Japanese org for atomic bomb survivors wins Nobel Peace Prize for nuclear disarmament efforts

Japanese organization 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 who 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 possible.

“(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 leukemia, were often forcibly segregated from society and faced discrimination when seeking employment or marriage in the years following the war.

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.

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 modernizing 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 civilization,” he said in an interview.