Thumbnail photo: A delegation from Rikuzentakata celebrates the inaugural Kamome Festival in Crescent City in 2023. | Photo by Jessica Cejnar Andrews Blake Inscore called his guest speaker role at a Sister Cities International Summit in Japan his “last big push for tourism as well as for our community” before he moves onto the next chapter of his life. Part of the World’s Expo 2025 in Osaka, Inscore said every U.S./Japan Sister City was invited to attend the summit, which will be held from Sept. 16-19. His opportunity to re-tell the story of Crescent City’s evolving friendship with Rikuzentakata not only puts it on as large a world stage as the Tokyo Olympics did back in 2021, it represents what many Sister Cities don’t have. “Sister Cities International has been very intrigued and they want us to show how a Sister City can work together with government-to-government relationships," Inscore told the Crescent City Council on Monday. “[Many Sister Cities] don’t have a city council or a mayor or anybody else that’s engaged with wanting to see this happen. And, frankly, this is a win for us.” On Monday, Inscore, who retired as Crescent City mayor in November, received the Council’s near-unanimous blessing to represent them at the Sister Cities International Summit, though he asked for no financial support. Councilor Daran Dooley was absent. World’s Expo 2025 is a six-month long event that started in April and ends in October. According to Kelly Feola, Crescent City’s recreation and events coordinator, 28 million people are expected to attend the World’s Expo throughout its six-month long run with 90 cities from the United States being represented. About 317 attendees will be from California, according to Feola. Inscore was mayor when Crescent City and Del Norte County entered into an official Sister City pact with Rikuzentakata in 2018, five years after Kamome, a 20-foot long fishing vessel washed ashore on South Beach after being swept away by the East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011. He will be part of a delegation of 27 people from Del Norte County who will make the trip to Osaka next month. That delegation will also include retired Del Norte County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Bill Steven and Halie DeArman, who was part of the original delegation that visited Rikuzentakata in 2014 “This thing has continued to grow over the years,” Steven told Redwood Voice Community News on Thursday. “We first started with a Sister School relationship and that blossomed into a Sister City relationship and then with the [Kamome] Festival being three years in now and getting bigger and better every year. I think it’s great because the whole thing is based on emergency preparedness and sharing culture.” It was Steven who urged his son John to recruit his friends, DeArman included, to scrub Kamome free of her barnacles and figure out a way to return her to Takata High School. That act of kindness led to the Sister School relationship between the two high schools and, five years later, the official Sister City relationship. There’s been business ventures between Rikuzentakata and Crescent City as well as a cultural exchange of education professionals from both sides of the ocean, Steven said. If it hadn’t been for Kamome and the tsunami, none of that would have happened, he said. “We’ve got a great origin story and we’ve got so much going,” he said. “We’ve been the darlings of the Sister City community for quite a few years now and because of that, we’ve been asked to speak at that convention in Osaka and tell our story.” Expo 2025 celebrates 170 years of diplomatic relations between the United States and Japan, Inscore said. It also commemorates the 80th anniversary of the two nations’ renewed relationship following World War II as well as the 70 years Sister Cities International has been active. Sister Cities International has been tasked by the U.S. State Department to staff the USA Pavilion at the expo with young professionals, Inscore said. The organization’s goal is to “strengthen bilateral partnerships and build new relationships.” “What we have discovered sometimes is Sister City relationships are hanging by a thread and the only thing left is some students going back and forth, but that’s what’s left,” he told the City Council. “Other than the early things that get said, we highlight Day One of the Sister City International [Summit]. Their Board selected our story as the way to communicate their hope for all Sister Cities around the world.” Before the summit, however, Inscore said he and the delegation will travel to the Iwate Prefecture to meet with Governor Takuya Tasso, who was also in office in 2014 when the first delegation visited Rikuzentakata. According to Inscore, funding for the trip is being funneled through the Kamome Foundation, which is providing financial support to DeArman for her trip. “Sister Cities International put the screws to us, ‘We want one of them first kids, figure it out,’” Inscore told the City Council. “When the ask was made — we didn’t have to twist her arm, but we felt as a Board we wanted to help with that because she’s making a big sacrifice.” The former mayor also spoke of another opportunity for a Crescent City delegation to visit Rikuzentakata. In November, he said, the East Japan Railway Company will hold a grand opening of the rail line between Ichinoseki and Kesennuma, which is about 12 miles south of Rikuzentakata. According to Inscore, after the earthquake and tsunami destroyed “a good portion of the coastline” the railway had never made it to Rikuzentakata. “You would go as far as Ichinoseki and you got on a bus for an hour and a half through the mountains, kinda like riding 199,” he said. “Rikuzentakata really wants to celebrate this and they would love to have someone from Crescent City be there for their ribbon cutting. They’re really making a big deal about this ‘cause it is a big deal from the standpoint of having public access to the coast.”