The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize goes to Nihon Hidankyo of Japan

Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of people who lived through the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday as a message to other countries that have nuclear weapons not to use them.

People who lived through the only two nuclear bombs ever used in war are called “hibakusha” in Japanese and have spent their whole lives fighting for a world without nuclear weapons.

This group won the Nobel Peace Prize because, according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, “it worked to make the world free of nuclear weapons and showed through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”

“The hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons,” the group said.

“I can’t believe it’s real,” Nihon Hidankyo co-chair Toshiyuki Mimaki said at a press meeting in Hiroshima, where the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, at the end of World War II. He pinched his cheek and tried not to cry.

As a survivor himself, Mimaki said that the award would give its efforts to show that getting rid of nuclear weapons was possible a huge push.

“(The win) will be a great force to appeal to the world that the abolition of nuclear weapons and everlasting peace can be achieved,” he added. “Nuclear weapons should absolutely be abolished.”

In Japan, hibakusha were often forced to stay away from society and faced discrimination when they tried to find work or get married after the war. Many of them had obvious wounds from radiation burns or diseases related to radiation, like leukemia.

Tokyo resident Yoshiko Watanabe told Reuters as she sobbed in the street, “They are a group of people delivering the message to the world. As a Japanese, I think this is truly wonderful.”

As of March of this year, 106,825 survivors of the atomic bomb had been registered in Japan. The average age of these survivors was 85.6 years.

NOTICE TO NUCLEAR NATIONS

The head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Joergen Watne Frydnes, warned that nuclear powers shouldn’t even think about using atomic bombs. He didn’t name any specific countries.

“In a world ridden (with) conflicts, where nuclear weapons is definitely part of it, we wanted to highlight the importance of strengthening the nuclear taboo, the international norm, against the use of nuclear weapons,” Frydnes said.

“We see it as very alarming that the nuclear taboo … is being reduced by threatening, but also how the situation in the world where the nuclear powers are modernizing and upgrading their arsenals.”

Frydnes said that “painful and dramatic stories of the hibakusha” should be heard by everyone.

“Nowhere in the world should these weapons ever be used again…” “Nuclear war could be the end of all people and our civilization,” he said in an interview.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the West many times of possible nuclear effects.

He said last month that Russia would use nuclear weapons if it was hit with regular missiles and that Moscow would see any attack on it that was backed by a nuclear power as a joint attack.

This month, Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, said that his country would speed up its steps toward becoming a military superpower with nuclear weapons and would not rule out using them if it came under attack. At the same time, rising tensions in the Middle East have led some experts to think that Iran may start working again on getting a nuclear bomb.

SECOND WINNER FROM JAPAN

The United States dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which led to Japan’s surrender. Next year will be the 80th anniversary of those events.

Head of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Dan Smith said that the award was meant to bring attention to a “very dangerous situation” in the world.

“If there is a war, there is a chance that it will escalate to nuclear weapons…” His words to Reuters were, “They (Nihon Hidankyo) are really an important voice to remind us about how destructive nuclear weapons are.”

Smith said the Committee had achieved “a triple strike”: drawing attention to the human suffering of nuclear bomb survivors; the danger of nuclear weapons; and that the world has survived without their use for nearly 80 years.

The organization that gives awards has often brought attention to the problem of nuclear weapons. In 2017, it gave an award to ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

This year’s award also echoes those to Elie Wiesel in 1986 and Russia’s Memorial in 2022 by highlighting the importance of keeping the memory of horrific events alive as a warning to the future.

It is the second Nobel Peace Prize for a Japanese recipient in the prize’s 123-year history, 50 years after former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato won it in 1974.

The Nobel Peace Prize, worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or about $1 million, is due to be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards, opens new tab in his 1895 will.