#1073 – Dick Bernard: Concert Today in St. Paul, 1 PM: "From Darkness to Light: A Journey Toward Peace & Reconciliation"
Peace is possible. Just take a look at St. Paul, Minnesota, and its Sister City, Nagasaki, Japan.
(click to enlarge photo. pdf here: Civic Symphony Oct 18 15002)
By chance I was at St. Paul’s Landmark Center yesterday, at the same time as the St. Paul Civic Symphony was doing its final rehearsal for this performance.
It will be magnificent. I know. I heard all of it.
After the rehearsal, Music Director Jeffrey Stirling stopped by the Nagasaki-Hiroshima Exhibit (where I was volunteering), and I asked him about the now 60 year Sister City relationship between St. Paul and Nagasaki.
He said that, to his knowledge, the cities relationship, the first for any American city with any city in Asia, was largely brought into existence through the efforts of Louis Hill, Jr., the grandson of railroad magnate James J. Hill.
He didn’t know Mr. Hills specific motivation.
I asked, was there any online history of the forming of the relationship?
Mr. Spirling wasn’t sure, but directed me to the Hills Grotto Foundation. This article, there, doesn’t answer the question, but is nonetheless fascinating reading.
Another link, here, outlines the timeline of the relationship.
The exhibit at which I volunteered continues through Nov. 28 at the northwest corner of Landmark Center, on the Main Floor. At first glance, it appears to be a small exhibit. But one of the visitors there, yesterday, spent the entire time watching/listening to survivor stories on one of four DVD players, and she was engrossed. She was 7 years old at the time of the Atom bomb, she said, knowing of it as we Americans would have known it, through child’s eyes.
Leaving the exhibit, I met a Japanese-American couple, from Minneapolis, who recounted how WWII impacted on their family.
More information on remaining events can be seen here.
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