During the Olympic Winter Games in Nagano in 1998, Sanbonyanagi Elementary School in Nagano supported Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of the "one school, one nation" program, where each local school learned about and supported one country during the games. Now friendship between students in Nagano and Sarajevo has grown strong.

The school's relationship with the country began with a letter from second graders at Nafija Sarajlic Elementary School in Sarajevo in 1996. During the Bosnian conflict heavy fighting took place in the capital, which hosted the Olympic Winter Games in 1984. About 100 of the 850 students at the school lost their parents, and some students were themselves killed in the war.

In the letter, the students wrote about these sad experiences. They wished for the Olympics in Nagano to be successful and for Japan to never again be involved in war. Since then, students of the two schools have corresponded with each other.

When Japanese students heard that a fifth grader at the Sarajevo school fell victim to a land mine in the summer of 1997, they launched a fund-rasing campaign to get him artificial legs. The young victim lost both his legs and his right hand, as well as his sight in his right eye.

Last March two teachers from the Japanese school were supposed to visit the school in Sarajevo with one million yen (9091 U.S. dollars at 110 yen to the dollar) raised in the campaign. However, their visit was postponed because NATO launched air strikes two days prior to their departure, making the region dangerous to visit.

These tragic events have made the Japanese students think about why such a long series of conflicts has taken place in Bosnia, a region where people of diverse ethnic backgrounds live.

Through their study about the Balkans, they learned about children who are in the hospital in war-worn Kosovo. The Japanese kids have started exchanging letters with them. At the end of November, the two Japanese teachers finally realized their visit to the elementary school in Sarajevo and children there welcomed them with smiles. The Japanese teachers said they wished to invite the Bosnian students to Japan someday.

Photo: Japanese students take a look at the latest pictures and letters from their Sarajevo friends. (Asahi Shogakusei Shimbun)