Osaka, Japan, ends sister city ties with San Francisco over 'comfort women' statue

Oct. 4 (UPI) -- The city of Osaka, Japan, ended its sister city relationship with San Francisco this week in response to a statue honoring so-called "comfort women" in the California city.

The statue, called Column of Strength and situated in St. Mary's Square, was erected two years ago on public land. It honors the estimated 200,000 women from Korea, China and the Philippines that Japan forced into sexual slavery during World War II.

The statue depicts three young women -- Chinese, Korean and Filipino -- holding hands in a circle atop a pedestal.

Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura asked San Francisco officials to move the statue off public land, threatening to end the relationship between the two cities if they didn't. Former San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee formally accepted the statue in November 2017.

Yoshimura said an inscription on the statue was "one-sided" about the Japanese military's involvement in forcing women into brothels and how badly they were treated.

"The very relationship of trust between our cities, which was constructed over years of friendly exchanges, has ended up declining significantly," Yoshimura said in a letter sent to San Francisco Mayor London Breed. "I have arrived at the conclusion that the continuation of the sister city relations is no longer possible."

Yoshimura said Osaka would be open to re-establishing sister city status with San Francisco should the city remove the statue from public land.

Jeff Cretan, Breed's communications director, called the decision "unfortunate."

"The mayor is disappointed Mayor Yoshimura doesn't want to maintain ties between our governments, but we're committed to our sister city relationship that will continue between our San Francisco and Osaka sister city committees," he said. "We want them to continue to maintain that relationship."