Journalist meets politician: The day I reunited with my childhood friend 5,500 miles from home

It indeed is a small world after all.

Having grown up in Japan, I recently volunteered to interview a delegation of young political leaders from Japan visiting Southern California.

When I received a list of the delegates’ names, I was more than surprised. On there was Takahisa Oda, my close childhood friend, with whom I had walked to school every day. Our homes were about 100 yards apart. He is now a councilman of our hometown, the city of Sagamihara, on the outskirts of Tokyo.

On Oct. 31, we reunited, 5,500 miles away from our hometown in a hotel lobby in Orange, as a U.S. journalist and a Japanese politician. There was no way we, or anyone, could have imagined that such a day would come, and I couldn’t help but feel proud of our careers.

Takahisa was among six Japanese officials tapped by their respective political parties to establish connections with and learn about the U.S. through an exchange program between the two countries, just before President Trump’s visit to Asia. These up-and-comers, 40 years and younger, are expected to lead Japan in the future.

I asked them what they thought about the U.S. and its relationships with Japan.

The delegation first stopped in Washington, D.C. during their 10-day stay, which had been cut short because of a snap election in Japan. There, they visited the U.S. Department of State and the Democratic National Committee while also learning about political lobbying.

“I was relieved to find out State Department officials know very well about Japan,” said Koichiro Yorimitsu, a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the Kochi Prefectural Assembly.

Despite what happened in World War II, most Japanese and the country as a whole consider the United States to be a key partner. And that partnership is more important to Japan than ever, as North Korea develops its missile systems. A big debate in Japan is whether the country should amend its pacifist constitution and beef up the military.

Although we hear news about Kim Jong-un’s threats to attack the United States, most of us here, even on the West Coast, don’t think much about it in our everyday lives. The fear, however, is real in Japan.

Whenever North Korea launches a ballistic missile that flies over Japan, people receive a government warning, known as the J-Alert, on loudspeakers, TV and cell phones. Imagine all the cell phones beeping simultaneously on infamously packed trains in Tokyo, like they did across Orange County during a recent wildfire.

Residents in Sagamihara, my hometown, are especially worried, Takahisa said, because it has a U.S. military base, which they think could become a target.

“I hope that America is on the same page as Japan, sharing the goal of disarming North Korea of nuclear weapons,” said Toru Kawabata, the chief of Chugoku Branch for the Komei Press, a media organization of the Komeito Party.

The delegation came to Orange County last week, meeting county and state politicians, getting a tour of Orange County Water District’s groundwater replenishment system and visiting Richard Nixon Library and UC Irvine.

Rieko Fukuda, a Liberal Democratic Party member of the Shunan City Council, said she was inspired to see women, such as board supervisors Michelle Steel and Lisa Bartlett, both of whom are Asian, serving as top-ranking officials. It’s still rare to see women in politics in Japan, particularly at the local level, she said.

La Palma City Councilman Peter Kim served as the delegation’s host in Orange County. Kim, 33, traveled to China and Taiwan in 2014 through a similar exchange program by the American Council of Young Political Leaders, whose local alumni include Congressmen Ed Royce and Dana Rohrabacher.

“It was great to meet young political leaders from both countries,” Kim said, reflecting on his 2014 trip. “A lot of our alum are now in the federal government and they are able to leverage those relationships.”

Kawabata agrees.

“An exchange program like this may not have an immediate effect,” he said. “But I believe that an accumulation of such experiences will lead to an even stronger U.S.-Japan relationship.”

One thing they want the Americans to know, delegates said, is how much the Japanese love the United States.

It’s not hard to sense that affinity, or even admiration, when you see the abundance of American retailers and restaurants in Tokyo, where people proudly wear New York and Los Angeles caps and T-shirts as fashion.

Their interest in the United States appears to have grown after Donald Trump was elected as president. Japanese media have reached out to me to write and talk about how Americans feel about this past presidential election and how they view Japan.

“It’s probably the foreign country we feel closest to,” said Kawabata, who lives in Hiroshima, where the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb. “Japan and the U.S. have overcome some conflicts, such as trade frictions, to build a strong relationship.”

Takahisa said he was impressed by global perspectives held by many top-ranking officials he met during the trip. That experience has taught him to think about domestic issues from a broader point of view even at the city level, he said.

“I was only thinking about Sagamihara’s education only within a domestic context, but I should also compare our system to that of the U.S., China, Korea and other countries,” he said.

As a journalist, I hope to do the same. While the world is a small place, it also is huge, full of things waiting to be discovered.

I cannot wait to meet Takahisa again one day, and hope that by then we will have both contributed to making this world a better place.