Tag: WWII

A Tale of Two Cities: The Origin and Impact of Sister Cities

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Word War II wrought evil, but out of the ashes, some beauty was born.

One phoenix is the sister city programs — social agreements between international twin cities to exchange culture and build global camaraderie.

While international city links akin to sister cities do date back to the 9th century, the program really found its legs after the world was almost destroyed.

The Origins

Modern-day sister cities were the brainchild of Alfred Robert Grindlay, the Mayor of Coventry, a city that was heavily bombed in 1940. 

His intention was to join sister cities in allied countries that had suffered similar calamities to provide a sense of comfort in community.

And so, he sent a telegram to Stalingrad (now Volgograd) and developed a link. When the Battle of Stalingrad unfolded a year later, the people of Coventry donated money along with a tablecloth, embroidered with names and the words, “Little help is better than a lot of pity.”

The twinning continued, and once the war ended, the sister city program built bonds of friendship between many more twin cities and expanded into tourism, trade, and international business links.

Today, thousands of cities worldwide are linked in meaningful relationships that promote diplomacy, cooperation, and cultural celebration.

The Cultural Bonds

One brilliant example of how twin cities share in each other’s cultures is the partnership between Bologna, Italy, and Portland, Oregon, established in 2003.

Often twin cities have similar demographics, sizes, or industries. In this case, the industries of education and biotechnology brought the pair together, along with their food cultures.

Bologna and Portland possess a shared passion for food, culture, and sustainability.

Known for their culinary excellence, the cities collaborate through chef exchanges, food festivals, and workshops that merge Bologna’s Italian pasta traditions with Portland’s farm-to-table innovations.

Beyond gastronomy, the partnership fosters educational and artistic exchanges, with student programs and joint art exhibitions enriching both communities. 

The cities also share strategies in urban planning and sustainability, drawing on their mutual commitment to livability and green initiatives.

Cooperation in Crisis

The basis of the sister city program lives on, as twins also often aid each other in disaster relief and support during crisis. 

The partnership between Kobe, Japan, and Seattle, Washington, is one example of this. 

These cities have supported each other through recovery efforts, with Seattle offering aid during the 1995 Great Harshen Earthquake.

Such support during times of crisis can mean a lot to communities all over the world, as they suffer environmental disasters and economic hardship.

Forming a sense of kinship and mutual respect, these dynamic partnerships are brilliant representations of grassroots diplomacy and positive cultural exchange.

The Heroes of Our Own Story: How Cultural Bias Enters into the Teaching of History

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We all want to be the heroes of our own story.

And with this desire comes bias.

When entering a new culture, learning to read between the lines of what is taught about the culture’s history will help you better understand their cultural perspective. 

You may still agree with and believe in the historical interpretation of your own culture, but getting to the roots of another culture means getting to know their view of themselves, which is never more apparent than in their teaching of history.

This knowledge will give you insight into the “why” of cultural norms, values, and traditions in your host country.

To gain this knowledge, learning what is taught is important; but, sometimes, learning what is expressly not taught is even more so.

Russia and North America

“Back in the USSR…”

While it’s obvious that Russian and Western cultures view things differently, what may not be so obvious is their extraordinarily different interpretations of history.

North Americans often view their liberal values of freedom and individualism with pride, and that is reflective in their teaching of history.

They view Marxist ideals and communist values as restrictive on individual liberties and enterprise.

Russian history, however, is taught from a Marxist viewpoint.

It teaches that the American working class – and overseas labor from American corporations – is exploitative.

Like Americans, their view of their own history is also one of pride.

They present their communist system as more egalitarian, distributing wealth more fairly amongst the working class.

While American historians present Russia as oppressive, so do Russian historians present America.

And from an outsider’s perspective, if you’re being honest with yourself and viewing these arguments and their history objectively, you can see truth in both…however, you’re probably more biased toward the history that aligns with your own values and norms.

Japan and China

Japan and China are two other examples of nationalist takes on history.

The Japanese take pride in their long and glorious empire. However, the tragic recent history of WWII and the events surrounding it is often deemphasized in classrooms.

Mariko Oi, a Japanese teacher who studied abroad in Australia, puts this into perspective:

“Japanese people often fail to understand why neighboring countries harbor a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and ‘40s. The reason, in many cases, is that they barely learned any 20th century history. I myself only got a full picture when I left Japan…” 

According to Oi, only 5 percent of her Japanese textbook (19 out of 357 pages) dealt with the recent history of WWII and the events that led up to it from 1931 to 1945.

A single line was dedicated to the Rape of Nanjing (also known as the Nanjing Massacre) which occurred during the Sino-Japanese war of 1937 when Japan invaded China. That war too was given but a single page.

On the other side of the East China Sea, Chinese students are taught in detail about Japanese war crimes and about the Rape of Nanjing in particular.

And as for other WWII enemies, the subject receives different treatment in American textbooks versus Japanese textbooks. 

The Manhattan Project is often heroically emphasized by American historians who detail the justifications for dropping the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In Mariko Oi’s Japanese textbook again, a single sentence is dedicated to this event.

Cultural Bias in Ourselves

The point of all this is that a nation tends to have a specific view of itself. 

And, in doing so, that nation will cast itself and its history in the best light while deemphasizing certain aspects that today bring shame. 

Cultural bias is difficult to recognize within ourselves. We’d like to think we’re “above” it.

But in the end, we all want to be “right”; we want our values to be right, our norms to be right, and our version of history to be right.

We want to be the heroes of our own story.

10 Cultural Universals: Politics

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Politics in Culture

Democracy, communism, socialism, totalitarianism.

The politics of a nation shape its values and are shaped by them.

The cycle is continuous and feeds itself: culture feeds politics, and politics feed culture. This cycle is only disrupted by some huge collapsing event.

What do I mean by “collapsing event”?

I’ll give you an example.

Germany & WWII

One obvious example of this is WWII.

When Hitler and the Nazis gained control, so did their political values: anti-semitism, the concept of an Aryan “master race,” and the formation of a “New Order.”

“There are only two possibilities in Germany; do not imagine that the people will forever go with the middle party, the party of compromises; one day it will turn to those who have most consistently foretold the coming ruin and have sought to dissociate themselves from it…there are only two possibilities: either victory of the Aryan, or annihilation of the Aryan and the victory of the Jew.”

– Adolf Hitler, Munich (April 12, 1922)

This was the first of the collapsing events: the Nazi takeover.

In 1945, another collapsing event would occur: their defeat.

And 44 years later, in 1989, would occur another collapsing event in Germany – this one almost a literal one – the fall of the Berlin wall, which separated East Germany from West Germany.

It was this collapsing event that eventually led to the Germany we know today: a federal parliamentary republic, an influential leader in Europe and the world, and the fourth largest economy.

This example demonstrates that politics can momentarily distort a culture’s values, can lead to evil acts. But, ultimately, if the majority’s values are good and strong, politics cannot destroy the true nature of a culture.

As long as that majority does not remain silent.

Collapsing Event

You can probably determine from the above example what a collapsing event is.

It’s a moment in history that almost entirely collapses the status quo, keeps the good or the bad (depending upon the values of the dominant group), attempts to eliminate the “other,” and starts building the status quo again from the ground, up, under newly installed values.

This is politics in culture.

Oftentimes, a collapsing event occurs through war and violence. In fact, one might look at politics as a war for cultural values.

Political Movements

A few more examples of collapsing events across history:

  • American Civil War – Abraham Lincoln led the North in defeating the confederates to preserve the union and abolish slavery.
  • Cultural Revolution – Chairman Mao Zedong’s attempt to preserve Communist ideology by destroying some of China’s capitalist past and tradition and silencing (and often publicly humiliating) community intellectuals and thought leaders.
  • Execution of the Romanov Family – The Bolsheviks murdered the family members of the last living tsar dynasty to end imperialism in Russia.

The list is endless, and the bodycount is often devastating. These events create a turning point in history, where the established values are disrupted or altered, altogether.

And as we all know, values are the fundamental roots of culture. They define us.

Next week, we’ll talk about how politics, values, and culture collide in North Korea.