Osaka to cut ties with San Francisco over comfort women statue

January 31, 2018

Osaka- Japanese citizens have shown mixed reactions to Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura's decision to terminate long-held sister city links with San Francisco following the American municipality's acceptance of a statue dedicated to so-called comfort women.

Many Japanese praised Yoshimura for his firm stance on the politically sensitive issue, but others questioned the wisdom of the decision, which is likely to hit grassroots exchanges between residents of the two cities.

The statue was donated by a group of Americans of Chinese descent and other citizens and now stands in a Chinatown plaza of San Francisco.

An inscription on the side of the statute reads: "The monument bears witness to the suffering of hundreds of thousands of women and girls, euphemistically called 'Comfort Women,' who were sexually enslaved by the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces in thirteen Asian-Pacific countries from 1931 to 1945. Most of these women died during their wartime captivity."

Most of the comfort women, who were forced to serve as prostitutes for Japanese troops before and during World War II, are thought to have been from the Korean Peninsula but included Chinese and other women.

The inscription is "different from the Japanese government's understanding," Yoshimura said. The "inaccurate and one-sided" message is aimed at criticizing Japan, rather than looking squarely at history, he added.

At a meeting with US Ambassador to Japan William Hagerty, Yoshimura said the relationship of mutual trust between Osaka and San Francisco, the foundation of their 60-year sisterhood since 1957, has been "fundamentally" upset.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the legislative branch of the city, decided last November to accept the statue, although Yoshimura had repeatedly asked Mayor Edwin Lee to reject it.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe subsequently told parliament during a plenary session that the decision by San Francisco was "highly regrettable because it conflicts with our government's position."

Abe revealed that he had asked Lee to veto the decision, but the San Francisco mayor endorsed it.

According to the Osaka city office, it had received some 13,000 opinions on the issue from people by telephone or email from January by November last year and roughly 90 pct of them supported Yoshimura's protest against the statue.

But questions have also been raised about the mayor going as far as terminating Osaka's sister city ties with San Francisco.

Yoshikazu Noda, mayor of Higashiosaka, Osaka Prefecture, which has a sister city relationship with Glendale, California, where another comfort women memorial statue has been installed, brushed aside Osaka's move as far from a fundamental solution to the problem. For San Francisco, "the unilateral termination of sisterhood is like a mosquito biting an elephant," Noda told reporters.

Ryoichi Kuboi, a 71-year-old professor emeritus of Osaka University and head of a civic group engaged in grassroots exchanges with San Francisco with the Osaka municipal government's financial support, said, "I wonder whether it was wise to take an easy decision on the termination without examining the exchange programs in detail."

"The foundation of exchanges between sister cities is the promotion of interactions of citizens free from politics," Kuboi said. "I feel really sad because the future of children has been crushed."

San Francisco Mayor Lee died suddenly of a heart attack in mid-December last year. Yoshimura plans to notify San Francisco of Osaka's decision to cut ties with it after the election of Lee's successor in June this year.

Yoshimura denied that he will reconsider the decision after San Francisco's new mayor takes office. "The relationship of mutual trust has already disappeared," he said. Jiji Press