SMART NEWS

Nobel Peace Prize Goes to Japanese Atomic Bomb Survivors Who Fight for Nuclear Disarmament

The grassroots organization, Nihon Hidankyo, was lauded for “demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again”

Sarah Kuta

Daily Correspondent

Black and white photo showing destroyed buildings
Hiroshima was left in ruins after American troops detonated a nuclear bomb on August 6, 1945. Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images

Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots group of atomic bomb survivors from Japan, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel committee lauded the organization’s efforts to “achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”

The group, which is also known as Hibakusha, helped give rise to the “nuclear taboo,” or the idea that using nuclear weapons is morally unacceptable. Though nuclear weapons have not been used in nearly eight decades, this taboo is now “under pressure,” according to the committee.

“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,” wrote the committee in its announcement. “At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen.”

An estimated 12,121 nuclear warheads existed around the world as of January 2024, according to the latest figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Of those, 9,585 were in military stockpiles for potential use.

Ongoing conflicts involving Russia and Israel—two of the nine nuclear-armed states in the world—continue to fuel concerns about potential nuclear warfare.

“It has been said that because of nuclear weapons, the world maintains peace. But nuclear weapons can be used by terrorists,” Toshiyuki Mimaki, a co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, tells Agence France-Presse. “For example, if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won’t end there. Politicians should know these things.”

Japan’s prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, called the committee’s decision “extremely meaningful,” as reported by Al Jazeera’s Maziar Motamedi.

On August 6, 1945, American troops flying the Enola Gay B-29 Superfortress detonated an atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” over Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb nicknamed “Fat Man” on the city of Nagasaki. The attacks killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people, according to Columbia University’s Center for Nuclear Studies. Tens of thousands were killed instantly, and many more later perished from severe injuries and radiation poisoning.  

Survivors of the bombs—the only nuclear bombs ever to be used in war—became known as hibakusha. Those who survived bombs in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki became known as nijū hibakusha.

Many hibakusha faced life-altering injuries and health problems linked to radiation exposure, including leukemia and other cancers. On top of that, survivors and their descendants also faced social stigma and discrimination “based on the common belief that they may be physically or psychologically weakened and that radiation effects are hereditary or contagious,” per the National Park Service.

In 1956, more than a decade after the bombings, some of those survivors began gathering together. Eventually, these grassroots groups developed into Nihon Hidankyo.

For nearly seven decades, the group has been compiling survivors’ stories and advocating for nuclear disarmament. Nihon Hidankyo sends annual delegations to the United Nations and attends various global peace conferences.

The group’s witness testimonies “help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons,” according to the committee.

Some 650,000 people survived the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today, roughly 114,000 of them are still alive, and most are in their 80s, per the New York Times’ Megan Specia and Lynsey Chutel.

Nihon Hidankyo, which is the 141st Nobel laureate since the awards began in 1901, will receive 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million).

The committee wrote that its decision is “securely anchored” in Alfred Nobel’s will. The Swedish inventor and chemist, who died in 1896, established the annual prizes with a bequest in his will. He directed that the Peace Prize be given to a winner who “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Nobel died decades before nuclear weapons were developed during World War II. But this is not the first time the prize has gone to advocates of nuclear disarmament. In 2017, it was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a grassroots group pushing for a global ban on nuclear weapons. In 1995, it was given jointly to the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and Joseph Rotblat, the group’s co-founder. Rotblat, a Polish-British physicist, is known for walking away from the Manhattan Project for moral reasons.

Last year’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Narges Mohammadi, a human rights activist who has been jailed since 2021 for speaking out against the Iranian government. Earlier this summer, she was sentenced to an additional year in prison.

Throughout this week, the Nobel committee has been announcing awards in physiology or medicine, physics, chemistry and literature. On Monday, officials will reveal the winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

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Sarah Kuta

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.