Japanese Sister-State Group Will Visit Here

Japanese Sister-State Group Will Visit Here

The 21 members of the fourth annual goodwill mission from Michigan's sister-state, Shiga Prefecture, Japan, will live in Ann Arbor area homes for four nights starting Saturday. Junko Iwane, a member of the group, lives in Hikone City, Ann Arbor’s sister-city, and will be presented by Mayor James E. Stephenson at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the City Council meeting. Miss Iwane will live in the home of Mayor Pro Tem and Mrs. William C. Colburn.

State government officials, Music Youth International Executive Director Bernice McCoy, and Ann Arbor People-to-People President Carl Zwinck will meet the 21 Japanese at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport Saturday. Zwinck will go with them to Grosse Pointe Farms for a banquet before they meet host families at the McCoy home.

Sept. 10 the group will go to the Sturgis City Hall, and tour factories in Sturgis. Their Sept. 11 tour will include the Ann Arbor City Hall, U-M and lunch at Weber's as guests of the Kiwanis Western Club, and end at the McCoy home, 7443 East Michigan Avenue, Saline.

On Sept. 12 the visitors will go to Traverse City for lunch in a ski resort and to live in homes overnight. On Sept. 13, they go to Lansing to live in homes for two nights, and on Sept. 15, they fly from Detroit to Los Angeles.

The head of the goodwill mission is Kaoru Hinode, chief of juvenile counter measure section for the Shiga Prefectural in Otsu City. The delegation will meet the mayors of Ann Arbor, Grosse Pointe Farms, Lansing, Sturgis, and Traverse City, all of which have Sister-cities in Shiga Prefecture. They will also meet Saline Mayor and Mrs. Hubert Beach, who will host the Mayor of Brecon, Wales, and his wife in their home in November. Mayor and Mrs.Tony Elston will come to Saline from New York City, the first time a Brecon Mayor has visited Saline, Brecon’s Sister-city.

People from all three of Ann Arbor’s Sister-cities (Belize, Hikone City, and Tuebingen) will be in Ann Arbor during 1974, the sesquicentennial year of Ann Arbor. Special programs will be arranged by People-to-People and the Sesquicentennial Commisson headed by Douglas Crary.

Michigan has three sister-states: Belize, Shiga Prefecture in Japan, and the Dominican Republic. Michigan has five or more sister-cities each in Belize and Shiga Prefecture.

Musical Youth International and Ann Arbor People-to-People are sponsoring a fundraising drive for furniture for the new building Curtis High School will soon occupy. This school is the only one in Belize to teach music and some occupational fields.

The first fall meeting of the Ann Arbor Chapter is the pot-luck dinner at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the McCoy home.

Mayor Stephenson gave Mr. and Mrs. Michael Jochim of Ann Arbor a letter of introduction, which they have taken to Tuebingen, Ann Arbor’s German sister-city. Jochim has been given a fellowship to study archeology there. He and his wife will be the official ambassadors in residence there for a year. Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Bodo Buechner of Tuebingen have come to Ann Arbor, Buechner has been given a fellowship for graduate study at the U-M Law School, and is the official ambassador in residence here for a year.