Japan’s bomb survivors group receives Nobel Peace Prize

FILE: Terumi Tanaka, a survivor of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki, speaks at an ICAN event in Hiroshima in 2011. (Photo By TimMilesWright/Wikimedia Commons, CC0)

By The Japan News/Ann, Philippine News Agency

OSLO – The Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations, or Nihon Hidankyo, received the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize at an award ceremony in the Norwegian capital of Oslo on Tuesday.

The Nobel Peace Prize medal and diploma were presented to three hibakusha atomic bomb survivors, including Terumi Tanaka, 92, co-chair of the group.

Nihon Hidankyo, the grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki – also known as hibakusha, became the second Japanese recipient of the Peace Prize after the late Prime Minister Eisaku Sato in 1974.

The latest milestone is expected to add momentum to efforts to abolish nuclear weapons.

The ceremony was held at Oslo City Hall and attended by a delegation from Nihon Hidankyo, including children and grandchildren of hibakusha.

In October, the Norwegian Nobel Committee named Nihon Hidankyo the winner of the 2024 Peace Prize “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”

The committee said the hibakusha group’s grassroots movement led to the development of the “nuclear taboo,” or a “powerful international norm” that stigmatizes “the use of nuclear weapons as morally unacceptable.”

It added this taboo is now “under pressure” due to nuclear threats in ongoing wars.

Established in 1956, Nihon Hidankyo has sent hibakusha to UN and other international conferences on nuclear disarmament to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

When the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which worked with Nihon Hidankyo to promote the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, won the 2017 Peace Prize, two Nihon Hidankyo members, including Tanaka, were invited to the award ceremony.