Diverged from AZYPAA to RYUKYPAA
AZYPAA was launched in Tokyo in 2012 as the ICYPAA for the Asian region. Since then, members have held events at the same location for the following three years. In 2015, Okinawa hosted the first international AA conference, AZYPAA2015. This marked the first opportunity for American AA members and local Okinawan members to gather together since the military group began in 1947 and the Japanese group in 1987.
Following the 2016 AZYPAA conference in Kyoto, the AZYPAA Executive Committee decided to temporarily suspend events until another host country outside Japan emerged. Meanwhile, ICYPAA, RYUKYPAA in Okinawa, and TOKYPAA in Tokyo were established in 2017 as spin-off events from AZYPAA, following the ICYPAA guidelines, which state that there are no restrictions based on age, country, region, or group, as long as the conditions for membership as defined in Tradition 3 are met.
Thanks to the efforts of some members that have reached out to other Asian countries, this year’s event is expected to be broader in participants’ background and more expanded. For example, two guest speakers from Dalian, China, and San Jose, USA, have already decided to join this event.
It was expected that this movement will be expanded, however, due to COVID pandemic there was a five-year suspension of this event. During that time, there were notable number of members joined AA through a new channel, the virtual online meetings, and some of them became interested in real-life AA activities. For that reason, the committee was formed to resume RYUKYPAA as a place for the third legacy of service freely, and we are now planning the 4th RYUKYPAA.
The relaunch of RYUKYPAA will be challenging because the event requires to be formed from the scratch again including the members of the RYUKYPAA committee. However, all committee members are looking forward to hold an event that we can share our hopes together.