Author: Jonathan Carey / Source: Atlas Obscura
For 60 years, the cities of San Francisco, California, and Osaka, Japan, enjoyed a robust cultural partnership. The two port enclaves were “sister cities,” a designation that illustrates one of several post-World War II attempts to embrace ethnic diversity and multiculturalism.
Like all sister cities, Osaka and San Francisco’s bond was built around the sharing of ideas and heritage. In the past, this has taken many forms, from student exchanges and remote learning programs to ambassadorial delegations, all of which have been used over the course of the six-decade relationship to foster cultural understanding. But this sororal connection became strained in the fall of 2017, when a statue honoring “comfort women,” who were enslaved in Japanese brothels during World War II, was constructed in San Francisco. After a year of repeated threats, Osaka mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura sent a 10-page letter to San Francisco mayor London Breed in October 2018 in which he wrote, “I am afraid to announce that the City of Osaka must hereby terminate its sister city relationship with the City and County of San Francisco.”
But what does it mean for sister cities to breakup? And what does it mean, more specifically, for Osaka and San Francisco?
While the concept of “sister cities” predates World War II—with Toledo, Spain, and Toledo, Ohio, signing a twinning agreement in 1931—these relationships have flourished in the decades since the conflict. In 1956, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower created the Sister Cities International program to improve relationships between countries around the globe. The nonprofit is the national membership organization for all sister cities, counties, and states that exist in the United States with ties to 140 countries across the planet. The U.S. president is considered the honorary chairman of the organization, even though it is not officially part of the federal government.
(A note about the lexicon here: The term “sister city” is usually utilized in reference to a relationship involving a city in the Americas, whereas elsewhere, other terms, including “twin towns,” are used.)
Individual sister-city relationships are orchestrated by smaller associations across various U.S. cities under the support and guidance of SCI. The sister-city relationship is usually one that has taken a few years to put together and organize, from establishing lines of communication to agreeing on what the actual partnership will entail. During this period the two cities are known as friendship cities, which is considered the first step to sisterhood. SCI also has a cities-seeking-cities personals page where lonely cities can find partners. Once the relevant representatives sign a memorandum outlining the relationship, it becomes official.
Some of the earliest sister-city relationships were formed out of humanitarian efforts. When American towns began noticing how British people sent relief packages to European countries recovering from the war, they decided to do the same. In 1955, one year before the formation of SCI, the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, became the first American city to establish a relationship with an Asian city by entering a sister-city agreement with Nagasaki, Japan. Minnesotans immediately began sending medical supplies to Nagasaki, which was still suffering a decade after the atomic bombing.
Today, these relationships take on many forms. While they can spawn from superficial similarities, such as two cities sharing a name, they can be mutually beneficial for…
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