In ways that seldom catch public attention the Sister City movement seems worthy of notice this Memorial Day Weekend. War in the 20th Century seems to stimulated people to want to connect and finding a specific foreign city--maybe like one's own and maybe different--as a way to implement the aim of "people to people" diplomacy.
It started after World War I with allies France and England. Then, after World War II Coventry, England and Dresden, Germany became sister cities--the two cities were among the worst bombed in the European Theater of the war. During the Cold War, Seattle became a sister-city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, then a part of the USSR.
President Eisenhower made the program popular in the 50s when it was still part of the National League of Cities. Now the program is under the umbrella of Sister Cities International.
The stories of sister city relationships continue a visible signs of the desire of ordinary citizens for peace and true cultural diversity. Howard and Betsy Chapman, my brother and sister-in-law in Fort Wayne, Indiana, took up an avocational interest in the program a quarter century ago, establishing life-long friendships in Takaoka, Japan. Eventually, they set up a program to allow students from Fort Wayne's sister cities to come to Fort Wayne and for Fort Wayne youth to study in the sister city schools. On a recent trip to Plotz, Poland, Howard (a sometime columnist and Adjunct Fellow of Discovery Institute) found himself the surprise beneficiary of an honor: the dedication of a beautiful new "Chapman Hall" in one of two schools he visited. That moved him, but not as much as meeting some of the Polish young people who told him how their lives had been enriched by the time they had spent as guest students in Indiana.
The Sister City program is one way to honor the sacrifices of soldiers who died to make peaceful understanding the norm rather than the exception in the world. Little steps in "people to people diplomacy": who knows how far they will take us?
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