Homer, Alaska, and Teshio, Japan celebrated 40 years of sister city partnership in 2024. The two cities, sharing similar environments and culture, have showed renewed commitment to their partnership, with Homer creating a permanent fund for the relationship in February 2025.
The two towns have been sister cities since 1984. The partnership was inspired by several key similarities, including their relatively small populations—around 3,000 for Teshio and 6,000 for Homer—and their northern locations, with Homer in Alaska and Teshio in Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, part of the country's “snowbelt.” Over the course of their four decades of friendship, the two cities have shared student exchanges and gifts. Educational exchange began in 1987, when a Teshio student visited Homer, and continued roughly every two years. The Alaskan city sent its first student in 1986, with one delegation sent about every six years since then. After the COVID-19 pandemic, student exchange was adjusted to focus more on digital avenues. The two cities have regularly facilitated online exchange sessions and pen pal programs for students. Neither city has sent a student delegation since 2016.
That will soon change, however. In an interview with East-West Center Young Professional Interns Tommis Meyer and Alex Vu, Homer-Teshio Sister City Liaison Megumi Beams shared that Homer is preparing to send a student delegation of unprecedented size to Teshio in late May. Five students and three chaperones will visit Teshio for four days, where they will stay with local host families and represent their city as part of celebrations for last year’s 40th anniversary. In Teshio, the student ambassadors will meet with the mayor, school principals, and city council members, giving presentations on key aspects of the sister city relationship. The delegation will receive special happi coats emblazoned with a newly designed sister city logo, which they will wear to represent the two cities as they visit other areas of Japan including the 2025 Expo in Osaka. The student ambassadors mark the very first official delegation of youth representing Homer to Teshio.
The two cities commemorated the 40th anniversary through an art exhibition last year. From May 1 to September 7, 2024, 18 works of art gifted from Teshio were displayed at the Pratt Museum in Homer. These developments built on Beams’s extensive work with the Alaska Japanese Club of Homer. The club has introduced not only the Japanese language to Homer youth, but also taiko, a traditional form of Japanese drums, with support from Tomodachi Taiko, a group based in Anchorage, Alaska. Ms. Beams discussed the difficulties of maintaining the sister cities partnership during COVID, which disrupted regular communication. The partnership proved resilient in the face of this difficulty thanks to immense effort from students. They have played a key role as shown through letters and a banner as part of their ‘Friendship without Boundaries’ project’ displayed on Homer’s main street.
Galvanized by the 40th anniversary of the Sister City relationship and the upcoming departure of Homer’s first official student ambassadors, the City of Homer took a historic step in passing Resolution 25-011 to establish a long-term fund dedicated to supporting the Homer–Teshio partnership in February 2025. Managed by the Homer Foundation, the fund will support exchanges, educational programs, and community events, with grants over $5,000 requiring City Council approval. Initial funding came from city allocations, and public donations are encouraged to ensure the program’s continued vitality and transparency.
As Homer prepares to send student ambassadors to Teshio for the first time in over 40 years, the fund cements a shared commitment to cultivating people-to-people connections. It is a testament to the power of local diplomacy, and to the belief that even small towns can make a lasting mark on the world through friendship, culture, and education.
The Sister Cities Series covers notable Sister City Partnerships with Asia across the United States, highlighting cooperation and exchange serving as a foundation to improve relations and understanding between peoples and localities in the United States and the Indo-Pacific.
Tommis Meyer is a Spring 2025 Young Professional Intern at the East-West Center in Washington. Tommis holds an undergraduate degree in Global International Relations from American University under its Joint Degree Program with Ritsumeikan University in Japan.
Alex Vu is a Spring 2025 Young Professional at the East-West Center in Washington. Alex is currently a junior at the University of South Florida, studying Econometrics & Political Science.