One may encounter Chuck Overby in his favorite place on the Ohio University campus, Alden Library. He often wears a Veterans for Peace (VFP) cap or his ancestral Norwegian fisherman's hat - each with an origami peace crane attached. He walks with a cane and likes to talk about Japan's war-renouncing Article 9 and related war-
and global-warming-prevention ideas from an engineering perspective.
He is a critic
but I'm deeply impressed by his passion for peace said Jung Lee, an OU student who often converses with Overby.
Overby, 83, is an OU emeritus engineering professor as well as a veteran of World War II and Korea. In 1991, Overby founded a peace group called the Article 9 Society. This idea, with the help of former Chubu University Vice President Dr. Hiroshi Katsumori, jumped across the Pacific in the summer of 1991 to later expand into many Article 9 Society groups scattered across Japan.
Article 9, in part, says ... the Japanese people forever renounced war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes. Overby views Article 9 as most all humanity's cry, rising like a phoenix out of Hiroshima's and Nagasaki's radioactive ashes, and the awful slaughter and destruction and that was World War II.
The U.S. government helped to place Article 9 in Japan's constitution after World War II but now the Japanese and U.S. governments seek to destroy this wonderful bit of species wisdom
said Overby.
The Article 9 Society is an organization dedicated to the preservation of the Japanese Constitution's war-renouncing Article 9 and to the ultimate adoption of Article 9's principles by all nations in the world.
Overby was recently able to get VFP to allow him to send his proposal for an Article 9 type of an amendment to the United States Constitution, as an official VFP request, to all 535 members of the U.S. Congress. Though he has yet to hear any response, his message is supported by many people at OU.
What he does is amazing
said Syed Jamal, a graduate student from India studying mass communication and international development. He is so energetic and enthusiastic
and he spends much time and effort on it.
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Culture
Lu Tang
