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Japanese Mayor Says He’ll End SF sister City Status Over Comfort Women Statue
San Fracisco Chronicle ^ | Friday, November 24, 2017 | Evan Sernoffsky

Posted on 11/24/2017 7:26:57 PM PST by nickcarraway

The mayor of Osaka, Japan, is making good on his threat to sever the sister-city relationship with San Francisco because of a Chinatown memorial honoring women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military before and during World War II.

The bronze sculpture that was placed in St. Mary’s Square in September shows three teenage girls holding hands next to an older woman. Though the artwork, known as the “Women’s Column of Strength,” was erected to honor female war victims, it’s seen by many Japanese citizens and government officials as an insult.

“This is highly regrettable,” Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura told reporters in Japan on Thursday. “The relationship of trust has completely been destroyed.”

Yoshimura made his comments after San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee signed a resolution Wednesday accepting the transfer of the statue onto city property. Yoshimura said he will cut ties with San Francisco by the end of the year.

Lee had sent a letter to Yoshimura on Oct. 2, saying he was “deeply disappointed,” after the Osaka mayor first threatened to end the sister-city relationship in response to the memorial.

The sculpture was the vision of two retired San Francisco Superior Court judges, Lillian Sing and Julie Tang, who wanted to memorialize the estimated 200,000 women from Asian-Pacific countries, known as “comfort women,” forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces from 1931 until the war ended in 1945.

It was the first sculpture to honor comfort women in a major American city and comes as historians gain a broader understanding of the atrocities perpetrated during the war. There are dozens of such statues in South Korea and a handful in small cities around the United States.

Tang said she was “outraged” after hearing Yoshimura’s comments. after the war.”

(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: china; japan; sanfrancisco
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1 posted on 11/24/2017 7:26:57 PM PST by nickcarraway
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To: nickcarraway

San Francisco....figures....Just plain nasty...


2 posted on 11/24/2017 7:33:41 PM PST by Sacajaweau
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To: nickcarraway

The rest of the USA should sever relations with the City of Washington D.C.when they unveil a statue paying tribute to crack head, race baiter Marian Berry.


3 posted on 11/24/2017 7:33:53 PM PST by Sasparilla ( I'm Not Tired of Winning.)
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To: nickcarraway
I don't have any use for San Francisco and don't make it a habit to defend the city but "comfort women" did happen...and shouldn't have happened.

Like slavery here in the US.

4 posted on 11/24/2017 7:35:20 PM PST by Gay State Conservative (ObamaCare Works For Those Who Don't.)
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To: nickcarraway

Go to Japan, as I have numerous times, and travel by train. You will find that the Japanese school children are often on trains taking field trips. If they see you, most likely they will engage you and their pitch almost always is: “Why did you bomb us? and promise you won’t ever do it again!” The Japanese still don’t acknowledge what they did in the years in the run up to Pearl Harbor and the fact that they attacked us. Talk about indoctrination of their children with the untruthful narrative that America started WWII with Japan, and that somehow Pearl Harbor was a “response.”


5 posted on 11/24/2017 7:35:21 PM PST by vette6387
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To: Sacajaweau

Honoring comfort women is nasty?


6 posted on 11/24/2017 7:36:45 PM PST by sparklite2 (I hereby designate the ongoing kerfuffle Diddle-Gate.)
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To: nickcarraway

I like how Democrats complain that Confederate statues are “controversial” while putting up stuff such as this and Harvey Milk.


7 posted on 11/24/2017 7:37:57 PM PST by Trump20162020
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To: vette6387

Wow, that is interesting. I’m going there next spring for the first time.


8 posted on 11/24/2017 7:46:03 PM PST by GnuThere
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To: vette6387

[ Go to Japan, as I have numerous times, and travel by train. You will find that the Japanese school children are often on trains taking field trips. If they see you, most likely they will engage you and their pitch almost always is: “Why did you bomb us? and promise you won’t ever do it again!” The Japanese still don’t acknowledge what they did in the years in the run up to Pearl Harbor and the fact that they attacked us. Talk about indoctrination of their children with the untruthful narrative that America started WWII with Japan, and that somehow Pearl Harbor was a “response.” ]

If you go to a Germany and Ride the train you might meet a young “german” who will ask you if you worship a pedophile moon god like they do and if you say you don’t, you will never have to worry about having a headache again, ever...


9 posted on 11/24/2017 7:47:36 PM PST by GraceG ("It's better to have all the Right Enemies, than it is to have all the Wrong Friends.")
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To: vette6387
Horse hockey! I LIVED in Japan 14 years, traveled by train more times that you could count, saw many school field trips and was never once engaged in a conversation with school children anything close to what you describe.

All three of my daughters attended local public elementary school in Japan from grades 1-6. I reviewed their text books. Pearl Harbor is mentioned and underemphasized, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are overemphasized but understandable as they affected Japan far more than they did us.

What I found most interesting however, was that the Japanese text book version of American history was far more pro-American and, in many cases, more detailed than ours.

10 posted on 11/24/2017 7:47:58 PM PST by Vigilanteman (ObaMao: Fake America, Fake Messiah, Fake Black man. How many fakes can you fit into one Zer0?)
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To: vette6387

Well the good news is that the Chinese will pretty much keep the Japs from getting uppity again.


11 posted on 11/24/2017 7:48:08 PM PST by dfwgator
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To: nickcarraway

When a**holes collide.


12 posted on 11/24/2017 7:48:25 PM PST by GeneralisimoFranciscoFranco (I love liberals. They taste like chicken.)
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To: sparklite2
Honoring comfort women is nasty?

Honoring was the last thing on their mind. It's purpose is to keep a 75 year old scab picked raw, and it seems to be having the intended effect.
13 posted on 11/24/2017 7:51:46 PM PST by SpaceBar
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To: dfwgator
Well the good news is that the Chinese will pretty much keep the Japs from getting uppity again.

The bickering between China and Japan has been going on for centuries, well over a thousand years. There have been times when the Chinese got uppity and tried to invade Japan, but were repelled by the Japanese. Chinese would kidnap Japanese women and tie them by ropes to the outside of their boats and taunt the Japanese. Westerners don't understand history more than a few years back.

14 posted on 11/24/2017 8:13:35 PM PST by roadcat
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To: Gay State Conservative

and the Japs got off easy for their war crimes of WWII...what the Japs did in the 30’s and 40’s to non-Japs makes the islamists of today look like amateurs..


15 posted on 11/24/2017 8:40:58 PM PST by God luvs America (63.5 million pay no income tax and vote for DemoKrats...)
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To: Vigilanteman

“I LIVED in Japan 14 years, traveled by train more times that you could count, saw many school field trips and was never once engaged in a conversation with school children anything close to what you describe.”

Well, that is not my experience, and as luck would have it, our daughter and son-in-law ( who is half-Japanese American, and whose mother grew up in a camp here) arrived here a few minutes ago and so I posed the question I posted to them. They BOTH said that what I wrote to you was SPOT ON, and they lived and worked in Japan for several year, and are fluent Japanese speakers.


16 posted on 11/24/2017 8:44:23 PM PST by vette6387
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To: Gay State Conservative

>I don’t have any use for San Francisco and don’t make it a habit to defend the city but “comfort women” did happen...and shouldn’t have happened.

Comfort women happened in Germany too, with allied troops. But in that case, it was just a choice between a woman and her children starving to death or whoring herself out for food to the occupying troops. So I guess you could say they did have a choice. I guess.


17 posted on 11/24/2017 9:08:10 PM PST by JohnyBoy (The GOP Senate is intentionally trying to lose the majority.)
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To: GraceG
Mayhap, but one thing for sure Americans will be assaulted by German Greens over Americas psycho President dragging the rest of the world into war.

My cousin, who is a surgeon and rabid member of the Green Party in Germany was raging at my Mother about how Trump was going to drag Germany and the rest of the world into war. I told her next time she should say to my cousin, well Germany had the last two times so maybe now it was America's turn. I said that should make my cousin's head explode!

18 posted on 11/24/2017 9:25:37 PM PST by Mastador1 (I'll take a bad dog over a good politician any day!)
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To: vette6387

Well we did sail into Tokyo Bay in 1853 and threaten to shell them unless they agreed to trade with us.


19 posted on 11/24/2017 9:29:36 PM PST by <1/1,000,000th%
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To: SpaceBar

Too many Japanese for the locals in SF?


20 posted on 11/24/2017 10:18:24 PM PST by Tunehead54
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