Kauai Rotary marks 55 years of sister-club ties with Moriyama visit

Thirty-three members, relatives and guests from the Rotary Club of Moriyama are set to come to Kaua‘i on May 15, turning a 55-year sister-club milestone into a living exchange rather than a ceremonial stopover. The visit follows a Rotary Club of Kaua‘i trip to Moriyama that included a meeting with Moriyama Mayor Takafumi Morinaka, giving the anniversary a civic purpose as well as a cultural one.

The relationship between Kaua‘i and Moriyama dates to 1975, the same year Moriyama presented the tanuki goodwill gift that later moved to the Kaua‘i Museum after years of neglect and vandalism. That artifact, along with the current anniversary visit, shows how the tie has endured through both public diplomacy and community caretaking. It is not just a plaque or a toast abroad. It is a working relationship that still sends students, families and club members back and forth across the Pacific.

For more than 25 years, the Rotary Club of Kaua‘i and the Rotary Club of Moriyama have also run a high school student exchange program that has left visible marks on island life. In March 2025, Moriyama students Sara Funahashi, Konami Fukutome and Yuriko Hatayama spent several days on Kaua‘i, studying hula, ukulele, lei-making and ti-leaf wrapping at the Kaua‘i Museum and spending a day at Kaua‘i High School. A year later, Sakura Doman and Yuzuki Kubota came to Kaua‘i as part of the same exchange, learning lei-making, visiting the tanuki and being told to look up the Moriyama Tree at Kaua‘i High School.

That tree has become one of the clearest physical symbols of the partnership. The Moriyama Tree was described in March 2026 as having been planted more than 20 years ago as part of a sister-city ceremony, and an October 2012 planting was meant to strengthen and continue the student exchange program. The result is a small but durable reminder that an international relationship can show up in the daily life of a local school, not just in formal resolutions.

The Kaua‘i delegation in Moriyama included Art Umezu, Lani Nagao-Tadaki, Kazuhiro Miyamoto, Ron Morin, Kazumichi Tateiri, Sachiko Tsuda, Craig Koga and Lori Koga. Rotary International describes twin club relationships as a way to promote international understanding and goodwill, and its Friendship Exchange program is built around members and families taking turns hosting one another. On Kaua‘i, that broad idea has translated into practical community work at home, including the Old Koloa Sugar Mill Run, the Lights on Rice holiday parade and the Rotary Club of Kapa‘a’s Taste of Hawaii brunch.

The sister-club anniversary now lands in a place where youth exchange, civic trust and local fundraising all overlap. After 55 years, the Moriyama connection still reaches into Kaua‘i schools, museums and service projects, proving that the strongest international ties are the ones residents can actually see.