In Oslo, Hidankyo Appeals For End to Nuclear Arms; Japanese Hibakusha Group Accepts Nobel Peace Prize

By Makiko Yanada / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent

15:11 JST, December 11, 2024

OSLO — Nihon Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations) received this year’s Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo on Tuesday, where it called on the international community to work toward the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Terumi Tanaka, 92, a cochairperson of Nihon Hidankyo who experienced the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, delivered the Nobel lecture at the ceremony, stressing, “We must not allow the possession of a single nuclear weapon.”

The national organization of atomic bomb survivors is the second Nobel Peace Prize laureate from Japan since former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato won in 1974 for advocating Japan’s three nonnuclear principles.

A delegation of 30 people from Nihon Hidankyo attended the award ceremony at the Oslo City Hall. It included hibakusha, as those who survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known, as well as the children and grandchildren of hibakusha. In addition to Terumi Tanaka, the group’s other cochairpersons — Shigemitsu Tanaka, 84, a Nagasaki atomic bomb survivor, and Toshiyuki Mimaki, 82 a Hiroshima atomic bomb survivor — received the prize medal and certificate from Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

“Ten years from now, there may only be a handful of us able to give testimony as firsthand survivors,” Terumi Tanaka said in the lecture. He expressed hopes that younger generations will take over the movement for nuclear weapons abolition.

He also recounted his own horrific atomic bomb experience, as well as the activities of Nihon Hidankyo, which was formed in 1956 to seek nuclear weapons abolition and compensation for hibakusha by the Japanese government.

Referring to issues such as repeated nuclear threats by Russia, which has continued its aggression against Ukraine, he said, “I am infinitely saddened and angered that the ‘nuclear taboo’ threatens to be broken.”

In a speech at the ceremony, Frydnes said that Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the prize for “demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”

“Their role in establishing the taboo [that nuclear weapons must never be used again] is unique,” he added.

Delegates attend banquet

A banquet was held on Tuesday night at a hotel in central Oslo to celebrate Nihon Hidankyo’s winning of the Nobel prize.

The banquet was attended by about 200 people, including the organization’s cochairpersons and other members as well as Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store and Frydnes.