Jay Gilliam - Rotary Peace Fellow
Peace Boat, is one of a very few Japanese nongovernmental organizations in Japan. It combines
the ideas of taking a vacation and going to learn about and practice peace work by interacting with
and helping people in underdeveloped parts of the world. According to Peace Boat, "The ship, as a neutral space beyond borders, becomes a floating peace village, encouraging a sense of community. Programs explore the main aspects of Peace Boat activity - peace, human rights, sustainability
and respect for the environment - and aim to develop travel as a tool for peace and sustainability."
Peace Boat participates in more than just its voyages around the world. One of those activities is what drew Jay to this NGO. In addition to the voyages, Peace Boat sponsors activities like its Hibakusha Project, where it gathers atomic bomb victims to tell their stories of living through the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in 1945 and gives them a space to advocate for a future nuclear-free world.
Earlier this year he had the opportunity to listen to 3 hibakusha that had just returned from a voyage and shared their experiences in Tokyo. Peace Boat is also a leading participant in the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict, which is a "world-wide civil society-led network aiming to [prevent] violent conflict and work on strengthening civil society networks for peace and security by linking local, national, regional, and global levels of action and effective engagement with governments, the UN system and regional organizations."
Jay has focused on the Global Article 9 Campaign to Abolish War of Peace Boat. This campaign was originally launched in 2005 with Japan's Lawyers' International Solidarity Association in response to rising conservative voices in Japan to amend Article 9 of its peace constitution to remove its war renouncing language and to make Japan a "normal" state, or one in which a military is a necessary part of the state. The campaign "strives not only to protect Article 9 locally, but also to build an international movement supporting Article 9 as the shared property of the world, calling for a global peace that does not rely on force." In the spring of 2008, just before he arrived to Tokyo, the campaign hosted its first conference that acted as a "forum for dialogue and discussions on the role that citizens of the world can play to realize the principles of Article 9, through promoting disarmament, demilitarization, and a culture of peace." Since that first conference, the campaign has continued work "to carry on the international campaign. that can 'act as an international peace mechanism' and [has] called on governments to adopt similar peace clauses in their constitutions."
This is what drew him to Peace Boat-its Article 9 Campaign. As an early student of Japan and its history, culture and politics, Jay has been interested in Japan's postwar defense and diplomatic issues, especially arguments for and against revising Article 9 and how those changes could affect East Asian and Japan's military ties to the United States. In Japan, where government officials rather than civil society drive politics and policies more, he has learned how Peace Boat engages with Japanese people about this important issue.
By aiding the Global Article 9 Campaign in its work and research and interacting with people in- and outside the organization, I have had first-hand experience working on this issue with Japanese civil society and other international NGOs and peace activists. During my first week at Peace Boat, the campaign held a follow-up peace conference in Costa Rica, which looked at the global implications of Japan and Costa Rica's pacifist constitutions and their roles in bringing peace to East Asia and Latin
America, respectively. Although I was not able to attend that conference, I was able to read the reports and listen to speeches from it. I also helped to write and edit the English reports that were posted on the Peace Boat website and included in the campaign's monthly newsletter.
As he wrote on his blog, one of the great things about this project is how it is pushing to educate the world about the uniqueness of Japan's pacifist constitution and urging other countries to adopt a similar one.
Jay Gilliam is the first Peace Scholar from District 5790 and is in Class VII of the Rotary Peace Fellows program. Jay has a blog that is updated on a regular basis. It can be read at the following:
http://jrginjapan.blogspot.com/