Tachikawa and San Bernardino: The History of Tokyo’s First Sister City

The San Kid who became President of the International Court of Justice

Tachikawa’s page on the 50th anniversary mentions one name almost in passing. On 28 November 2009, a commemorative lecture was held at the city’s I’m (Aimu) women’s centre, on “My exchange-student experience and my international work today”. The speaker was listed as a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo, chair of the UN Human Rights Committee, and a Tachikawa exchange student to San Bernardino in fiscal 1971: Yuji Iwasawa.

The University of Tokyo has recorded what came next. Iwasawa became a judge of the International Court of Justice in The Hague in June 2018, and on 3 March 2025 he was elected President of the Court. He is the second Japanese national to hold the post, after Hisashi Owada.

The head of the world court, the court that settles disputes between nations, once spent a summer in a family home in California as Tachikawa’s teenage representative. The list of Tachikawa exchange students runs further than I expected.

Of course, not every exchange student becomes the head of an international court. Most become ordinary adults with one summer in their memories, and that is exactly as it should be. But beyond the car-wash money raised by a small local committee, a life like this sometimes unfolds. Citizen exchange works slowly, and its effects can show up decades later, in forms nobody planned.

The 50th and 60th anniversaries: a delegation of teenagers

Anniversaries brought adult delegations across the ocean. According to the city, 26 citizens from Tachikawa visited San Bernardino for the 30th anniversary in November 1990, and 16 committee members went for the 35th in October 1994. For the 40th in 1999, 24 visitors came from San Bernardino to Tachikawa in April, and 35 went the other way in October.

From the 50th anniversary in 2009, teenagers joined in. On 25 March, Tachikawa welcomed an official delegation of 13 from San Bernardino, and about 200 people attended the ceremony at a hotel in the city. In October, the mayor of Tachikawa made an official visit to San Bernardino, where both sides signed a pledge of continued friendship. With him went 14 junior-high and high-school students, prize-winners in the previous year’s city speech contest for junior-high students.

For the 60th, in 2019, 15 students chosen the same way travelled to the US from 23 to 28 May: four nights, six days. The city published a booklet of their trip, and it is full of small, real moments.

Their outbound flight left five hours late because of an equipment problem. After an eleven-hour flight, on 24 May they were invited to the official residence of the Consul General of Japan in Los Angeles. According to the consulate, that day the Consul General honoured the sister-city committee to celebrate the 60th anniversary. The ceremony opened with the Japanese national anthem, sung by a student from Tachikawa. Then Andrea Press, a professional singer, sang the US anthem. The Southern California sister-cities report describes her as the daughter of Thelma Press.

Sixty years after a couple are credited with making the match, their daughter sang the American anthem in front of the children of Tachikawa. Moments like that are where reading old records gives you goosebumps.

The next day, in San Bernardino, came a meeting with local students and the 60th-anniversary ceremony itself. The Tachikawa group performed the Tachikawa Ondo, the city’s folk dance, followed by high-fives all round. The booklet notes, with sympathy, that the ceremony lasted four hours. The last full day was down in the programme as an “inspection” of Disneyland in Anaheim. That is genuinely what it says. The findings of the inspection: despite the rain, the students thoroughly enjoyed rides they don’t have in Japan, and the shopping. Official duties can be very demanding.

The students’ essays are full of scenes no English textbook would include. One junior-high student froze at the start of the meeting with local students, until one of them joked, “I told my co-workers that I am sick. Then I came here.” The ice broke. Another, at an airport shop on the way home, was so nervous that she asked, “Excuse me, can I ask you a question? How much is it?” The clerk smiled: “Oh, nice question! It is 9 dollars.” Later she realised she hadn’t needed the first sentence at all, and that “nice question” felt very kind.

A third listed four things that surprised her in America: how big the food was, how distinctive the buildings were, how supermarket cashiers ask how your day is going, and how dry the air felt. She ended by hoping Tachikawa would get more buildings with real character. Homework for the city, from a junior-high student.

What became of the two bases: a park and an airport

Back then, military transport planes flew over both cities.

Today the old Tachikawa base is Showa Kinen Park, where families spread picnic blankets on the grass at weekends. As we have written elsewhere in this series, the base was fully returned in 1977 and the park partly opened in 1983. The land became fields and woods, research institutes and an art-filled business district.

San Bernardino’s base went the same way. The Norton Air Force Base Museum records that the base was selected for closure by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 1988 and closed on 31 March 1994. The site is now San Bernardino International Airport. Tachikawa turned its base into a park; San Bernardino turned its base into an airport. Two cities gave up their military airfields: one chose a lawn for looking up at the sky, the other chose a new road back into it.

The two cities paired in 1959 “because they were both supply-base towns” are no longer supply-base towns. The match has outlived its original reason. Perhaps the reason quietly changed along the way: not “our bases are alike”, but “every summer, somebody’s child comes to stay”.

San Bernardino has other faces too. The English-language encyclopedia says that in 1940 Richard and Maurice McDonald founded McDonald’s in the city. A Route 66 museum now stands on the site of the original restaurant, and every September downtown San Bernardino holds a four-day festival celebrating the “Mother Road”. If Tachikawa’s local speciality is Tokyo udo (a crisp, pale vegetable grown in underground pits), the elder sister’s claim to fame is the birthplace of the world’s best-known hamburger chain. Udo and burgers: the sisters’ table is a lively one.

One more story I like. According to San Bernardino’s former official website, when the city was incorporated in 1854, 900 of its 1,200 residents were Mormons, and it was “strictly a temperance town, with no drinking or gambling allowed.” Tachikawa, for its part, has a keirin (track cycling) stadium that people bet on. Even sisters have different personalities.

The other sister: Omachi, in the Northern Alps

Tachikawa has a second sister, over the mountains: Omachi, in Nagano Prefecture, at the foot of the Northern Alps.

According to the city, it began in September 1987, when 48 Tachikawa citizens visited Omachi under a national programme linking cities and farming communities. Omachi then took stalls at Tachikawa’s market festival, and sports exchanges such as gateball (a Japanese cousin of croquet) followed. On 25 March 1991 the two signed a sister-city agreement in Omachi, and in April 1995 they added a pact to send each other people and equipment in a disaster.

Tachikawa’s latest statistical yearbook introduces Omachi conscientiously. Population: 25,152 (31 March 2025). Area: 565.15 square kilometres, about 23 times Tachikawa’s 24.36. City hall altitude: 726 metres. Lowest temperature: minus 14.1°C. Snowfall: 346 centimetres. Reading those numbers, a Tachikawa person instinctively reaches for a scarf. Incidentally, Omachi is the only city in the yearbook’s “sister cities” section. No population or temperatures for San Bernardino. The yearbook gives no reason. Sometimes the eldest sister gets left out of the family photo.

The two sisters are linked through Tachikawa. The city’s page says that since fiscal 1998, the exchange students from San Bernardino have also visited Omachi, staying with local families. California teenagers, via Tachikawa, sleeping at the foot of the Alps. A sister’s sister is a sister.

Tachikawa’s junior-high students go back and forth too. Since fiscal 2015, student representatives from both cities’ junior high schools have visited each other for a “Junior High School Summit”. In 2016, when Tachikawa hosted the Omachi students for the first time, the group stayed in the lodgings at the Tachikawa keirin stadium, which, the city notes, are normally off-limits. In 2018 the theme was “Let’s promote Tachikawa in English for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics”. Students from Nagano and Tokyo, selling Tachikawa in English: a sister-city tie going international from the inside.

You can taste Omachi in Tachikawa too. According to the city, Nokaru Bazaar, on the ground floor of the Kotorinku building, sells Omachi’s local sake and specialities alongside Tachikawa-grown vegetables.

Tachikawa’s 6,591 foreign-national neighbours

Let me step away from the sister cities and look at a closer kind of “world”.

According to Tachikawa’s resident register, 6,591 foreign nationals lived in the city on 1 January 2026: 3.5% of its 187,440 residents, or roughly one in 28. In 2017 the figure was 3,859, so it has grown 1.7 times in nine years.

The breakdown by nationality shows how the city is changing. China is the largest group, at 2,459. Next is Vietnam, at 810, more than five times the 142 of 2017. Nepal rose from 127 to 539, Indonesia from 32 to 242, Myanmar from 6 to 162. South Korea stayed roughly level, 717 to 748, and residents registered under the older “Chosen” (Korean Peninsula) designation fell from 109 to 80. US nationals number 200. In a city that was once a US base town, Americans are now fewer than half as many as Nepalis. The “foreign” face of Tachikawa has changed completely in half a century.

On 19 December 2016, the city issued a Multicultural City Declaration, aiming for a community where differences of nationality, ethnicity and culture are mutually respected. It is available in English, Chinese and Korean. One of its four pledges reads, in the city’s words, “together as members of the local community, we will interact with smiles.” By coincidence, one of the students who went to America in 2019 titled her essay “Smiles”.

In 2023 the city sent a questionnaire to 1,000 randomly chosen foreign residents aged 18 and over, and with interviews it gathered 248 responses. In the report, 82.8% said they wanted to keep living in Tachikawa. Convenience for shopping and transport was the most common reason, but more than 60% also said it was because of the nature and greenery. Showa Kinen Park works on everyone, whatever their passport. The top difficulty, at 15.3%, was communicating in Japanese, followed by money at 12.5%. Asked which language they read flyers in, people from other Asian countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines more often chose “easy Japanese” (yasashii nihongo, simplified Japanese for non-native readers) or English than standard Japanese. The survey fed into the city’s fifth multicultural plan, which began in fiscal 2025.

In front of that language wall, some people quietly get to work every week. The city runs Japanese classes for foreign residents with the help of the Tachikawa International Friendship Association (TIFA). According to the association, the classes are commissioned by the city and held 40 times a year across three terms: a Thursday daytime class and a Saturday evening class at the Shibasaki community learning centre, and a Saturday evening class at the Nishisuna centre. The teachers are volunteers. The city’s notice says you don’t need a teaching qualification, and you don’t need to speak a foreign language.

The association’s activity reports show what happens outside the classroom. Since January 2017 it has held a monthly “Multicultural Salon Engawa”. An engawa is the narrow wooden veranda of a Japanese house, the place that is neither quite inside nor outside. Whoever chose that name deserves applause. In summer 2026, eleven students and volunteers helped the Takamatsu-cho neighbourhood association carry its portable shrine at the annual festival of Kumano Shrine. At Tanabata, the summer star festival, they wrote wishes on paper strips; at the Saturday class, 19 volunteers and 28 students gathered round the bamboo.

Another group, the non-profit Tachikawa Multicultural Center (TMC), supports foreign residents of Tachikawa and nearby towns. It runs a consultation service for foreign residents and “Tsubasa”, a Japanese class for children with roots abroad. Every autumn it holds the World Fureai Festival in Showa Kinen Park. According to the centre, the 18th festival will be held on 14 and 15 November 2026 at the park’s Midori-no-Bunka Center.

People from around the world and people from Tachikawa gathered round food stalls in the park that was once the base. Sixty-odd years ago, Tachikawa residents were the guests, invited through the fence to the base’s friendship festivals. Host and guest have swapped places, and seem to have landed somewhere just right.

Answer to the quiz

The answer is (B), the International Court of Justice. According to Tachikawa City, Yuji Iwasawa, a sister-city exchange student in fiscal 1971, gave a commemorative lecture in Tachikawa in 2009. According to the University of Tokyo, he became a judge of the International Court of Justice in June 2018 and was elected its President on 3 March 2025.

Before you go

• Tachikawa City Hall (1156-9 Izumicho, Tachikawa): according to the city, walk about 10 minutes from around Takamatsu Station on the Tama Monorail, towards the courthouse. By Tachikawa Bus, it is about 5 minutes from the North Exit of Tachikawa Station to the “Tachikawa Shiyakusho” (City Hall) stop, which is right outside. The sister-city programme is run by the multicultural affairs section of the Citizens’ Collaboration Division, which also houses the secretariat of the Tachikawa San Bernardino Sister City Committee. Directions (Japanese): https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/shisei/gaiyo/1005931/1005970.html
• The sister-city exchange, in Japanese and English (Tachikawa City): https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kanko/bunka/1003078/1003093/1003098.html
• Tachikawa San Bernardino Sister City Committee (Japanese): https://sites.google.com/site/tachisanb/ . In-person student exchanges have not yet resumed, and for 2026 the committee recruited Tachikawa high-school students for an online exchange with students in San Bernardino (applications closed on 10 June). Check the city and committee pages for future programmes.
• Omachi: Tachikawa’s page on the tie (Japanese) https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kanko/bunka/1003078/1003094/1003100.html . Omachi sake and specialities at Nokaru Bazaar, Kotorinku 1F; hours on the city’s page: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/sangyo/nogyo/1004077/1025863.html
• World Fureai Festival (18th): 14 and 15 November 2026, 10:00–16:00, Midori-no-Bunka Center, Showa Kinen Park. Organised by the Tachikawa Multicultural Center: https://www.tmc.or.jp/ . Check the park’s official site for its opening hours and admission.
• Japanese classes and volunteer teachers: Tachikawa International Friendship Association https://tifa-class.net/ (Japanese, with English and Chinese pages). The city’s notice: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kurashi/shiminkatsudo/1002047/1002053.html
• Getting to Tachikawa: from Shinjuku, take the JR Chuo Line to Tachikawa. From Kanagawa, the JR Nambu Line runs from Kawasaki to Tachikawa with no change. From Yokota Air Base, the JR Ome Line runs from Fussa, Ushihama and Haijima stations to Tachikawa.
• Tips: carry an IC card such as Suica or PASMO. Most of the official pages above are in Japanese; a browser’s translate function helps.
• Read alongside: Tachikawa Air Base history, Tachikawa’s base-town culture, Tachikawa from Yokota Air Base and Tachikawa for international visitors.

Home from abroad, at Tachikawa Station North Exit

A student back from a month’s homestay is usually tired right down to the bone: jet lag, portions twice the usual size, and a great deal of English. Travellers, returning students and people who have only just moved here all know that feeling.

A one-minute walk from the North Exit of JR Tachikawa Station, on the 3rd floor of the Etoile Building at 2-14-10 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, is On the Shore Tachikawa (オンザショア立川店), a hot yoga studio where classes are held on heated lava stone. There is also room-temperature yoga, Pilates, women-only kickboxercise, boxercise, HIIT and personal training, with more than 25 kinds of yoga lessons alone. It is open every day from 8:00 to 23:30.

Many of our yoga instructors speak English, and the studio’s owner, Naomi Fujita, often helps guests from the US bases in English herself. She holds Eiken Grade 1 and a perfect TOEIC score, worked as a translator and overseas interpreter at Nomura Securities, and lived in Alaska for three years. Not every lesson is taught in English, so mention it when you book.

A trial yoga lesson costs ¥1,980 (tax included), with two bath towels, one face towel and a mat to rent, so you can come empty-handed. Pregnant guests cannot join the lava-stone hot yoga, but room-temperature maternity yoga is available.

Studio information: https://ontheshore.jp/ ; trial booking: https://site.locaop.jp/C0aVK?_src=hp

In the summer of 1962, the first Tachikawa student crossed the Pacific. More than sixty years on, somewhere on the other side, someone is still waiting to call a Tachikawa kid “San”.

Cover photo: Tachikawa City Hall in Izumi-cho, home of the office that runs the sister-city programme (2011) (Photo: Altomarina / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

More Tachikawa Walks

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All Tachikawa Walks (English)