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
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to