The mayor of Osaka, Japan, said he is ending a six-decade “sister city” relationship with San Francisco to protest a statue honoring women forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers during World War II.
Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura this week sent a letter to San Francisco announcing that he is withdrawing from the largely ceremonial relationship, the San Francisco Examiner reported on Wednesday.
The statue was last year erected on city property by Korean, Chinese and Philippine communities in California.
Photo: AFP
Yoshimura’s decision was “unfortunate,” said Jeff Cretan, a spokesman for San Francisco Mayor London Breed, adding that the cities would remain connected through “people-to-people ties.”
The Japanese consulate in San Francisco declined to comment.
“Breaking the relationship over a memorial is outrageous and absurd,” Comfort Women Justice Coalition cochair Lillian Sing said. “It shows how afraid the Osaka mayor and Japanese prime minister are of truth and are trying to deny history.”
Historians say tens of thousands of women around Asia were sent to work in Japanese military brothels, often through coercion and deception.
Japan apologized in 1993, but the issue has remained an open rift with its neighbors, particularly South Korea which has strong memories of Japan’s colonization from 1910 to 1945.
After a gradual pullback from the apology, Japan’s government now denies that the women, called “comfort women” in Japanese, were forced into sexual slavery, citing a lack of official documentary proof, saying that the statue in San Francisco and similar statues in other countries wrongfully blame Japan.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of