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Dr. Chuck Overby
7815 Angel Ridge Road
Athens Oh, 45701
740-593-5759
overbycm@hotmail.com; www.article9society.org

27 October 2009

To my dear Article 9 loving friends in Japan -

Thank you for asking me to once again share with you some hopes and fears on this 63rd anniversary of the promulgation of your new Constitution and its wonderful Article 9's renunciation of war. I see Article 9 [A9] as not just Japan's but as our human species cry for an end to that brutal obscenity called war.

You have a new Prime Minister Hatoyama, a reality that offers some hope for you and all of us on Planet Earth - a hope that it will be more difficult now for your Japanese government and my USA government to destroy Article 9's essence.

You must strongly and non-violently continue your struggle for Article 9's health under these new circumstances. My feeling that you will prevail -- lifts me with hope. We so urgently need for you to keep your Article 9 robustly alive as a powerful international moral model for all nations on Planet Earth - including the USA.

We in the USA have our own supreme challenges -- to move our country away from its profligate "grow-grow" unregulated free-market entropic-economic global-warming militarist posture in the world - to one of international leadership in non-violent, non-militarist, war-prevention and conflict resolution -- and leadership for ecologically healthy "communities of justice and peace."

Speaking of "peace" we were all perhaps a bit surprised at US President Barack Obama's being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009. Some of you have asked my opinion on this award. I see it as more of a manifestation by my Norwegian Nobel friends of a Planet Earth "sigh of relief" at something healthily different from the prior Bush government's unsavory policies and actions -- and as a yearning "hope" that it might be possible for President Obama to change the USA's course in world affairs toward something like that mentioned in the paragraph just above.

Obama's April 2009 Prague speech on ridding Planet Earth of nuclear weapons was hopeful. We the people of Planet Earth might collectively urge that he begin this nuclear weapons extinction process by forcefully providing leadership to the world in implementing the 40 year old wonderful ideas in Article 6 of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT. Article 6 of the NPT reads as follows:

"Each of the parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty of general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control."

Unfortunately, the immensity of the international and domestic chaos left on Obama's plate is such that I am a bit fearful that Obama, with his beautiful rhetoric, may not be able to fulfill his promise. This is especially true because the huge military-industrial-academic-corporate-financial power structure that runs things in America - is still there -- some of it receiving huge financial bailouts and bonuses in honor of their recent gambling failures.

Back to the Nobel Peace Prize - it interests me that for the second time in seven years a US president has beaten "Article 9" in this Nobel contest. In 2002 I nominated Dr. Hiroshi Katsumori, the 1991 founder of the "Article 9 Society - Japan [A9S-J]," only to have former US President Carter win the prize in 2002. In 2009 at least two different nominations related to Article 9 were submitted to the Norwegian Peace Prize committee - one connected to the 2004 founded "Article 9 Association [A9A]" and one connected to the relatively recent "PeaceBoat" activity for Article 9. Obama wins the prize in 2009.

Several of my Article 9 loving friends in Japan asked me to send a letter of support to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Oslo for each of these two A9 related 2009 nominations. At first I hesitated in writing these support letters because I have experienced some conflict between some Japanese A9 support groups. However, I finally did communicate with the Nobel Committee giving much loving support for the importance of Article 9 receiving Nobel Peace Prize recognition.

I also shared with the Nobel Committee some of my perceptions, understandings, and opinions about these Japanese peace groups' conflicts. I asked the Nobel group, if they chose to honor Article 9 with a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, to send a conflict-healing peace message of "inclusion" to Article 9 loving people in Japan. I asked Oslo to do this by expanding the scope of the 2009 Article 9 related nominations to encompass in their deliberations, all three nominations so that they become as one - the 2009 A9A, and the PeaceBoat nominations -- and my 2002 nomination of the pioneer in all of this, the founder of A9S-J [Dr. Katsumori, posthumously.] I asked that both, the "honor" and the "financial" awards of a Nobel Peace Prize for A9 be shared equally among the three.

Allow me to share with you a final commentary on the sometimes paradoxical nature of Nobel Peace Prize awards and their outcomes - this one involving Japan, the USA, and Russia. Another US President, Theodore Roosevelt, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for mediating an end the 1904-05 Japanese-Russian War - a war that Japan was apparently likely to win. Roosevelt was motivated in part because he sought to keep a USA "open-door" for trade and commerce with China and East Asia - trade and commerce without there being any one too dominant nation in the region. One of Roosevelt's enticements to Japan was to suggest that if Japan would stop beating up on the Russians - the USA would "look the other way" [remain silent] if Japan at some future date might wish to invade and colonize the entire Korean peninsula. Of course, that is what Japan did in 1910 [remaining until August 1945] in emulation of those great pioneering European colonizers, and the USA in Cuba, Hawaii, and the Philippines, etc. The USA remained silent in 1910.

Finally, my dear Article 9 loving friends in Japan please allow me to share with you a bit of wisdom and truth -- words that much move me with their eloquence.

"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it." -- The Talmud.

Chuck Overby, A9S-USA
Ohio University Emeritus Professor
World War II and Korean War Veteran [B-29 combat pilot in Korea]
Member of Veterans For Peace [VFP]

2009年9月3日撮影(c)

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