Osaka mayor to end sister city status with San Francisco over ‘comfort women’ statue
2017-11-26 11:00:38 source：The Washington Post
November 25, 2017
Japan's third-largest city, Osaka, and San Francisco became sister cities in 1957 — part of a project to twin Japanese cities with American counterparts to foster peace between former enemies and celebrate historical ties.
Sixty years later, that relationship is slated to come to an abrupt end. The cause of the breakup? A statue installed this year that commemorates the foreign “comfort women” forced to work in brothels by the Japanese army during World War II and the decades before.
The statue was unveiled in downtown San Francisco in late September to relatively little fanfare in the United States. But it has prompted dramatic headlines in Japan, with Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura pledging Friday to end the sister city relationship after San Francisco officially designated the memorial city property this week.
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