeman, a former Palo Alto City Council member who helped make Tsuchiura an official sister city, said she received from a family she knew there. "No food, no water, no electric. Just happy to be alive. Please pray for us.”  

The Palo Alto middle-school students plan a fund-raising event for Tsuchiura, Nakajima said. Anyone interested in helping may contact her at: tymm4@yahoo.com.