Photo/Illutration A card from a Ukrainian child says “I dream of flying to your country” in Japanese. (Provided by Tomoko Kobayashi)

Christmas cards continue to be exchanged between children living in now war-torn Ukraine and students in an area heavily affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The exchanges started in 2014.

This winter, 355 Christmas cards were sent from Ukraine for distribution to children in the Odaka district of Minami Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, starting on Jan. 11.

The children in Minami-Soma attend municipal-run elementary and junior high schools in the Odaka district. The Ukrainian schools in the exchange include the 25th School in Zhytomyr, a city on the midwestern part of the country, that was bombed by Russia in March last year.

The 25th School teaches children from elementary school to high school age.

What first connected Zhytomyr and Minami-Soma, which are more than 8,000 kilometers apart, were nuclear disasters.

Zhytomyr is around 100 km southwest of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The city was blanketed with radioactive fallout from the nuclear accident there in 1986.

Minami-Soma is located near Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, which suffered a triple meltdown in 2011.

Messages on the cards from the Ukrainian children highlighted the impact of Russia’s invasion.

“Our parents are military men who guard us on the war field,” one message read. “We have known what nuclear pollution is, but now we’ve also got to know what war is. Let such adversity never come your way.”

Many cards depicted a map of Ukraine or used blue and yellow, the colors of the country’s flag.

One Ukrainian child even wrote in Japanese, “Dear Japanese people, I dream of flying to your country.”

From the Japanese side, 18 students in the fifth or sixth grade at the Odaka Elementary School sent Christmas cards to Ukraine at the end of November with messages in English.

“I’ve got your back,” said one. “I’m always on your side,” read another.

Students at the Odaka junior high school held a fund-raiser and donated the money to Ukraine.

The friendship between the two cities’ children started through Kyoko Tomura, 74, a director at a nonprofit organization in Nagoya called the Association to Help Chernobyl, Chubu-District, Japan.

After the Chernobyl disaster, the NPO based itself in Zhytomyr and provided support to the victims.

The exchanges continued despite disruptions caused by Russia’s invasion, which began in February last year.

In Zhytomyr, the children were deprived of a place of learning by the bombing of the 25th School. The city’s students are now taking online classes.

The students in the Odaka district keep sending words of encouragement to their Ukrainian friends.

“I hope I can be even a little help for them,” Sae Ijima, a sixth-grader at the Odaka Elementary School, said.

Tomura said she will work toward a continuation of the children’s friendship.

“The fact that they still exchange cards as in the past is a miracle and gives mutual encouragement to the children,” Tomura said.

Related News