Atomic bomb survivors and members of Nihon Hidankyo, a country-wide organisation of atomic and hydrogen bomb sufferers, including Assistant Secretary General Toshiko Hamanaka, Co-chairperson Terumi Tanaka, Assistant Secretary General Masako Wada, Assistant Secretary General Jiro Hamasumi attend a press conference on the following day of Nihon Hidankyo winning the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, in Tokyo, Japan, October 12, 2024. File
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

The recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is a fast-dwindling group of atomic bomb survivors who are facing down the shrinking time they have left to convey the firsthand horror they witnessed 79 years ago.

Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese organization of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was awarded for its decadeslong activism against nuclear weapons. The survivors, known as hibakusha, see the prize and the international attention as their last chance to get their message out to younger generations.

“We must seriously think about the succession of our messages. We must thoroughly hand over from our generation to the future generations,” Toshiyuki Mimaki, senior member of the Hiroshima branch of Hidankyo, told reporters on Friday (October 11, 2024) night.

“With the honor of the Nobel Peace Prize, we now have a responsibility to get our messages handed down not only in Japan but also across the world.”

The honor rewards members’ grassroots efforts to keep telling their stories — even though that involved recollecting horrendous ordeals during and after the bombings, and facing discrimination and worries about their health from the lasting radiation impact — for the sole purpose of never again let that happen.

Now, with their average age at 85.6, the hibakusha are increasingly frustrated that their fear of a growing nuclear threat and push to eliminate nuclear weapons are not fully understood by younger generations.

The number of prefectural hibakusha groups decreased from 47 to 36. And the Japanese government, under the U.S. nuclear umbrella for protection, has refused to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapon.

But there is hope, and a youth movement seems to be starting, the Nobel committee noted.

Three high school students accompanied Mimaki at the city hall, stood by him as the prize winner was announced, and promised to keep their activism alive.

“I had goose bumps when I heard the announcement,” said a beaming Wakana Tsukuda. “I have felt discouraged by negative views about nuclear disarmament, but the Nobel Peace Prize made me renew my commitment to work toward abolishing nuclear weapons.”

Another high school student, Natsuki Kai, said, “I will keep up my effort so we can believe that nuclear disarmament is not a dream but a reality.”

In Nagasaki, another group of students celebrated Hidankyo’s win. Yuka Ohara, 17, thanked the survivors’ yearslong effort despite the difficulty. Mr. Ohara said she heard her grandparents, who survived the Nagasaki bombing, repeatedly tell her the importance of peace in daily life. “I want to learn more as I continue my activism.”

In April, a group of people set up a network, Japan Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, connecting younger generations around the country to work with survivors and pursue their effort.

Efforts to document the survivors’ stories and voices have grown in recent years around Japan, including in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tokyo. In some places, young volunteers are working with hibakusha to succeed their personal story telling when they are gone.

The first U.S. atomic bombing killed 140,000 people in the city of Hiroshima. A second atomic attack on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, killed another 70,000. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, bringing an end to its nearly half-century aggression in Asia.

Hidankyo was formed 11 years later in 1956. There was a growing anti-nuclear movement in Japan in response to U.S. hydrogen bomb tests in the Pacific that led to a series of radiation exposures by Japanese boats, adding to demands for government support for health problems.

As of March, 106,823 survivors — 6,824 fewer than a year ago, and nearly one-quarter of the total in the 1980s — were certified as eligible for government medical support, according to the Health and Welfare Ministry. Many others, including those who say they were victims of the radioactive “black rain” that fell outside the initially designated areas of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are still without support.

Oslo / Tokyo:

Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, in a warning to countries that have nuclear weapons not to use them.

Many survivors of the only two nuclear bombs ever to be used in conflict, who are known in Japanese as “hibakusha”, have dedicated their lives to the struggle for a nuclear-free world.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said in its citation the group was receiving the Peace Prize for “its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again”.

“The hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons,” the committee said.

“I can’t believe it’s real,” Nihon Hidankyo co-chair Toshiyuki Mimaki told a press conference in Hiroshima, site of the Aug. 6, 1945 atomic bombing during the closing stages of World War Two, as he held back tears and pinched his cheek.

Mimaki, a survivor himself, said the award would give a major boost to its efforts to demonstrate that the abolition of nuclear weapons was necessary and possible and faulted governments for waging wars even as their citizens yearned for peace.

“(The win) will be a great force to appeal to the world that the abolition of nuclear weapons and everlasting peace can be achieved,” he said. “Nuclear weapons should absolutely be abolished.”

In Japan, hibakusha, many of whom carried visible wounds from radiation burns or developed radiation-related diseases such as leukaemia, were often forcibly segregated from society and faced discrimination when seeking employment or marriage in the years following the war.

“They are a group of people delivering the message to the world, so as a Japanese I think this is truly wonderful,” Tokyo resident Yoshiko Watanabe told Reuters, as she wept openly in the street.

There were 106,825 atomic bomb survivors registered in Japan as of March this year, data from the country’s health ministry showed, with an average age of 85.6 years.

WARNING TO NUCLEAR NATIONS

Without naming specific countries, Joergen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, warned that nuclear nations should not contemplate using atomic weapons.

“In a world ridden (with) conflicts, where nuclear weapons is definitely part of it, we wanted to highlight the importance of strengthening the nuclear taboo, the international norm, against the use of nuclear weapons,” Frydnes told Reuters.

“We see it as very alarming that the nuclear taboo … is being reduced by threatening, but also how the situation in the world where the nuclear powers are modernising and upgrading their arsenals.”

Frydnes said the world should listen to the “painful and dramatic stories of the hibakusha”.

“These weapons should never be used again anywhere in the world … Nuclear war could mean the end of humanity, (the) end of our civilisation,” he said in an interview.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned the West of potential nuclear consequences since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

He declared last month that Russia could use nuclear weapons if it was struck with conventional missiles, and that Moscow would consider any assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack.

This month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would speed up steps towards becoming a military superpower with nuclear weapons and would not rule out using them if it came under enemy attack, while widening conflict in the Middle East has prompted some experts to speculate Iran may restart its efforts to acquire a nuclear bomb.    

SECOND JAPANESE WINNER

Next year will mark the 80th anniversary of the dropping of nuclear bombs by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945 that forced Japan’s surrender.

With the award, the committee was drawing attention to a “very dangerous situation” in the world, according to Dan Smith, head of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

“If there is a military conflict, there is a risk of it escalating to nuclear weapons … They (Nihon Hidankyo) are really an important voice to remind us about the destructive nature of nuclear weapons,” he told Reuters.  

Smith said the Committee had achieved “a triple strike”: drawing attention to the human suffering of nuclear bomb survivors; the danger of nuclear weapons; and that the world has survived without their use for nearly 80 years.

The award body has regularly put focus on the issue of nuclear weapons, most recently with its award to ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, who won the award in 2017.

This year’s award also echoes those to Elie Wiesel in 1986 and Russia’s Memorial in 2022 by highlighting the importance of keeping the memory of horrific events alive as a warning to the future.

It is the second Nobel Peace Prize for a Japanese recipient in the prize’s 123-year history, 50 years after former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato won it in 1974.

The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or about $1 million, is due to be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Toshiyuki Mimaki, president of Nihon Hidankyo. File.
| Photo Credit: AP

The head of Japan’s Nihon Hidankyo said on Friday (September 11, 2024) that the group’s win of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize would give a major boost to its efforts to demonstrate that the abolition of nuclear weapons was possible.

“It would be a great force to appeal to the world that the abolition of nuclear weapons can be achieved,” Nihon Hidankyo head Toshiyuki Mimaki told a news conference in Hiroshima, site of the Aug. 6, 1945 atomic bombing during World War Two.

ALSO READ: The Nobel Prize 2024 – An interactive guide

“Nuclear weapons should absolutely be abolished,” he said.

He further expressed his surprise at being given the award for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.

“Never did I dream this could happen,” Mr. Mimaki said.