Here’s another story of history unfolding around us every day…
Did you know that San Francisco used to have a sister city? I learned that in March while there for the Superfine Art Show.
(one of the paintings that sold at Superfine Art Fair San Francisco)
While exploring SF, I happened across Japantown. It wasn’t old like SF’s Chinatown, and I wondered why.
Turns out, the original Japantown was next to Chinatown. After its complete destruction in the 1906 earthquake and fire, Japantown relocated to the Western Addition (newer part of SF). Then came WW2.
The WW2 mass incarceration of Japanese Americans emptied Japantown.
After incarceration, the US government encouraged Japanese Americans to resettle further east, and only about half of Japantown residents returned. Even then, post-war housing developments further de-populated the area (Graves 2011).
The post-war US occupation of Japan and their ensuing close (albeit contentious, see ‘Anpo protests‘) relationship meant that San Francisco was assigned a ‘sister’ city–Osaka.
But that sisterly relationship ended in 2018. Why? Because of a memorial.
In 2017, a statue (above) commemorating WW2 ‘comfort women’ was unveiled in SF. Japan’s official position regarding its military’s sexual enslavement of Korean, Chinese, Filipino, etc. girls/women during WW2 has been fraught. In 2015, the Japanese government finally apologized but denied legal responsibility.
After the statue was unveiled, Osaka’s mayor ended his city’s relationship with San Francisco, arguing that the memorial and its inscriptions “present uncertain and one-sided claims as historical facts” (NPR).
I shared this story with my students as another example of history unfolding around us today (although, 2018 is like ancient history for most of my students).