Both teenage girls were still adjusting to the jet lag, the unfamiliar Japanese food and the idea of traveling halfway around the globe to attend summer camp.
They were also trying to get used to sitting next to each other. Only a few months ago, their countries -- the US and Iraq -- had been at war.
On Thursday, as they gathered at Japanese charity group Ashinaga's center for orphans in this western Japanese city, the only thing they knew about each other was that they had both lost a parent: one girl's father had died in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and the other's in this year's US-led war in Iraq.
For Wisdan H.K. Al-Fadhily, the memory was still fresh.
The 16-year-old from Baghdad burst into tears when she was reminded of the day in March when her father was killed in an explosion at a nearby market where he ran a tobacco store. The Iraqi government said 58 civilians died, and blamed a US bomb.
"It was a disaster. I'll never forget it," Al-Fadhily said through a translator, hiding her face in her hands.
But it didn't take long for her to regain her composure. Hours later, as she and Hilary Strauch sat side-by-side during an icebreaker, they seemed to hit it off.
Afterward, Strauch, a freckled redhead from Avon, New Jersey, smiled broadly when asked if there had been any tension.
"We didn't get to talk much. But she seemed nice," said the 13-year-old, whose father had worked at Aon, a financial firm located in the World Trade Center.
It was the start of the fourth international camp hosted by Tokyo-based Ashinaga, which will last a week and has helped more than 60,000 children who have lost parents to disaster and disease since its founding in 1969.
The three Americans and 10 Iraqis are joined by 90 other orphans from Afghanistan, Algeria, Turkey, Uganda and Japan, and more than 50 Japanese university students and other volunteer camp counselors.
Although their customs, language and religion differ, the children are bonded by grief: The Afghan children have lost parents in the war with the US; the children from Japan, Turkey and Algeria were orphaned in earthquakes; and the Ugandan children lost parents to AIDS.
Yoshiji Hayashida, Ashinaga's director-general, said the goal is to teach the children to cope with their personal tragedies -- and to give them hope -- by encouraging them to have fun and make new friends. Many had been deprived of food or schooling, and had nobody to help them ease the pain.
"The worst ones have lost hope," he said. "We can't predict whether all will go well. But some will leave here able to dream about a better future."
Roni Robertie, a counselor from the Virginia-based Comfort Zone Camp, which assists families who lost loved ones in the terror attacks in the US, said she jumped at the chance to come.
"If there is ever going to be peace, it has to start at the grass-roots level, not with governments," she said.
On Thursday, the campers attended an opening ceremony and took part in a drawing session in which the children were asked to express how they felt. Later, they set off by ferry for Nishijima, a tiny island nicknamed Hahatoko, or "mother and child," for four days of barbecues, canoeing and playing ball.
Sajad Al-Bawy, a 6-year-old Shiite Iraqi whose soldier father was killed in April, had drawn a picture of a man with black hair. He said it was former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, after he had been killed.
"He killed my father," he whispered into a counselor's ear.
The older ones were more cautious.
Roaa Muhamed, 15, complained she wasn't told that Americans would be attending. She said she didn't like the Americans because they attacked her country and killed her people.
"I wouldn't have come if I had known. I don't want to meet any Americans," Muhamed said.
But Strauch, the 13-year-old from New Jersey, had a different perspective. "I don't think all Iraqis are bad -- just a select few who were in power," she said.
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