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nihon hidankyo
A Hiroshima Survivor Reminds the World Why History Must Not Repeat Itself
Eighty years have passed since the bombing of Hiroshima, when Kodama’s life and the world changed dramatically. She has not forgotten that day, but she said looking at today’s conflicts, it seems like the world has.
Aug 21, 2025
Michiko Kodama was only seven years old when the world’s first nuclear weapon was dropped on her hometown of Hiroshima. Since then, she has dedicated her life to ensuring that her generation remains the only victims of a nuclear holocaust.
“When you witness something like this, you think how can I live? Am I allowed to live? But, I’m glad I’m alive,” Kodama said. “I’m glad I had the life I wanted, and I think it’s because I can tell the stories of those who have passed away.”
Kodama is the assistant secretary general of Nihon Hidankyo, an organization composed of Hibakusha, the Japanese word that refers to the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. In 2024, Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their advocacy work on nuclear nonproliferation.
“To fight against nuclear weapons is to preserve life because it is the weapon that is capable of completely destroying the entire Earth. It’s the weapon that’s capable of stopping time,” Kodama, 87, said.
“The atomic bombs that I experienced 80 years ago were like babies compared to today’s nuclear weapons,” said Kodama.
Eighty years have passed since the bombing of Hiroshima, when Kodama’s life and the world changed dramatically. She has not forgotten that day, but she said looking at today’s conflicts, it seems like the world has. And she’s determined to continue reminding the world of the terrors of nuclear weapons.
She remembers being under her desk as the bomb hit. She saw a flash of light followed by an extreme wave of heat. Somehow she survived along with her classmates. She recalled the horrific sight of people who had come to her families’ suburb to try and get relief from the epicenter. People who had been so badly burnt that their skin was coming off their flesh.
“These sorts of images show the differences between conventional weapons and nuclear weapons. It’s just a weapon that is so inhumane, so indiscriminate that we just should not have it,” Kodama said.
The Doomsday Clock, which the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created in 1947 to measure how close the world is to man-made catastrophe, signals that the world has moved closer to nuclear catastrophe than it ever has been. In January 2025, the clock was moved one second closer to midnight, sending a stark signal to the global community that we are moving closer toward the brink of nuclear holocaust. The clock currently looms at a mere 89 seconds to midnight.
“I fear that World War III will turn into a nuclear war,” she said.
Nine countries currently have nuclear weapons, and many more are seeking to get it as a deterrent.
“I think it’s a huge mistake,” Kodama said. “Nuclear weapons and humans, and of course the Earth, cannot coexist. I know this from personal experience.”
In June 2025, the US bombed Iran’s nuclear sites out of fear they were getting closer and closer to developing a nuclear weapon. Experts said that Iran’s aspirations will not stop and that other countries could follow its example
“In the span of two weeks, Iran was bombed by two nuclear powers, the US and Israel. That could lead to a perverted logic in which developing the nuclear bomb is seen as their only way to be safe from further attacks,” said Thomas Countryman, president of the board at the Arms Control Association.
Kodama warned that more countries with nuclear weapons would only increase the likelihood that a nuclear holocaust would take place.
Kodama described apocalyptic scenes from when the bomb first hit in the center of Hiroshima. People riding on Hiroshima’s famous tram instantly turned to charcoal; those that didn’t die instantly had their skin stripped off from the heat of the ground, and many ended up jumping in the river for relief where they also died.
Although she was one of the fortunate ones to survive the bombing, the consequences of the bomb continued well after August 6 for Kodama.
“I’ll be a victim of the atomic bomb until I die. Yes, I can’t escape the fact that I was a victim of the atomic bomb” Kodama said.
For example, Kodama recalled how she faced discrimination within Japan as a survivor and was told that would have to live alone without getting married because people at the time did not want their future generations “mixed” with those that survived an atomic bomb. Moreover, even after she married and had kids, her daughter suddenly died at 45 after contracting cancer, which Kodama believes was passed down from herself.
Her mother, father, and two brothers, one of whom was born after the bombing Hiroshima, also died of cancer which she attributed to the effects of radiation exposure.
However, even with the devastating effects of Hiroshima, Kodama warned that the bomb dropped 80 years ago would only cause a fraction of the damage that today’s weapons could inflict.
“The atomic bombs that I experienced 80 years ago were like babies compared to today’s nuclear weapons,” said Kodama.
In fact, just 20 days before the bomb exploded she moved from the center of Hiroshima to a suburb. Everyone in her former school was killed. Kodama noted that in some ways she was lucky because the Hiroshima bomb didn’t completely destroy life.
“When the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, it was said that no plants would grow for 80 years, but the following year, those trees in the garden sprouted young shoots,” Kodama said. “If something like that were to happen again, no plants would really grow. They wouldn’t grow for 80 years, or even a hundred years. It would be impossible to survive.”
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Survivor of US Atomic Bombing Makes Plea to World With Nobel Acceptance Speech
"Let us all strive together to ensure that humanity is not destroyed by nuclear weapons, and to create a human society where there are no nuclear weapons and no war," said Terumi Tanaka.
Dec 11, 2024
Accepting the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the grassroots Japanese anti-nuclear group he co-chairs, Terumi Tanaka warned on Tuesday night that the world is moving in the opposite direction than the one hibakusha—survivors of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—have demanded for nearly seven decades.
Tanaka is a co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, an organization founded in 1956 by survivors of the bombings that had killed an estimated 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki, with the death toll continuing to rise in later years as people succumbed to the effects of radiation.
The group accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, with the Nobel Committee honoring Nihon Hidankyo "for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons."
The organization aims to maintain a taboo around the use of nuclear weapons, which have only been used in combat by the U.S. in Japan in 1945.
Tanaka warned that there are currently 12,000 nuclear warheads in the arsenals of the U.S., Russia, China, and six other countries, and 4,000 of those "could be launched immediately."
"This means that the damage that occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be multiplied by hundreds or even thousands," said Tanaka, who is 92. "Let us all strive together to ensure that humanity is not destroyed by nuclear weapons, and to create a human society where there are no nuclear weapons and no war."
"It is the heartfelt desire of the hibakusha that, rather than depending on the theory of nuclear deterrence, which assumes the possession and use of nuclear weapons, we must not allow the possession of a single nuclear weapon," he added.
"I hope that the belief that nuclear weapons cannot—and must not—co-exist with humanity will take firm hold among citizens of the nuclear weapon states and their allies, and that this will become a force for change in the nuclear policies of their governments."
Tanaka said that "the nuclear taboo threatens to be broken," as evidenced by Israeli Heritage Minister Amihay Eliyahu's recent comment that a nuclear attack on Gaza would be "one way" to defeat Hamas.
"I am infinitely saddened and angered" by such statements, said Tanaka.
He described his experience as a 13-year-old when the U.S. bombed Nagasaki, just a couple of miles away from his family's house, which was crushed by the impact.
He said he later found the charred body of one of his aunts and saw his grandfather close to death from the burns that covered his body.
"The deaths I witnessed at that time could hardly be described as human deaths," Tanaka said. "There were hundreds of people suffering in agony, unable to receive any kind of medical attention."
"I hope that the belief that nuclear weapons cannot—and must not—co-exist with humanity will take firm hold among citizens of the nuclear weapon states and their allies, and that this will become a force for change in the nuclear policies of their governments," said Tanaka.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) applauded Nihon Hidankyo and the hibakusha "for their resilience and willingness to share their stories over and over again, so that the world may learn and come together to say 'never again.'"
"It was their courage that enabled the [Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons] to be adopted, which represents the first progress on nuclear disarmament in decades," said Melissa Parke, executive director of ICAN, referring to the treaty that's been ratified by 73 countries.
"Listening to Mr. Tanaka describe the horrendous effects on his family and city when the Americans dropped their atomic bomb should convince world leaders they have to go beyond simply congratulating the hibakusha of Nihon Hidankyo for this award. They must honor them by doing what the hibakusha have long called for—urgently getting rid of nuclear weapons," said Parke. "That is the only way to ensure that what Mr. Tanaka and the other hibakusha have been through never happens to anyone ever again. As long as any nuclear weapons remain anywhere, they are bound one day to be used, whether by design or accident."
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Nobel Committee, condemned the nine nuclear powers for "modernizing and building up their nuclear arsenals."
"It is naive to believe our civilization can survive a world order in which global security depends on nuclear weapons," Frydnes said. "The world is not meant to be a prison in which we await collective annihilation."
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The Timely Importance of Japanese A-Bomb Survivors Receiving the Nobel Peace Prize
With humanity facing the greatest danger of nuclear apocalypse since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize wisely refocuses world attention on the urgency of renewing nuclear disarmament diplomacy.
Dec 09, 2024
The following is the text of a speech given in Oslo, Norway on the Eve of Nihon Hidankyo receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
Thanks first to Ingeborg Brienes for organizing today’s event. It was an unexpected honor to be invited to join Nihon Hidankyo’s Nobel Peace Prize delegation. I am glad to be here to celebrate the Peace Nobel Prize with dear and courageous Hibakusha friends and other dedicated activists, to represent the U.S. peace movement, and to add my voice to the Hibakusha’s profound warning that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist.
I first joined the World Conference Against A and H Bombs in Hiroshima in 1984. That was after we had launched the nuclear weapons freeze movement in the U.S. which played a role in ending the Cold War. It followed our successful campaigning to prevent three U.S. ports from being transformed into nuclear weapons bases. Visiting Hiroshima and engaging with Hibakusha (the A-bomb survivors) and opponents of the more than 100 U.S. military bases and installations across Japan was a life changing experience for me, as it has been for so many others.
As Wilfred Burchett, first Western journalist to witness the ruins and suffering in Hiroshima in 1945, later correctly reported that despite their excruciating physical and emotional suffering, the Hibakusha became the world’s most powerful and influential force for nuclear weapons abolition. With the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Hibakusha, their tortured testimonies, and their urgent appeal for a nuclear weapons free world now rings out more powerfully around the world.
Friends, there is no way that we can adequately thank Nihon Hidankyo and its Hibakusha members for their courage and steadfastness in warning the world about the existential danger we face in order to save humanity.
It has been my privilege to return to Hiroshima and Nagasaki many times in support of Japan’s nuclear weapons abolition movement. I had the extraordinary opportunity to meet, learn from, and to work with Hidankyo members and some of the organization’s most ravaged, wounded, and courageous founders, Watanabe Chieko, Yamaguchi Senji, and Taniguchi Sumiteru. Would that they had lived long enough to witness the Nobel Committee’s recognition of their sacrifices and to reinforce their existential warning.
Twenty-five years ago, amid a speaking tour, Tanaka Terumi—Hidankyo’s general secretary for 20 years—asked a heartfelt question: “Who will remember us when we (Hibakusha) are gone?”
Now we know. With the Nobel Peace Prize, a good part of the answer is that the world will remember. The question is whether humanity will heed the Hibakusha’s appeal.
Nihon Hidankyo was created in the wake of the 1954 U.S. Bravo H-Bomb test, a bomb which was 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A bombs. Since then, Hidankyo’s core demands have been: Prevent nuclear war, eliminate nuclear weapons, and obtain essential medical care and services for A-bomb victims.
Recklessly, not only have the nuclear powers failed to respond to these life-affirming demands, but today U.S. nuclear terrorism in the form of its first strike doctrine is the cornerstone of both the United States’ and Japan’s national security doctrine. And preparations and threats of nuclear attacks are central to the military doctrines of the other eight nuclear weapons states. Tragically, for 60 years, despite Japan’s peace constitution, its military has insisted that it has the right to deploy and use tactical nuclear weapons, like those that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan has facilitated the U.S. and other nuclear powers’ refusal to fulfill their Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligation to engage in good faith negotiations for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Like the nuclear powers, it has yet to even send an observer to the conference on the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) at the U.N. And, many Hibakusha continue to be denied medical care as Tokyo continues to insist that all Japanese must bear the burden of its disastrous 15 Year War. We can hope that with Hidankyo’s Nobel Peace Prize, popular pressure will lead the Japanese government and the nuclear powers to reverse course and join the TPNW.
I want to make four additional points:
Contrary to the myth propagated by former U.S. President Harry Truman, the A bombs were not necessary to defeat Japan. Senior U.S. military officials from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Curtis LeMay and William Leahy all advised that “it wasn’t necessary to hit Japan with that awful thing.” Secretary of War Henry Stimson told Truman that Japan’s surrender on terms acceptable to the U.S. could be negotiated. In 1942, General Leslie Groves, who led the Manhattan Project, told the incoming senior scientist and future Nobel Peace Prize recipient Joseph Rotblat, that since Germany would not be getting the bomb, the A bomb project was then directed against the Soviet Union. With the A bomb, Truman said, he would have “a hammer over those boys,” meaning Soviet leaders. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were thus sacrificed on the first altar of the Cold War.
Second, we need to correct a mistake in the Nobel Committee’s announcement of this year’s prize. Nuclear weapons have been used repeatedly since the 1945 A bombings. Daniel Ellsberg, a principle author of U.S. nuclear war planning in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, revealed that during numerous international crises and wars, the U.S. has used its nuclear arsenal in the same way that an armed robber uses his gun when pointed at his victim’s head. Whether or not the trigger is pulled, the gun has been used. Such threats and preparations were made at least three times during European crises, 13 times to maintain U.S. Middle East hegemony, five times during the Korean War and subsequent Korean crises, three times against China, four times against Vietnam, and during the 1954 CIA Guatemala coup and the Cuban Missile Crisis. All other nuclear powers have made such nuclear preparations or threats at least once. Tragically, this is the playbook that the Kremlin is using with its Ukraine War nuclear threats. Add to these, there have been nuclear weapons accidents, false alerts, and miscalculations. The truth is that we are alive today more because of luck than because of wise policies.
Third, as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock warns, we are 90 seconds to midnight, meaning apocalypse. All of the nuclear weapons states are upgrading their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems. The U.S. is spending $1.7 trillion to replace its nuclear arsenal and its triad of delivery systems. Russia has just lowered its doctrinal threshold for nuclear weapons use and underlined its nuclear threat by launching a nuclear-capable ballistic missile against Ukraine. With China expanding its nuclear arsenal, we are now three scorpions in a bottle. As U.S. President-elect Donald Trump returns to power, France and Britain are vying to provide Europe’s nuclear umbrella. North Korea is increasing the size of its nuclear arsenal and displayed its nuclear resolve with a commitment to nuclear weapons in its constitution. Many worry that Israel could use its nuclear weapons against Iran’s nuclear project. And India and Pakistan, the two nuclear powers of South Asia, remain at loggerheads.
Finally, there is Trump, the would-be dictator. His former national security adviser wrote that Trump is driven by his instincts and that he brought the world closer to nuclear war with his 2017 Fire and Fury nuclear threats against North Korea than almost anyone knows. Trump and his coterie plan to purge the military to ensure its loyalty to Trump, not to our Constitution, and they are committed to dominating China militarily, economically, and technologically. As a result, in the coming years, in the U.S., to prevent nuclear war, we will need to do more than defuse the confrontations over Ukraine, Taiwan, the South China Sea, and Korea. Our campaigning will require defense of constitutional democracy.
With humanity facing the greatest danger of nuclear apocalypse since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize wisely refocuses world attention on the urgency of renewing nuclear disarmament diplomacy. Let us celebrate the Hibakusha who have awakened the conscience of the world.
With their testimonies across the world, including at the U.N., they forged the powerful but still inadequate taboo against the use of nuclear weapons. Their descriptions of the Hell that they witnessed and survived led most of the world’s governments to understand that for humanity to survive, priority must be given to addressing the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, not so-called “state security” interests. Thus we have the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which seeks to hold the nuclear weapons states accountable to their Article VI Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligation to engage in good-faith negotiations for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons.
Numerous popular disarmament initiatives are being boosted by the Peace Prize award to Nihon Hidankyo. In the U.S., there will be webinars and meetings in many communities. Our Back from the Brink campaign, initiated by Physicians for Social Responsibility, is at the leading edge of our movement, supported by 43 members of Congress and city councils across the country. It calls for negotiation of a verifiable agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons, renunciation of first-use policies, ending the president’s sole authority to launch nuclear weapons, taking U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert, and cancelling the plan to replace the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons.
Friends, there is no way that we can adequately thank Nihon Hidankyo and its Hibakusha members for their courage and steadfastness in warning the world about the existential danger we face in order to save humanity. Let the Nobel Peace Prize lead us to insist on No More Hiroshimas, No More Nagasakis. No More Hibakusha. No More War.
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Can Nuclear Survivors Guide Us all to Peace?
Peace may still be confined to the social margins, but peace proponents, especially those who have transformed their own victimhood into agency, continue pushing against the norm.
Oct 21, 2024
“The past carries unforgettable trauma and pain across the land and among generations of refugees; yet we choose to transform victimhood into agency. We want to be the authors of our future.”
Let these words resonate. In a sense, they’re all we have—if we oppose war and envision a future that transcends it. I’ve quoted these words of Ali Abu Awwad before. They’re part of the Palestinian Nonviolence Charter, but they reach beyond Palestine: deep into the soul, and the hope, of all humanity.
Is there a human future that isn’t in the hands solely of global militarism—war—and the “world leaders” who serve it? Are ordinary people no more than spectators in a world in which some 13,000 nuclear weapons remain stockpiled and ready for use, with our collective suicide an ever-present possibility? Can the pursuit of peace—dismissed by so many with a cynical shrug—ever truly challenge the legitimacy of war?
I nonetheless celebrate and honor every proponent of peace, as they push beyond their spectator status and do what they can to help author humanity’s future.
There’s an irony to these questions, because peace means understanding one’s enemy, not destroying him—something far more complex than a “fight or flight” mentality can comprehend. Intensifying the irony is the fact that those who pursue peace at the deepest, most profound levels are oh so often those most victimized by the global racists and warmongers. Whereas waging war—waging murder—seriously minimizes the scope of one’s humanity, enduring its consequences can expand it.
I confess to a deep frustration about all this. While waging peace means embracing the uncertainty of who we are, waging war is psychologically simple and linear: good verus evil, us versus them. Organizing a social structure—e.g., “the USA”—around war and militarism is far easier than organizing it around wholeness and understanding. Does that mean we’re stuck with war—at least until we nuke ourselves out of existence?
I don’t know the answer to that question. But I nonetheless celebrate and honor every proponent of peace, as they push beyond their spectator status and do what they can to help author humanity’s future.
Consider, for instance, the Hibakusha... the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 (which killed some 200,000 people), as well as survivors in later years of the fallout and hellish effects of nuclear testing around the world.
And yes, 79 years later, some survivors of the Little Boy and Fat Man atomic bombs are still with us. Many of them have devoted their lives to telling the world about the realities they endured in those bombings. And last week, the organization Nihon Hidankyo, to which many Hibakusha belong, received the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s been a long time coming!
Nihon Hidankyo was founded in 1956, essentially in defiance of Japan’s U.S. occupiers, which, according to the organization’s website, “strictly prohibited the people to write or speak about the bombing and damages, including the miserable deaths of 200,000 people, from the Japanese government even after the country regained its sovereignty in 1952.”
They knew the world needed to know what they had endured. The world still needs to know. Yes, seven years ago, the United Nations (by a vote of 122-1) created the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, declaring nuclear weapons to be... uh, illegal. But the vote was boycotted by the world’s nine nuclear-armed nations, along with all of NATO—and, in any case, the treaty only applies to the countries that have signed and ratified it: 73 countries as of today.
So something is happening here. Post-nuclear peace—or simply peace itself—may still be confined to the social margins, but peace proponents, especially those who have transformed their own victimhood into agency, continue pushing against the norm.
“For over half a century since its founding,” the site informs us, “Nihon Hidankyo has sent Hibakusha delegations to many parts of the world in order to give testimonies on the atrocious damage and human sufferings caused by the use of nuclear weapons, and endeavored to ensure no more Hibakusha would be created anywhere in the world, calling for creating a ‘nuclear weapon-free world.’”
This is not an abstraction, even though the perpetrators of war do their best to make it so. For instance, some months ago, as the Israeli assault on Gaza was getting underway, Israeli cabinet minister Amichai Eliyahu suggested during an interview that using a nuclear weapon on Gaza was a distinct possibility.
In response, 85-year-old Toshiko Tanaka, who lived in Hiroshima and was six years old when her city was nuked, said in outrage that Eliyahu “doesn’t realize how terrible the use of nuclear weapons is...”
“I hope,” she added, “that the leaders of each nation will not put their own national interests first, but look at the world as a whole and determine a path toward peace.”
If only she could be heard—across the infinite divide separating those in power, especially members of the so-called “nuclear club,” from ordinary humans! “The world as a whole” is where we all live. It’s one entity. If we don’t learn how to live as one, we’ll die as one.
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Nihon Hidankyo's Nobel Peace Prize Win Could Not Have Come at a More Important Moment
With the world, our species, facing the greatest danger of nuclear apocalypse since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, this year's Peace Prize will refocus world attention on the urgency of renewing nuclear disarmament diplomacy.
Oct 12, 2024
The Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo is long overdue and could not come at a more important time.
The Hibakusha (A-bomb witness/survivors) of Nihon Hidankyo have been among the world’s most courageous and steadfast advocates of nuclear disarmament. The organization has focused on three core demands: preventing nuclear war, eliminating nuclear weapons, and obtaining essential medical care for A-bomb victims.
Hidankyo was founded in 1956, in the wake of the Bravo H-Bomb test 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima A-bomb, which poisoned Japanese fishermen and Marshall Islanders.
As Wilfred Burchett, the first Western journalist to witness the ruins and suffering in Hiroshima in 1945, later reported, despite their excruciating physical and emotional suffering, the Hibakusha became the world’s most powerful and influential force for the abolition. With the award of the Nobel Peace Prize, the voices of the Hibakusha, their tortured testimonies, and their truth that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist will now ring out more powerfully around the world.
Nihon Hidankyo was repeatedly nominated for its now well-earned Peace Prize, and the Nobel Committee is now to be celebrated for finally making this year’s decision. With the world, our species, facing the greatest danger of nuclear apocalypse since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, this year’s Peace Prize will refocus world attention on the urgency of renewing nuclear disarmament diplomacy. In addition to Russian nuclear threats related to the continuing Ukraine war, an accident, incident, or miscalculation growing out of provocative U.S., allied, and Chinese military operations in and around the Taiwan Strait and the South China/West could ignite escalation to a nuclear cataclysm.
With uncertainties about a possible Trump election victory, there are growing demands among Japanese and South Korean elites for their nations to become nuclear powers. The U.S. and Russia have lowered their official operational thresholds for launching their nuclear weapons. All of the nuclear weapons states are upgrading their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems, with the U.S. committing an estimated two trillion dollars to “modernize” its systems when that money could be spent to stanch and reverse the climate emergency and to address other urgent human needs.
"The Hibakusha have identified with victims of other holocausts and massacres going back to Vietnam, when they identified with the people under the bombs."
Let us marvel and learn from the reality that Hibakusha, who were literally the last people on Earth, once seen by U.S. leaders and media as “vermin” to be eliminated, have awakened the conscience of the world after suffering what was probably the world’s worst war crime. And contrary to the myth propagated by President Truman, the A-bombs were not necessary to defeat Japan. Senior U.S. military officials from Eisenhower to LeMay and Leahy advised the president that “it wasn’t necessary to hit Japan with that awful thing” Secretary of War Stimson had already advised that Japan’s surrender on terms acceptable to the U.S. could be negotiated.”
Hibakusha’s friends, families, and neighbors were incinerated, irradiated, and physically ripped apart by the radiation’s heat and blast waves of the world’s first A-bombs. An entire city was destroyed and burned to the ground. Amidst their own agonies, many Hibakusha were unable to save their families in their shattered and burning homes. They witnessed ghostlike figures, no longer recognizable as human beings, some holding their eyeballs or intestines in their hands marching to their deaths, often in cisterns or the city’s rivers.
In the months and years that followed, many died from radiation-inflicted cancers and other diseases. Memories remain of the birthing of mutant babies and of other young children whose lives were cut short by radiation diseases. With initial fears that the radiation diseases might be contagious and about genetic damages, Hibakusha’s suffering was compounded by marginalization and discrimination.
As a result of the U.S. military occupation which continued until 1952 and subsequently with Japan functioning as the United States’ subservient ally, essential medical and other support services were long denied to Hibakusha. Among the achievements of Nihon Hidankyo and its allies are the collaborations they have built with other “global hibakusha.” These included forced laborers who were brought from Japanese-occupied Korea who also suffered the A-bombings. Compassionately and strategically they supported and joined with nuclear weapons test victims from the Marshall Islands, the United States, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tahiti, the Christmas Islands, and other Pacific Islands. Together with their testimonies in communities across the world and in the United Nations they forged the powerful but still inadequate taboo against the use of nuclear weapons. With their testimonies at the U.N. and elsewhere they have won the majority of the world’s governments to the understanding that for the human species to survive, priority must be given to the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, not so-called “state security” interests.
Hibakusha testimonies were essential to the successful negotiation of the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which seeks to hold the nuclear weapons states accountable to their Article VI Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty obligation to engage in good faith negotiations for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons.
That nuclear weapons have not been used since the Nagasaki A-bombing was an unfortunate misstatement in the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s award announcement. As Daniel Ellsberg, a principal author of the United States’ nuclear war planning in the Kennedy administration, taught during many international crises and wars, the U.S. has used its nuclear arsenal in the same way that an armed robber uses his gun when pointed at his victim’s head. Whether or not the trigger is pulled, the gun has been used.
Tragically, this is a playbook from which the Russian government has been working with its Ukraine-war nuclear threats. It is worth noting that in response to the announcement of the award, Hidankyo referenced the terrible assaults on the people of Gaza. The Hibakusha have identified with victims of other holocausts and massacres going back to Vietnam, when they identified with the people under the bombs.
They then warned of the danger that the U.S. might resort to a nuclear attack (which the U.S. prepared and threatened in 1954, 1957, and with President Nixon's 1969 "madman" nuclear mobilization. Numerous popular initiatives are at work in the world which will be boosted by the Peace Prize award to Nihon Hibakusha.
In the U.S., the Back from the Brink campaign, initiated by Physicians for Social Responsibility, has been at the cutting edge. Its call for negotiation of a verifiable agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons, renunciation of first-use policies, ending the president’s sole authority to launch nuclear weapons, taking U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert, and canceling the plan to replace the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons has been endorsed by 43 members of Congress and numerous U.S. cities and states.
The Campaign for Peace, Disarmament, and Common Security works to prevent nuclear war and achieve a nuclear weapons-free world via its advocacy of Common Security. This is the ancient truth that no nation can achieve security at the expense of its rival. As with the INF Treaty that ended the Cold War before the fall of the Cold War, peaceful coexistence and security can be achieved only through mutual recognition and respectful, if difficult, win-win negotiations between rivals.
In the face of the horrors of nuclear weapons and drawing on the courage of Hibakusha, this is the paradigm on which the Hibakusha's vision of a nuclear weapons-free world can be achieved.
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NATO Announces Nuclear Drills as Nobel Goes to Atomic Weapon Abolitionists
Disarmament advocate Beatrice Fihn stressed that the exercise is practice for "wiping out hundreds of thousands of civilians" with weapons that would also "flatten cities and poison survivors."
Oct 11, 2024
The NATO military block announced Friday that its annual nuclear exercise is set to begin next week—news that arrived just as Japanese atomic bomb survivors who advocate for disarmament received the Nobel Peace Prize.
"There is bad timing, there is dropping a brick... and then there is this. Nice work," the Geneva Nuclear Disarmament Initiative said in response to NATO Spokesperson Farah Dakhlallah on social media.
Dakhlallah shared a NATO statement explaining that "Steadfast Noon," the two-week military drills scheduled to start Monday, will include 2,000 soldiers from eight air bases and more than 60 "nuclear-capable jets, bombers, fighter escorts, refueling aircraft, and planes capable of reconnaissance and electronic warfare" flying over western Europe.
"Nuclear deterrence is the cornerstone of allied security," NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in the statement. "Steadfast Noon is an important test of the alliance's nuclear deterrent and sends a clear message to any adversary that NATO will protect and defend all allies."
Mary Wareham, deputy director of the crisis, conflict, and arms division at Human Rights Watch, also responded to the spokesperson on social media, asking, "Any comment from NATO on today's announcement that the Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize to the Japanese association of atomic bomb survivors organization Nihon Hidankyo?"
Since the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, survivors known as hibakusha have shared their experiences to promote peace. The Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday honored the group Nihon Hidankyo, which "has provided thousands of witness accounts, issued resolutions and public appeals, and sent annual delegations to the United Nations and a variety of peace conferences to remind the world of the pressing need for nuclear disarmament."
The committee highlighted that "the nuclear powers are modernizing and upgrading their arsenals; new countries appear to be preparing to acquire nuclear weapons; and threats are being made to use nuclear weapons in ongoing warfare. At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen."
The peace award and plans for NATO's exercise come as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip, and provocations against Iran have heightened global fears of nuclear war. Russia and the United States have by far the largest arsenals, but China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom also have nuclear weapons.
Beatrice Fihn, director of Lex International and a senior fellow at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, stressed on social media Friday that NATO exercise is practice for "wiping out hundreds of thousands of civilians" with weapons that would also "flatten cities and poison survivors."
Fihn previously directed the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which in 2017 won the Nobel Peace Prize for its work on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. On Friday, she urged countries that haven't yet signed the treaty to "listen" to the Nobel committee and Nidon Hidankyo.
ICAN's current executive director, Melissa Parke, said in a Friday statement that the campaign "is honored to have been able to work alongside Nihon Hidankyo and the hibakusha to push for the total elimination of nuclear weapons."
"Their testimonies and tireless campaigning have been crucial to progress on nuclear disarmament in general and the adoption and entry into force of the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons," she added. "We call on the nuclear-armed states and their allies which support the use of nuclear weapons, including of course Japan, to heed their call to abolish these inhumane weapons, to make sure what they have been through never happens again."
Gregory Kulacki, who has worked with disarmament advocates in Japan as East Asia project manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists' Global Security Program, similarly said Friday that "the testimony of the Hibakusha demonstrates the grave risks we still run by the very existence of nuclear weapons, which have only become more destructive. It's time for the world to not only acknowledge the risks of nuclear weapons but take action to enact a permanent international ban against them."
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Head of Nuke Abolition Group Decries Gaza Suffering After Winning Nobel Peace Prize
Toshiyuki Mimaki said he had believed "the people working so hard in Gaza" would be awarded the Peace Prize, referring to aid workers with UNRWA.
Oct 11, 2024
Calling for peace in war zones around the world and an end to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a grassroots group organized by survivors of the United States' atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.
Nihon Hidankyo was established in 1956 after a number of local organizations of hibakusha, the Japanese name for "bomb-affected people," joined together.
Toshiyuki Mimaki, the group's leader, was three years old when the U.S. killed 100,000 people in Hiroshima with a nuclear weapon, and his message after learning Nihon Hidankyo was the 2024 Peace Prize winner was straightforward.
"I am not sure I will be alive next year," said Mimaki, 82. "Please abolish nuclear weapons while we are alive. That is the wish of 114,000 hibakusha."
Mimaki focused not only on the plight of the estimated 650,000 Japanese people who survived the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, but also people—particularly children—facing war now.
"It has been said that because of nuclear weapons, the world maintains peace. But nuclear weapons can be used by terrorists," said Mimaki. "For example, if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won't end there. Politicians should know these things."
"In Gaza, bleeding children are being held [by their parents]," he added. "It's like in Japan 80 years ago."
Mimaki said he had believed "the people working so hard in Gaza" would be awarded the Peace Prize, referring to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which was also nominated.
The U.N. agency has struggled to continue providing humanitarian services to Palestinians in Gaza this year after unverified claims by Israel that 12 UNRWA workers were involved in a Hamas-led attack last year prompted countries including the U.S. to suspend its funding. A majority of countries—but not the U.S., the agency's biggest donor—have restored funding after an independent probe found Israel had not provided evidence for its accusations.
Kazumi Matsui, the mayor of Hiroshima, said that with the average age of hibakusha now 85, "there are fewer and fewer people able to testify to the meaninglessness of possessing atomic bombs and their absolute evil."
"People in coming generations must know that what happened is not just a tragedy for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but one that concerns all humanity that must not be repeated," said Matsui.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for its efforts to ensure countries comply with the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, applauded the Nobel Committee for recognizing Nihon Hidankyo's "lifelong work to bring the world's attention to what nuclear weapons actually do to people when they are used."
Several years after the nuclear bombings, rates of leukemia diagnoses rose considerably in Japan among survivors. After a decade, other cancers were also detected at higher-than-normal rates. Pregnant women who were exposed to radiation from the bombings also had higher rates of miscarriage and their infants were more likely to die.
Cancer rates have continued to increase among hibakusha throughout their lives.
"It is particularly significant that this award comes at this time when the risk that nuclear weapons will be used again is as high, if not higher, as it has ever been," said Melissa Parke, executive director of ICAN.
As Nihon Hidankyo was honored "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 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) announced it would be holding its annual nuclear exercise, "Steadfast Noon," on October 14 over Western Europe.
On "Democracy Now!" on Friday, Joseph Gerson, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament, and Common Security, said the award "could not come at a better time."
"What most people don't understand is the increasing danger of nuclear war at this point," said Gerson. "Among all the nuclear powers, the threshold for nuclear use is decreasing, and all the nuclear powers are in the process of so-called 'modernizing' their nuclear arsenals. This is a very dangerous moment."
"We must, as the hibakusha say, recognize that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist," Gerson added, "and we have to work for their abolition."
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