PROPOSITION ONE HISTORY
(a Japanese slant)


On November 3, 1994 Proposition One was introduced to some 1,500 Japanese peace activists at the 9th annual Japan Peace Conference, held in Misawa City, 500 kilometers north of Tokyo.

The conference was organized by 70 peace and progressive national organizations, including the Japan Peace Committee, Zenroren ("National Federation of Trade Unions"), Zenkyo ("National Teacher's Union"), and many other associates of Gensuikyo ("Council Against A&H Bombs").

Gensuikyo is an umbrella coalition of associations, including students, women, pensioners, teachers, scientists, physicians, "religionists," artists, scholars, trade unionists, and even some politicians, who all agree, amid their various other concerns, that global nuclear disarmament is their first priority.

It was 1987 when we first became actively involved with Japanese peace activists. Gensuikyo had launched a "Peace Wave"- at 7:30 a.m. on August 6th, across the planet, one after the other as time zones changed, people gathered indoors and out to speak and pray about Hiroshima. We'd been staging special events during Hiroshima/Nagasaki week for several years, and wrote the Peace Wave organizers that we would incorporate a Peace Wave action. Our follow-up report of the action was published in the Peace Wave news magazine, a remarkable short-lived publication which awakened lonely little enclaves of anti-nuclear activism around the world to the fact that we were not alone.

In 1990 Norio Okada of Akahata wrote a story about Proposition One, and a follow-up story in 1993 after DC Initiative 37 won the election. Akahata has a readership of 3 million. The stories led to an invitation this fall for Proposition One to send a representative to the Japan Peace Conference.