Nihon Hidankyo, an organization of survivors of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Committee announced on Friday.
Nihon Hidankyo is primarily an advocacy group for survivors of the only nuclear weapon attack against a country during wartime, urging the Japanese government to help provide for them but also engaging politically in pursuit of the global abolition of nuclear weapons.
The Nobel Committee said in its announcement of the prize that it chose Nihon Hidankyo in recognition of the “taboo against the use of nuclear weapons” facing “pressure” from nuclear states threatening to use their weapons.
Toshiyuki Mimaki, the co-chair of the organization, used his remarks following the announcement of the group’s win to compare the situation in Hamas-controlled Gaza to “Japan 80 years ago,” an apparent condemnation of Israel self-defense efforts against the jihadist terror organization. Reports on Mimaki’s comments did not indicate that he similarly condemned the event that triggered the self-defense operations in Gaza: the massacre of 1,200 people and abduction of 250 others from Israel during Hamas’s siege of the country on October 7, 2023.
The Nobel Committee said in its announcement of the award that Nihon Hidankyo “is receiving the 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.”
“These historical witnesses have helped to generate and consolidate widespread opposition to nuclear weapons around the world,” the Committee explained, “by drawing on personal stories, creating educational campaigns based on their own experience, and issuing urgent warnings against the spread and use of nuclear weapons.”
File/The United States drops an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan three days after dropping one on Hiroshima. Japan would surrender five day later, ending World War II. (Getty)
“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 statement continued, crediting the group in part for the fact that “no nuclear weapon has been used in the war in nearly 80 years.”
The Committee nonetheless lamented that “nuclear powers are modernising 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.” In the face of that apparent threat, the Committee declared, the testimony of hibakusha, or nuclear weapon survivors, was necessary to “maintain the nuclear taboo.”
Mimaki, in comments to reporters from Tokyo on Friday, lamented that some in the world believed that nuclear weapons could bring peace and stability.
“It has been said that because of nuclear weapons, the world maintains peace. But nuclear weapons can be used by terrorists,” he said. “For example, if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won’t end there. Politicians should know these things.”
Mimaki also claimed that the situation in Gaza, the Hamas stronghold from which the Iran-backed terrorists orchestrated the October 7 attack, was similar to a nuclear bombing.
“In Gaza, children in blood are being held. It’s like in Japan 80 years ago,” Mimaki reportedly said.
File/Daily News front page August 8, 1945, Headline: ATOM BOMB HIT-A CITY VANISHED – Jap Seaport Went Up in Smoke And Flame, Whitnesses Say – 40,000-FT> DUST PYRE OVER HIROSHIMA (NY Daily News via Getty Images)
Israel declared war on Hamas on October 8 in response to the attack the day before, which featured a long list of atrocities including door-to-door mass executions of families in their homes, gang rapes at a music festival, the desecration of corpses, and infanticide. As Hamas has controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, the terrorists constructed complex tunnel infrastructure in the Gaza Strip hidden under civilian structures, such as hospitals, schools, and children’s bedrooms. To dismantle that infrastructure, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have had to enter Gaza and fight Hamas terrorists in nominally civilian areas controlled by the jihadist group, a situation that Mimaki appeared to compare to being the target of a nuclear detonation.
Mimaki also called for Japan and America to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the same time.
Nihon Hidankyo will receive its award in Oslo, Norway, on December 10. It is the second Nobel Peace Prize winner from Japan and 29th Japanese Nobel winner overall, the Japanese Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper noted on Friday.
Mimaki, the head of Nihon Hidankyo, was three years old and living in Hiroshima when the United States dropped its first of two atomic weapons over Japan.
“I saw a sudden flash in the sky when I was playing in front of the house. … During the afternoon I saw throngs of people walking down the street past the house,” Mimaki narrated for a collection of testimonies published by the Asahi Shimbun. “I had no way of knowing that they had been wounded by an A-bomb attack on Hiroshima.”
An estimated 344,306 people died after the Hiroshima bombing, both in the immediate aftermath and due to the effects of the bomb. In Nagasaki, the second city bombed during World War II, 198,785 people died. The bombings preceded the end of the war and Japan’s surrender to the United States and its allies, and prevented a land invasion of Japan.
Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.
