SATOMI STILL LIVES

Everywhere I have been so far in Japan people come up to me and tell me that they were friends of Satomi Oba. Satomi died suddenly a couple of years ago and was a huge loss to the peace movement in Japan. She was also on the Global Network's board and was our key link to Japan. She translated one of our space videos into Japanese and spread it around the country. Several times she translated our space week posters and distributed them far and wide. When I spoke the other night in Tokyo I saw her translated videos are still being sold.

We have now established a strong core of people in Japan who are working on the space issue and we must give much credit to Satomi for that. She, working along with Atsushi Fujioka who is our other long-time GN board member from Japan, are the peaceful space pioneers in Japan. (Today I head to Kyoto where Atsushi lives and will be there for three days.)

Satomi once told me how hard it was for women to have strong voices in her culture and sometimes she paid a bitter price for that. But she was a strong and gentle soul who is still revered by her fellow activists.

She lived in Hiroshima and helped Atsushi organize a speaking tour for me around Japan in 2002.

At the Global Network annual conference that followed her death our chairperson Dave Webb from the UK put the above picture up on a huge screen and played a song from The Kinks (he is also a fan) called Days.

I put it here in her memory.