The Nobel Peace Prize was yesterday awarded to Japanese group Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as hibakusha.
The group, founded in 1956, received the award “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,” said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.
The cohead of the group expressed surprise at winning the award.
Photo: Kyodo, via Reuters
“Never did I dream this could happen,” Nihon Hidankyo cochair Toshiyuki Mimaki told reporters in Tokyo with tears in his eyes.
“It has been said that because of nuclear weapons, the world maintains peace,” but “if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won’t end there,” Mimaki warned. “Politicians should know these things.”
The Nobel committee expressed alarm that the international “nuclear taboo” that developed in response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945 was “under pressure.”
“This year’s prize is a prize that focuses on the necessity of upholding this nuclear taboo. And we all have a responsibility, particularly the nuclear powers,” Frydnes said.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said the award for Nihon Hidankyo was “extremely meaningful.”
The Nobel committee said that next year will mark 80 years since two US atomic bombs killed an estimated 120,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and a comparable number later died of burn and radiation injuries.
Frydnes said that “today’s nuclear weapons have far greater destructive power.”
“They can kill millions and would impact the climate catastrophically,” he added. “A nuclear war could destroy our civilization.”
The committee said that nations with nuclear weapons are modernizing and upgrading their arsenals, and new countries “appear to be preparing to acquire nuclear weapons.”
There are nine nuclear-armed states: the US, Russia, France, Britain, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and likely Israel.
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