Tomoko Ohji, Award Winning Journalist (Current Student)

I am a former senior Jerusalem correspondent with the Mainichi Newspaper, one of Japan’s leading national newspapers. During my work as a Jerusalem correspondent I developed a desire to learn about Israel’s psychological coping skills. I have come to learn that resilience is key, not only in dealing with social stress, but also for preventing people from radicalizing, and this is why I decided to enroll in the International MA in Crisis and Trauma at Tel Aviv University.

Japanese society, while different from Israeli society in many aspects, also faces challenges and as a country, which has seen many disasters – natural or manmade – and Japan can certainly benefit from enhanced resilience among its population, so that it would be better equipped for coping with devastating trauma.

As a journalist I experienced crisis and trauma first hand on a number of occasions. In 2009, I accompanied US combat troops to Afghanistan. While there, an armored vehicle I was traveling in hit an IED. This and other battlefield experiences led me to realizations regarding the challenging nature of asymmetric warfare. Afterwards, I suffered from concussions and when I got back to Washington DC, I interviewed medical professionals and reported on the issue of military veterans’ brain injury phenomenon, also known as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), stemming from shockwaves of IED blasts. I received an international prize for journalism: the Vaughan-Ueda International Journalist Award, for these reports.

In 2013, I was posted in Jerusalem, and during the summer of 2014, I covered Operation Protective Edge from inside Gaza, and spent 25 consecutive days there in the midst of heavy fighting. In addition to my experience in covering conflicts and war zones, I also have a significant experience in covering natural disasters. In 1995 I was in Kobe when the Hanshin earthquake disaster hit, and in Tokyo when the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami disaster took place.

As a journalist, once I graduate from the Program, I plan to focus on writing articles and books to convey the knowledge and skills that I learn. Needless to say, a society's resilience is measured by the resilience of the individuals comprising it, and in this sense I attribute a great importance to the role of mass media in educating the population and granting ordinary citizens the appropriate knowledge and tools for coping with the potential stress and trauma that stem from terrorism, violent conflicts and natural disasters.