Terumi Tanaka, survivor of the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and co-president of Nihon Hidankyo, in Tokyo, July 30, 2020. ISSEI KATO / REUTERS Awarded against a backdrop of growing conflict in the world and the revived threat of the use of atomic weapons, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo. Japan’s largest organization of survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is being honored “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through testimony that nuclear weapons must never again be used,” explained the Norwegian Nobel committee on Friday October 11. “It’s a dream within a dream. I can’t believe it,” responded, in tears, Toshiyuki Mimaki, hibakusha (survivor of the bombings) and member of Nihon Hidankyo, who followed the announcement live from Hiroshima City Hall. “The A-bomb survivors were martyred by the United States and abandoned by the Japanese government for many years. I see again the faces of our predecessors who worked to prevent new hibakusha, while struggling to overcome their suffering,” added Kiichi Kido, secretary general of the organization. Currently visiting Laos, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba praised Nihon Hidankyo’s long-standing efforts, and called the award “extremely significant.” This is the first time that Japan has won the Nobel Peace Prize since that awarded in 1974 to former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato (1901-1975). He was rewarded for having stated three fundamental principles on nuclear power in Japan: not to manufacture, not to possess and not to introduce atomic weapons into Japanese territory. He also signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). “Not reliving our suffering” Nihon Hidankyo was born in 1956, eleven years after the bombings carried out by the United States on August 6 and 9, 1945, at the end of the Second World War, which left 140,000 people dead. Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki, and nourished a powerful pacifist movement carried by the hibakusha. Its creation took place in the midst of the campaign against atomic and hydrogen bombs, in a Japan shocked by the tragedy of the crew of the tuna boat Daigo Fukuryu, exposed in 1954 to radiation from the American hydrogen bomb test in the Bikini Atoll. , in the heart of the Pacific. “Humanity must not relive our sacrifices and our suffering,” affirmed the organization from its founding. Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers In Hiroshima, the return of the nuclear threat in conflicts worries Add to your selections During the Cold War, Nihon Hidankyo sent delegations to the UN three times. In 1982, Senji Yamaguchi (1930-2013) was the first hibakusha to speak at the United Nations Special Session on Disarmament. He called for “no more creating Hiroshima, Nagasaki, war, hibakusha”. You have 49.49% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
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