The UNESCO Club Movement grew spontaneously out of the enthusiasm and idealism of the peoples of several countries very soon after the Organization was founded. In Japan, for instance, the Clubs were born out of the ruins of the post war period, even before the country was admitted to membership of UNESCO. Indeed, the first UNESCO Club (in Japan and in the world as a whole) was set up in Sendai on 19 July 1947, followed by another in Kyoto on 18 September of the same year. In December 1947, a UNESCO Group was set up in the United States, at the Steele Center in Denver, Colorado. Thus, only a few months after UNESCO had been founded, on the initiative of academics, there emerged a popular movement supporting the new Organization’s ideal of world peace.