One of the teenagers is longing for her grandfather, a hostage being held in Gaza; another lost her best friend in the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in Kibbutz Be’eri; and yet another had to carry a gun for protection as he patrolled his moshav a few days after Hamas’ brutal attack.

All three are part of a group of 15 Israeli students from the Nofey Habsor High School — located in the Eshkol region of the Gaza Envelope — that will be traveling to Japan at the end of this month as part of a unique leadership program aimed at supporting their recovery following Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attacks on their communities and instilling a sense of empowerment that young people, despite such extreme events, can be effective agents of change.

While the group, which will also include three teachers and a student counselor, will travel to several locations in Japan, the highlight of the trip is a scheduled visit to Fukushima, the devastated site of the 2011 nuclear power plant accident caused by an unprecedented earthquake and tsunami in the region. 

“The similarity between Fukushima and what happened in southern Israel on Oct. 7 are the personal stories of loss and destruction,” said Mayo Hotta, the executive director of enForward, a community platform that promotes diversity and multicultural collaborations to achieve a better future and overcome challenges and crises. 

Hotta, a Japanese national who moved to Israel in 2017 and who is married to Yotam Polizer, CEO of Israeli emergency aid agency IsraAid, told Jewish Insider that the idea for the trip was based on her own experiences working with young survivors from Fukushima.

She described how in 2011 she had been working for Japanese investment company Softbank and, like many in Japan, was shocked into action after learning that some 20,000 people were killed in the combined disasters.

“It was a shocking event for all the Japanese people and the company I was working for started to develop its corporate responsibility, a concept that we didn’t have in Japan until then,” she recalled, describing how she helped to found the TOMODACHI SoftBank Leadership Program, under the auspices of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, aimed at giving hope to young survivors of the disaster.

It was the success of the Fukushima program that propelled Hotta into action following Oct. 7. Connecting with Hadar Horesh, the 11th grade head teacher at the Nofey Habsor school, she worked on creating a program that would allow young survivors of the terror attacks in Israel a glimpse into the heartbreaking experiences of people in another place, halfway across the world.

“People from the periphery [of Israel] are hungry for opportunities,” Hotta, who now develops relationships between Japan and Israel in the high-tech field, said, drawing comparisons between her own experiences as a girl from a tiny, rural village and those of young people from the Fukushima and Eshkol areas.

Listing basic similarities such as mass evacuation of the population from a danger zone, the devastating losses of life and the struggles of a destroyed community, Hotta said that it was during a recent interview with a prospective Israeli student for the Eshkol-Japan program that she realized the underlying connection between the two sites.

Budding filmmaker Eyal Cohen from Moshav Ein Habsor, which is about four miles from the Gaza Strip, told Hotta that he wanted to make a documentary about the visit, saying he believed what residents of Eshkol and Fukushima had in common was the “unknowns” they experienced during and after their respective tragedies.

“He told me that on the day of Oct. 7, in the morning, there were unknowns … the people didn’t know what was happening,” she recounted of the interview. “A few hours later, there were still unknowns, and a few days later, there were still unknowns.”

“So many different kinds of unknowns were created on that day and are still happening today, they are living in the middle of the unknown and he said he believed that the people of Fukushima, who were also evacuated from their homes and lost friends and family, also had this feeling of [the] unknown,” Hotta said, adding, “I totally agree with him.”

On a recent Zoom call in preparation for the trip, all 15 students shared their experiences and losses on and since Oct. 7, including talking about leaving their homes, communities and the physical dispersal of their school, which became a staging ground for the IDF troops heading into Gaza.

Among the stories were those of Yuval Moses, who spoke about missing her grandfather, Gadi Moses, 80, from Nir Oz, a hostage in Gaza for more than 280 days; Lili Pelish from Kibbutz Urim, who told the group about losing her best friend, Tchelet Fishbein, murdered on Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7; and Yotam Zellner, 16, who recalled being equipped with a gun as he took part in guard patrols on his moshav, Ein Habsor.

Hotta told JI that all the students had been deeply affected and traumatized by the Oct. 7 attacks and ongoing war. She said that their two-week stay in Japan would focus not only on learning about her country, its 2011 disaster and developing leadership skills, but also on emotional reflection.

She also said that the program, which is being run in partnership with the American Jewish Committee, the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo, the Sojitz Foundation and an anonymous donor, has been warmly received in Japan, where public attention and sympathy is often focused on the Palestinian people in Gaza.

“No one in Japan questioned me about the importance of bringing Israeli kids to visit,” said Hotta. “They all understood that these kids were hurt, and that they all need support.”

“I don’t want this to be a political discussion or for us to talk about why this happened,” she continued. “My main aim is to bring it all down to the personal level.”