Japan’s atomic bomb survivors to accept Nobel Prize in Oslo
OSLO—This year’s Nobel Peace Prize will be presented Tuesday to Japan’s atomic bomb survivors’ group Nihon Hidankyo, which lobbies against the weapons now resurging as a threat 80 years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
The three cochairs of Nihon Hidankyo will accept the prestigious award during a ceremony starting at 1 p.m. in Oslo’s City Hall, at a time when states like Russia increasingly threaten to break the international taboo on the use of nuclear arms.
“Nuclear weapons and humanity cannot coexist,” one of the three cochairs, Terumi Tanaka, told a press conference on Monday in the Norwegian capital.
“Humanity may come to its end even before climate change brings its devastating impacts,” the 92-year-old said.
Nihon Hidankyo works tirelessly to rid the planet of the weapons of mass destruction, with testimonies from survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known as “hibakusha.”
Around 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima when the United States detonated an atomic bomb over the Japanese city on Aug. 6, 1945.
A further 74,000 were killed by a US nuclear bomb in Nagasaki three days later.
Final blow
Survivors suffered from radiation sickness and longer-term effects, including elevated risks of cancer.
The bombings, the only times nuclear weapons have been used in history, were the final blow to imperial Japan and its brutal rampage across Asia. It surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945.
Tanaka was 13 when the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing five members of his family.
On Monday, he expressed alarm at the resurgence of nuclear threats and urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop brandishing the threat to prevail in the war in Ukraine.
