TOKYO—Guinness World Records has certified two Japanese sisters as the world’s oldest living identical twins at 107, in an announcement Monday coinciding with Respect for the Aged Day, a national holiday in Japan. Umeno Sumiyama and Koume Kodama were born the third and fourth of 11 siblings on Shodoshima island in western Japan on Nov. 5, 1913. They were separated after elementary school, when Kodama was sent to work as a maid in Oita on Japan’s southern main island of Kyushu. She later married there, while Sumiyama remained on the island where they grew up and had her own family. The sisters later recalled their difficult younger days. Growing up, they said they were bullied because of prejudice against children of multiple births in Japan. Busy with their own lives for decades, the sisters rarely met until they turned 70, when they started making pilgrimages together to some of the …
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