Oslo:

Japan’s atomic bomb survivors’ group Nihon Hidankyo accepted its Nobel Peace Prize on Tuesday, pleading for the abolition of nuclear weapons that are resurging as a threat 80 years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

One of the three Nihon Hidankyo co-chairs, 92-year-old Nagasaki survivor Terumi Tanaka, demanded “action from governments to achieve” a nuclear-free world.

The prize was presented at a time when countries like Russia — which has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal — increasingly brandish the atomic threat.

“I am infinitely saddened and angered that the ‘nuclear taboo’ threatens to be broken,” Tanaka told dignitaries at Oslo’s City Hall, some clad in traditional Norwegian bunads or Japanese kimonos.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly made nuclear threats as he presses the war in Ukraine. He signed a decree in November lowering the threshold for using atomic weapons.

In a strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro a few days later, the Russian army fired a new hypersonic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, although in this instance it had a regular payload.

Nihon Hidankyo works to rid the planet of the weapons of mass destruction, relying on testimonies from survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known as “hibakusha”.

The US bombings of the Japanese cities on August 6 and 9, 1945 killed 214,000 people, leading to Japan’s surrender in World War II.

Burnt bodies

Tanaka was 13 years old when Nagasaki was bombed, the epicentre just three kilometres (1.8 miles) west of his home. Five members of his family were killed.

He was upstairs reading a book when the A-bomb was dropped.

“I heard the explosion and all of a sudden saw a bright white light, which surrounded everything and everything became silent,” he recalled.

“I was really surprised. I felt my life in danger.”

Rushing to the ground floor, he lost consciousness when two glass doors, blown out by the detonation, fell on him, though the glass did not break.

Three days later, he and his mother went searching for their relatives. That was when they realised the scope of the disaster.

“When we reached a ridge over the hills, we could look down over the city and that was when, for the first time, we saw that there was absolutely nothing left. Everything was black and charred.”

He saw gravely wounded people fleeing the city, burnt bodies on the roadside. He and his mother cremated his aunt’s body “with our own hands”.

“I was numb, not able to feel anything.”

Nihon Hidankyo’s ranks are dwindling with every passing year. The Japanese government lists around 106,800 “hibakusha” still alive today. Their average age is 85.

‘Uphold nuclear taboo’

For the West, the nuclear threat also comes from North Korea, which has increased its ballistic missile tests, and Iran, which is suspected of seeking to develop nuclear weapons though it denies this.

Nine countries now have nuclear weapons: Britain, China, France, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United States, and, unofficially, Israel.

“Our movement has undoubtedly played a major role in creating the ‘nuclear taboo’,” Tanaka said.

“However, there still remain 12,000 nuclear warheads on Earth today, 4,000 of which are operationally deployed, ready for immediate launch.”

In 2017, 122 governments negotiated and adopted a UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), but the text is considered largely symbolic as no nuclear power has signed it.

While all ambassadors stationed in Oslo were invited to Tuesday’s ceremony, the only nuclear powers in attendance were Britain, France, India, Pakistan and the United States. Russia, China, Israel and Iran were not present, the Nobel Institute said.

Expressing concern about the world entering “a new, more unstable nuclear age”, Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Jorgen Watne Frydnes warned that “a nuclear war could destroy our civilisation”.

“Today’s nuclear weapons … have far greater destructive power than the two bombs used against Japan in 1945. They could kill millions of us in an instant, injure even more, and disrupt the climate catastrophically,” he warned.

Later, the Nobel laureates for medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics received their prizes from Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf at a separate ceremony in Stockholm, followed by a banquet for some 1,250 guests.

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

Members of Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots Japanese organization of atomic bomb survivors, that won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, attend a press conference on October 12, 2024, in Tokyo, Japan.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

Leaders of the group of atomic bomb survivors awarded the Nobel Peace Prize warned on Saturday (October 12, 2024) that the risk of nuclear war was rising, renewing their call to abolish nuclear weapons.

“The international situation is getting progressively worse, and now wars are being waged as countries threaten the use of nuclear weapons,” said Shigemitsu Tanaka, a survivor of the 1945 U.S. bombing of Nagasaki and co-head of the Nihon Hidankyo group.

“I fear that we as humankind are on the path to self-destruction. The only way to stop that is to abolish nuclear,” he said.

In awarding the survivors, the Norwegian Nobel Committee highlighted the devastation of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese group’s decades-long work to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

The group’s endeavours have critical importance in the world today, the committee said. It did not specify any countries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signalled last month that Moscow would consider responding with nuclear weapons if the U.S. and its allies allow Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia with long-range Western missiles.

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.

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.

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“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.