Organization Nihon Hidankyo: Nobel Peace Prize honors Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors

The Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo of survivors of the nuclear weapons drops on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will be honored with the Nobel Peace Prize this year. The grassroots movement receives the world’s most important peace prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. The organization has also demonstrated through contemporary witness statements that such weapons should never be used again, explains the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

Seven years ago, the committee awarded the Nobel Prize to an organization that advocates for nuclear disarmament, at that time the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or Ican for short. Ican immediately congratulated this year’s winners.

Tomoyuki Minomaki, president of the Japanese Peace Organization, said he was very touched by the award at a press conference in Hiroshima. “A dream of a dream. It’s unbelievable,” Minomaki exclaimed, pinching his cheek as he cried with joy, as if he couldn’t believe the news. “I would like to continue to appeal to the people of the world to abolish nuclear weapons and achieve lasting peace.”

Japan’s newly elected Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was also pleased about the Nobel Prize being awarded to the atomic bombing organization. It is “extremely significant,” explained Ishiba.

“At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapon the world has ever seen,” said new Nobel Committee chairman Jørgen Watne Frydnes. Today’s nuclear weapons would be much more destructive than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “They could kill millions and would have catastrophic effects on the climate. Nuclear war could destroy our civilization,” warned Frydnes.

Contemporary witnesses to the nuclear weapons drops in 1945

By honoring Nihon Hidankyo, the Nobel Committee is also turning the world’s attention to next year’s 80th anniversary of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II. The USA dropped the devastating weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. An estimated 120,000 residents were killed in the two drops, and a similar number also died from burns and radiation injuries in the months and years that followed.

To date, these have been the only uses of nuclear weapons in a war. Since the outbreak of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, the Kremlin has repeatedly threatened that nuclear weapons could be used in the ongoing conflict if the Russian state finds its existence threatened by weapons supplied by the West.

Against this background, Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) sees the honoring of Nihon Hidankyo as an important signal towards Kremlin boss Vladimir Putin. “Especially in times when aggressive powers are threatening to use nuclear weapons again, it is all the more important that the world as a whole makes it clear: peace means that such weapons will never be used,” she said, without mentioning Putin by name.

Contribution to the “nuclear taboo”

Nihon Hidankyo was founded by survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These contemporary witnesses, also known as hibakusha, helped to generate widespread opposition to nuclear weapons around the world, said Frydnes.

“Hibakusha helps us describe the indescribable, think the unthinkable and understand the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons,” said the 39-year-old.

The Nobel Committee still wants to recognize an encouraging fact: “No nuclear weapon has been used in wars for almost 80 years,” said Frydnes. Nihon Hidankyo’s extraordinary efforts helped to establish a “nuclear taboo.” However, this taboo is under pressure today, he warned.

Nuclear arsenals are being modernized

In fact, according to peace researchers, the world’s nuclear powers have long been in the process of modernizing and upgrading their nuclear weapons arsenals. These powers include the USA, Russia, Great Britain, France and China as well as India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.

The total number of nuclear weapons is falling worldwide because the USA and Russia are gradually dismantling old warheads from the Cold War era. However, according to the Stockholm peace research institute Sipri, the trend towards keeping nuclear warheads ready for use is accelerating.

According to Sipri, the total inventory at the beginning of the year was an estimated 12,121 nuclear warheads, of which around 9,585 were in military stockpiles for potential use. Around 3,904 of these warheads were mounted on missiles and aircraft – 60 more than a year earlier.

Sipri director welcomes award

Nuclear weapons have recently come more into the spotlight, Sipri director Dan Smith told the German Press Agency, among other things, with a view to Russian threats against the West. The fact that the nuclear taboo seems to be disappearing more and more is a very dangerous thing, he warned. “If you want to know why this is dangerous, look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the hibakusha remind us of that.” Nihon Hidankyo’s award was therefore an “intelligent, well-informed and thoughtful choice,” Smith said.

A price is still missing

This means that almost all of this year’s Nobel Prize winners have been determined. This year’s winners in the categories of medicine, physics, chemistry and literature were announced in Stockholm this week. Finally, on Monday, there will be the award in economics, which is the only award that does not go back to the will of the dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), but has been donated by the Swedish central bank since the end of the 1960s.

The Nobel Prizes are all traditionally presented on the anniversary of Nobel’s death on December 10th, with the Nobel Peace Prize being the only one not in Stockholm, but in Oslo. The awards are endowed with prize money of eleven million Swedish crowns (just under 970,000 euros) per category.