April 19, 2002

The Honorable Takafumi Isomura
Mayor of Osaka
City Hall
Osaka, Japan

Dear Mayor Isomura,

2002 marks the 45th anniversary of the Osaka-San Francisco sister city relationship, the oldest such relationship in the United States. In celebration of this wonderful milestone, the SF-Osaka Sister City Association extends our warmest welcome to you and your most distinguished delegation from Osaka.

Your city has been most generous in continuing to host our San Francisco high school students from our Summer Scholarship Program year after year for nearly 20 years now. On behalf of our students past and future, we would like to express our deepest appreciation for the hospitality your city and its people continue to extend to them. At the same time, we have been eagerly waiting for the opportunity to reciprocate your city's generosity and host students from Osaka here in San Francisco.

Unfortunately since early 1990s, when the safety issue of a few foreign students in this country was receiving much publicity in the international media, our Osaka-San Francisco exchange student program has been a one-sided love affair.

Please take the time to read the letters included in this petition from our former students. Some of them now have been accepted by numerous universities across the country because their experiences in Osaka gave them the confidence and direction in their future; some have gone on to pursue even higher education in engineering, medicine, international relations, and so on; and some are in the workforce already committed to serving the community in fostering our sister city relationship. You can hear that their lives have all been dramatically changed because of their valuable experiences from one summer in Osaka.

It is our sincere hope that you will go home and give your strong encouragement and assurance to the people of Osaka to support their exchange student program with San Francisco once again. We strongly believe, and are certain that you will agree, that it is a program like this that brings our two cities closer together.

Yours sincerely,

Miho Armacost
Chair, High School Student Summer Scholarship Program