Newport Beach’s bond with sister city runs deep

TONY DODERO

I often write about those stories that reappear and replay in our

newspaper like clockwork: stories like the opening of the fair, The

Wedge breaking at 20 feet, John Wayne Airport making noise and Chris

Steel running for council.

All pretty predictable.

And then there’s the Newport Beach Sister City exchange in which

teens from here go to visit teens in Newport’s sister city of

Okazaki, Japan, and vice versa.

Each year, we get pitches to write about the exchange, and each

year reporters take on the assignment.

So this week, when I read the story on the sister city exchange

written by reporter Marisa O’Neil, it reminded me of a promise I had

made to Rotary Club of Newport-Balboa honcho Roger McGonegal.

McGonegal told me a few months ago that the sister city program

was celebrating its 20th anniversary.

It got me to thinking. We write about this program every year, but

just how much do we know about it?

Believe me, there is plenty to know.

McGonegal hooked me up with Sara (Lucas) Ottinger, one of four

original students who took part in the first sister city exchange in

June of 1985.

“My group was the first group,” she said. “We were the pilot

program. Three from Ensign and one from Corona del Mar.”

The group, which consisted of Ottinger, Chris Rabbitt, Greg

Shryock and Carla Huffman, started off the trip with a bang --

literally.

As they were waiting for their luggage in the Tokyo airport that

summer of 1985, a bomb blew up in the cargo department of an Air

Canada jet three gates down, shutting down the airport and sending

the facility into chaos.

“The whole building was shaking,” she said. “They locked the doors

and locked us all inside. The Japanese thought the terrorists were

inside the building. That was the start of our trip. The next day it

was on the front page of every newspaper in the world.”

Believe it or not, the trip got better from there, and the rest is

history.

“The hospitality was more than I could ever imagine,” Ottinger

said. “At every event they gave us gifts. They taught us how to make

sushi and write in Japanese and took us to Disneyland Tokyo. They

were so kind to us.”

Ottinger was 13 when she visited that year and returned with

Rabbitt two years later for another trip. She became close with her

host family and still keeps in contact with her big sister from that

family, Michie Hayakawa, who is 10 years her senior.

Her many memories include speaking to 3,000 Japanese students at

assemblies about peaceful relations between the two countries and

taking the bullet train into Tokyo from the industrial town of

Okazaki.

“I never thought it would take off and be as pronounced as it is

now and be so great,” she said of the exchange that has been going on

yearly ever since.

McGonegal told me the sister city program in Newport Beach got

started through a fellow Rotarian and well-known local businessman

named Wendell Fish.

Fish, who died a couple years ago, worked for Tupperware and

opened a facility in Okazaki, McGonegal said. Some of the crew he

hired to run the Tupperware plant were also members of the Rotary

Club.

Being of like mind on international relations, Fish and his

Japanese counterparts worked to establish the sister city program in

both Newport and Okazaki.

Other key contributors to the early days of the program were

Newport businessman and retired Air Force pilot Mo Hamill and Masao

Kato, the Japanese businessman who ran the Tupperware plant in

Okazaki.

In a strange coincidence, Hamill, who died within four months of

Fish, was a veteran of World War II, who also was in Pearl Harbor on

Dec. 7, 1941 to play a football game with the San Jose State team,

McGonegal told me.

That game, naturally, was canceled when the Japanese attacked that

morning.

That history makes Hamill’s work to smooth relations between the

two countries all the more significant.

McGonegal said he has been glad to be a part of the program.

“On a personal level, I’ve developed a better understanding of the

Japanese people and how they live,” he said. “That’s real different

for a New York kid who moved to California 20 years ago and didn’t

really know about the rest of the world. It’s better for our world

that some of those mental barriers come down.”

Early this November, 25 to 30 residents of Okazaki, including the

mayor, are planning a visit to mark the program’s 20th anniversary. A

presentation to the Newport Beach City Council is in the works.

McGonegal said if any alumni are interested in taking part in the

20th anniversary of the program, they should e-mail this address for

more details: okazakialumni@newportbeach

sistercity.org