Numerous international experts and leaders have responded to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, by emphasizing the extraordinary importance of this most urgent, timely development.
Nihon Hidankyo, the survivors’ organization of the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 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.
Terumi Tanaka, 91, Nihon Hidankyo co-chair, told Japanese public broadcaster NHK: “I think that the reason (we received the prize) is that the international situation today has made it so. With the war between Russia and Ukraine, and the war in the Middle East, I think the risk of nuclear weapons being used has increased greatly, and I personally have a premonition that a nuclear war will break out in the not-too-distant future.”
He told a news conference in Tokyo: “Now we face the crisis in which nuclear weapons may be actually used and they are not even going away, we need to properly communicate with younger people and teach them about atomic weapons and the work we have been doing … so everyone can think what he or she can do.... We’ve led the activism because we were atomic bombing victims, but I must say all of you are the future hibakusha candidates. So you should fully understand what it means to be hibakusha,” and work together, Tanaka said.
The Governor of Hiroshima Hidehiko Yuzaki said, “We are in a situation where we’re seeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the use of military force in Gaza and Israel. In such tragic situations, there is growing debate around the world about whether we should use nuclear weapons, strengthen nuclear deterrence, or even have nuclear weapons. The atomic bomb survivors have been stressing how foolish this really is. The Nobel Foundation has reminded the world of this through the Peace Prize.”
The Japanese Jiji Press reports: “Following the announcement that the Japan confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo) had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, congratulations were voiced by experts from the United States, the country that dropped the atomic bomb. However President Biden and others have not issued any particular statement.”
“Professor Peter Kuznick, director of the Institute for Nuclear Studies at the American University, who has close ties to Hiroshima, praised the organization in an interview with Jiji Press saying ‘The Atomic Bomb Sufferers Association continues to be the conscience of the world.'” Kuznick said he had recommended Hidankyo for the Peace Prize, and stressed that “there was an urgency to award this prize while the hibakusha were still alive.”
