The 2024 Peace Prize was awarded to the Japanese public organization Nihon Hidankyo “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating that nuclear weapons should never be used again.” “The outstanding efforts of Nihon Hidankyo and other hibakusha have contributed greatly to the establishment of the ‘nuclear taboo.’ It is therefore alarming that today this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure,” the official press release said.
Nihon Hidankyo was founded in 1956 by survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Its staff has provided aid to victims, published thousands of testimonies about the effects of nuclear weapons, and made numerous public appearances, including at the United Nations, calling for global nuclear disarmament. “Please get rid of nuclear weapons in our lifetime,” said 81-year-old co-chairman Toshiyuki Mimaki upon learning of the prize.
The Japanese Confederation of Atomic Bomb and Hydrogen Bomb Victims’ Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo) said it would send 31 people to this year’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony.
This confederation worked to eliminate nuclear weapons, representing the point of view of the hibakusha, people who suffered from atomic and hydrogen bombs.
The ceremony will take place in the Norwegian capital Oslo on December 10.
Impact of a nuclear explosion on a residential building. Atomic Archive
On Friday, Nihon Hidankyo announced that the 31 confederation representatives at the ceremony would include the three co-chairs of the confederation, as well as other hibakusha and their children.
Nihon Hidankyo said an atomic bomb survivor living in Brazil and another living in South Korea, as well as a hibakusha child, will also be present.
Participants will also include UN Deputy Secretary-General Nakamitsu Izumi and Kawasaki Akira, a member of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which received the prize in 2017.
Nihon Hidankyo said the three co-chairs would be on stage at the ceremony, and that one of them, Terumi Tanaka, would give a speech. The 92-year-old survived the 1945 bombing of Nagasaki.
Nihon Hidanke is a movement of ordinary Japanese people uniting the survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, called Hibakusha, and the victims of nuclear tests in the Pacific region. The goal of the organization, founded in 1956, is to fight for the abolition of nuclear weapons by providing historical evidence of the catastrophic consequences of using the atom for military purposes. As noted on the Nobel Committee website, the activities of Nihon Hidanke have made a significant contribution to achieving the international “nuclear taboo.”
Nihon Hidankyo Co-Chairman Toshiyuki Mimaki, a survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, speaks during a news conference after the organization was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Hiroshima, Japan, October 11, 2024. Kyodo/Reuters
“The outstanding efforts of Nihon Hidanke and other Hibakusha have contributed greatly to the establishment of the ‘nuclear taboo.’ It is therefore alarming that today this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure,” the official press release said.
To draw attention to the need to renounce nuclear weapons, members of Nihon Hidanke engage in a variety of activities: providing eyewitness accounts, preparing special documents and public appeals, sending delegations to the UN and various conferences on peace issues.
“Next year marks 80 years since two American atomic bombs killed about 120,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A comparable number of people died from burns and radiation in the months and years that followed. Modern nuclear weapons are far more destructive. They are capable of killing millions of people and having a catastrophic effect on the climate. A nuclear war threatens to destroy our civilization,” the Nobel Committee’s website emphasizes.
In the vanguard of the fight against nuclear weapons in the 1950s, socialists and communists were in the forefront, as it was a convenient excuse to stigmatize capitalist America. However, when it became known that the USSR was also conducting large-scale nuclear tests, many leftists declared that it was only the imperialist nuclear weapons that should be fought against, and that there was nothing wrong with communist nuclear weapons. Therefore, in Hiroshima Prefecture, for a long time (and perhaps still is), there were two Hidankyo, a regular one and a socialist one. However, in general, the organization insists on complete nuclear disarmament, regardless of the political views of the owner of the atomic bomb.
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, like any other tragedy, fade from memory with each passing year. Nihon Hidankyo was an important organization during the Cold War, but it has not gained any notoriety in recent years.
Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper staff hand out a copy of the news that Japan’s Nihon Hidankyo Foundation has won the Nobel Peace Prize in Tokyo, Japan, October 11, 2024. Shuji Kajiyama/AP
“However, this decision of the committee fits very organically into the original idea of Alfred Nobel. He wanted his prize not to be a social event or entertainment, but to be a tool for influencing the international political discussion, which pushes it towards peace. The discussion about nuclear weapons has turned from marginal to central over the past year and a half to two years after a long break. After the end of the Cold War, the fear of nuclear weapons began to fade away, it ceased to be relevant. Now the international situation has sharply worsened,” Fyodor Lukyanov, professor of the Faculty of World Economy and World Politics at the Higher School of Economics, told Gazeta.Ru.
In the current debate on the role of nuclear weapons, the political scientist explains, two currents have emerged. The representatives of the first believe that nuclear weapons are an absolute evil and a danger that must be gotten rid of as soon as possible. The second, on the contrary, say that nuclear weapons keep major powers from a full-scale war among themselves. This debate plays an important role in international politics, and the Nobel Committee has decided to intervene in it.
“It is interesting that their decision, in my opinion, plays into the hands of both camps. At first glance, it is certainly on the side of those who are against nuclear weapons, which was directly stated in the motivational part of the award ceremony. On the other hand, those who talk about the need for nuclear deterrence also say that humanity has become extremely frivolous about nuclear weapons and has ceased to be afraid of them. And if there is no fear, they believe, there will be no deterrence,” Lukyanov explained.
The Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, which won the Nobel Peace Prize, does not provide statistics on its website about how many people it has. However, it is known that as of 2023, there are only 113,000 surviving hibakusha left in the world. It is difficult to say how winning the prize will affect the global debate on nuclear weapons, but it will certainly make Nihon Hidankyo’s main message louder:
“We, the hibakusha, describe the real consequences of the atomic bombing and tell of our suffering because we want no one else to suffer like us. ‘Do no more hibakusha’ is our message for which we give our lives. This is also the aspiration of all the people of Japan and the world.”
