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 US atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was awarded for its decades-long 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,” Hidankyo cochair Toshiyuki Mimaki told reporters on Friday 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.”
Photo: Reuters
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 effects.
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 US nuclear umbrella, has refused to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
However, a youth movement seems to be starting, the Nobel committee said.
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,” a beaming Wakana Tsukuda said. “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.”
“I will keep up my effort so we can believe that nuclear disarmament is not a dream, but a reality,” high-school student Natsuki Kai added.
In Hiroshima, residents said they hope the world never forgets the atomic bombing of 1945 — now more than ever.
Susumu Ogawa, 84, was five when the bomb dropped by the US all but obliterated the Japanese city 79 years ago, and many of his family were among the 140,000 people killed.
“My mother, my aunt, my grandfather and my grandfather all died in the atomic bombing,” Ogawa said yesterday.
Ogawa said he recalls little, but the snippets he garnered later from his surviving relatives and others painted a hellish picture.
“All they could do was to evacuate and save their own lives, while they saw other people [perish] inside the inferno,” he said.
“All nuclear weapons in the world have to be abandoned,” he said. “We know the horror of nuclear weapons, because we know what happened in Hiroshima.”
Additional reporting by AFP
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