{"id":25877,"date":"2024-10-14T16:36:31","date_gmt":"2024-10-14T15:36:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=25877"},"modified":"2024-10-14T16:36:31","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T15:36:31","slug":"nobel-peace-prize-awarded-to-japanese-atomic-bomb-survivors-group-for-its-efforts-to-free-the-world-of-nuclear-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/arts-social-sciences\/nobel-peace-prize-awarded-to-japanese-atomic-bomb-survivors-group-for-its-efforts-to-free-the-world-of-nuclear-weapons\/","title":{"rendered":"Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Japanese atomic bomb survivors\u2019 group for its efforts to free the world of nuclear\u00a0weapons"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open University academic Dr Luc-Andre Brunet<\/a>, a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary International History and Eirini Karamouzi, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary History from the University of Sheffield tell us more about Nobel-Prize-winning Nihon Hidankyo.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

The 2024 Nobel peace prize has been awarded<\/a> to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese grassroots organisation created by survivors of the two US atomic bombs that were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.<\/p>\n

The Norwegian Nobel committee recognised the organisation<\/a> \u201cfor its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again\u201d.<\/p>\n

Discussion of the bombings, which killed more than 100,000<\/a> Japanese people, was largely a taboo in the immediate post-war period. This was, in part, thanks to American press censorship<\/a> in occupied Japan.<\/p>\n

But, in 1954, an American nuclear weapons test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean produced such extensive radioactive fallout that it affected a Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon<\/a>, causing one death from radiation poisoning.<\/p>\n

The Lucky Dragon incident<\/h2>\n

The Lucky Dragon incident prompted many of the atomic bomb survivors, who are known as the hibakusha<\/em>, to speak out about their experiences. And it was within this context that Nihon Hidankyo was created in 1956.<\/p>\n

Since then, the hibakusha<\/em> have played an immeasurable role in activism against nuclear weapons<\/a> worldwide. Their testimony, the Nobel committee said, has \u201chelped to generate and consolidate widespread opposition to nuclear weapons around the world\u201d.<\/p>\n

In 1975, for example, a group of hibakusha<\/em> that included Setsuko Thurlow, a member of Nihon Hidankyo and a globally renowned campaigner against nuclear weapons, organised an exhibition on the atomic bombings at the Toronto public library.<\/p>\n

This helped trigger the development of a significant anti-nuclear movement in Canada. By the early 1980s, tens of thousands of Canadians regularly demonstrated<\/a> against their government\u2019s support for US nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

Then, in 1984, another survivor of the Hiroshima bombing called Takashi Morita co-founded a hibakusha<\/em> organisation based in S\u00e3o Paulo to share their stories<\/a> and raise awareness in Brazil of the devastating consequences of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

Awareness spreads<\/h2>\n

Growing awareness of the experiences of the hibakusha<\/em> throughout the 1980s inspired Europeans to protest against the deployment of new nuclear missiles in their countries. The phrase \u201cno Euroshima!\u201d became a popular slogan<\/a> for the European peace movement.<\/p>\n

Nihon Hidankyo\u2019s efforts have focused not only on sharing the experiences of hibakusha<\/em>, but also using them to gain support for the abolition of nuclear weapons worldwide.<\/p>\n

The organisation has been a key supporter of the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons<\/a>. This treaty, which entered in force in 2017 and has been signed by 94 countries, prohibits states from participating in any nuclear weapon activities.<\/p>\n

The International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons \u2013 in which Setsuko Thurlow is a leading figure \u2013 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize<\/a> in 2017 for its efforts to achieve this legally binding prohibition of such weapons.<\/p>\n

Still work to do<\/h2>\n

Within Japan, Nihon Hidankyo has worked to challenge the government\u2019s position on nuclear weapons. The Japanese government is supportive of American nuclear weapons<\/a>, despite the horrors witnessed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and depends on them as a deterrent against its several nuclear-armed neighbours.<\/p>\n

Successive Japanese governments have insisted<\/a> on the importance of nuclear weapons for the country\u2019s national security. But it remains a controversial stance for many in Japan. Every Japanese school child typically visits Hiroshima or Nagasaki to learn about the nightmarish consequences of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

The decision to award the Nobel peace prize to Nihon Hidankyo is particularly timely. In 2023, the world\u2019s nine nuclear powers spent over US$91 billion<\/a> (\u00a369.5 billion) on nuclear weapons. And since Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened<\/a> to use his nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n

These concerning developments were acknowledged<\/a> by the Nobel committee. When awarding Nihon Hidankyo with the prize, the committee said it was \u201calarming that today this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s nuclear powers \u2013 especially China<\/a> and the US \u2013 are expanding and modernising their arsenals. North Korea is continuing to develop<\/a> its nuclear weapons programme. And tensions are fast escalating<\/a> between nuclear-armed Israel and near-nuclear Iran.<\/p>\n

The threats posed by nuclear weapons are more apparent now than they have been at any time since the cold war. With barely 100,000 hibakusha<\/em> alive today, it is imperative that we listen to their voices and their warnings.\"The<\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Open University academic Dr Luc-Andre Brunet, a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary International History and Eirini Karamouzi, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary History from the University of Sheffield tell us more about Nobel-Prize-winning Nihon Hidankyo. The 2024 Nobel peace prize has been awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese grassroots organisation created by survivors of the two US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":25878,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[191,869,1073,1525,1540,1640],"class_list":["post-25877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-social-sciences","category-history","tag-atomic-bomb","tag-fass","tag-hiroshima","tag-news-home","tag-nobel-peace-prize","tag-ou-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}