SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 3 -- Representatives from diverse communities in San Francisco on Wednesday gathered in front of a "comfort women" memorial, criticizing Japanese Osaka mayor's decision to sever the 61-year-old sister city relationship with the city.
The memorial statue has sparked protest from the Japanese right-wing groups even before it was installed at St. Mary Square in San Francisco last September.
The most pronounced opposition came from Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura, who had written numerous letters to San Francisco mayor, requesting to have the memorial removed.
In August, he threatened to cut the ties if San Francisco's new Mayor London Breed didn't respond by the end of September.
The Japanese city on Tuesday announced that it had terminated the sister city relationship with San Francisco in protest of the statue in honor of "comfort women."
"It is unfortunate that Mayor Yoshimura no longer wishes to maintain ties between the governments of San Francisco and Osaka," said Mason Lee, a communications officer of Breed's office.
"We will remain sister cities via the people-to-people ties maintained by our San Francisco-Osaka Sister City Committee and their counterparts in Osaka," he said.
The statue, called "Column of strength," depicts a grandmother looking up at three Asian girls standing on a pedestal and holding hands together. They represent hundreds of thousands of girls and women who were kidnapped and forced into prostitution by the Japanese imperial military during World War II.
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