After 68 years of battle against nuclear weapons, the Swedish Academy awarded this Friday the Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo (Japanese contraction of ‘Japan Atomic Bomb Victims Organization’), which brings together survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
According to the criteria of
This year’s award is an award that focuses on the need to defend this nuclear veto
The group, founded in 1956, He received the Nobel Prize “for his efforts in favor of a world without nuclear weapons.” and for having demonstrated, through testimonies, that nuclear weapons should never be used again,” declared this Friday the president of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes.
The chairman of the Committee considered it “alarming” that the “veto on the use of nuclear weapons” that was generated in response to the atomic bombings of August 1945 is now “under pressure.”
“This year’s award is an award that focuses on the need to uphold this nuclear veto. And we all have a responsibility, particularly the nuclear powers,” Frydnes told reporters.
The history of the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo
Founded 11 years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, the organization was born when anti-nuclear sentiment gaining strength in Japan after the crew of a Japanese tuna boat was exposed to radiation during a US hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
The birth of the organization ended the silence in which the bomb survivors had lived until then – ‘hibakusha’ in Japanese -, for whom death was not a consequence but the health problems, poverty and discrimination that derived from the disaster were.
Nihon Hidankyo was close to winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005, when it was 60 years since the United States dropped bombs on Japan and the organization was among the favorites to win the recognition.
However, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its director, the Egyptian Mohamed El Baradei, were the winners that year, in which the president of the Nobel Committee recognized the work of Nihon Hidankyo by pronouncing: “For many years, the organization has been working for nuclear abolition.
With ‘hibakusha’ among his committee members, Nihon Hidankyo cries out to the world about the need to abolish nuclear weapons and works to extend the testimonies of the still-living victims of the tragedy, for whom it also asks for support.
Toshiyuki Mimaki, who was 3 years old when the disaster struck, is one of the members of the organization’s committee and remembers how a woman came to his house in Inmuro (about 30 kilometers from Hiroshima) begging for a can of food after the disaster. and his mother told him that the lady he had just seen would probably die soon.
That memory is marked in the memory of Mimaki, who at 82 years old is finishing writing his own book, which already has the title: ‘My life and the bombing of Hiroshima’.
Nihon Hidankyo and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
Nihon Hidankyo’s role in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was also key. He managed to collect three million signatures of support before the negotiation conference and presented another 13.7 million to the United Nations (UN) so that all the countries of the world could adhere to him.
The NPT came into force in January 2021 and Nihon Hidankyo sent atomic bomb survivors to the first Conference of the Parties in Austria in June last year, where they expressed their desire to abolish nuclear weapons.
Now, heThe organization works so that advanced age and the decreasing number of ‘hibakusha’ do not prevent them from continuing to give voice to their stories and tries to also extend them online, beyond in-person events, reduced after the coronavirus pandemic.
It is the first time in 50 years that Japan has received the Nobel Peace Prize since 1974, when it received the award Eisaku Sato, who was Prime Minister of Japan between 1964 and 1972, for representing the will for peace of the Japanese people, introducing the three non-nuclear principles of “not possessing, producing or permitting nuclear weapons” in the country and signing the NPT in 1970.
The nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left more than 210,000 dead due to the direct effect of the explosion, as well as the consequences of the radiation that continued to affect the population years later.
‘Nuclear weapons can be used by terrorists’
The co-president of Nihon Hidankyo, Toshiyuki Mimaki, was surprised this Friday to learn that his organization was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mimaki considered that the current situation in the Gaza Strip is similar to that of Japan devastated by bombs at the end of World War II.
“In Gaza, (parents) hold bloody children in their arms. It’s like in Japan 80 years ago,” he said during a news conference in Tokyo, adding that the idea that nuclear weapons bring peace is a fallacy.
“It has been said that thanks to nuclear weapons, the world maintains peace. But nuclear weapons can be used by terrorists,” he said.
“For example, if Russia uses them against Ukraine, or Israel against Gaza, it won’t end there. Politicians should know those things,” Mimaki insisted.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba called the award for Nihon Hidankyo “extremely significant.”
For the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the award represents a “powerful message.” “The specter of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still looms over humanity. This makes Nihon Hidankyo’s action invaluable,” he said in X.
The specter of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still looms over humanity. This makes Nihon Hidankyo’s action invaluable
Last year, Iranian women’s rights activist Narges Mohammadi, imprisoned in her country, was awarded with the prestigious reward for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran.
The award will be presented at a formal ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.
The Nobel Peace Prize is the only prize awarded in Oslo, while the rest of the disciplines are announced in Stockholm.
The award is accompanied by a gold medal, a diploma and a check for one million dollars.
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