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hibakusha
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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Hiroshima Survivors Warn Against Nuclear War 79 Years After US Bombing
"The world needs to stop nuclear war from ever happening again," said one hibakusha. "But when I turn on the news, I see politicians talk about deploying more weapons, more tanks. How could they?"
Aug 06, 2024
As the number of people who survived the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki rapidly dwindles 79 years after the attacks, hibakusha—the Japanese word for the survivors—and others are imploring humanity to do everything possible to avert another nuclear war.
"People still don't get it. The atomic bomb isn't a simple weapon. I speak as someone who suffers until this day: The world needs to stop nuclear war from ever happening again," Shigeaki Mori, who was an 8-year-old boy on his way to school on the morning of August 6, 1945,
toldThe New York Times. "But when I turn on the news, I see politicians talk about deploying more weapons, more tanks. How could they? I wish for the day they stop that."
Keiko Aguro was also 8 years old and standing on a road near her home in Hiroshima when a U.S. B-29 Superfortress dropped one bomb over Hiroshima that exploded with the force of 16 kilotons of TNT. The explosion destroyed nearly everything and everyone within about a 1-mile (1.62 km) radius. As many as 90,000 people died from the heat, blast wave, and ensuing inferno. Tens of thousands of others were injured, many of them mortally. Tens of thousands more would perish from radiation over the following weeks, months, and years.
"As survivors, we cannot do anything but tell our story," Aguro said. "'For we shall not repeat the evil'—this is the pledge of survivors. Until we die, we want to tell our story, because it's difficult to imagine."
"Now what survivors worry about is to die and meet our family in heaven," Aguro added. "I heard many survivors say, 'What shall I do? On this planet there are still many many nuclear weapons, and then I'll meet my daughter I couldn't save. I'll be asked: Mom, what did you do to abolish nuclear weapons?' There is no answer I can tell them."
Three days after Hiroshima, Nagasaki was obliterated in a 20-kiloton air burst that killed as many as 75,000 people that day, with a similar number of people wounded and tens of thousands more dying later from radiation.
The authors of the Times piece—Kathleen Kingsbury, W.J. Hennigan, and Spencer Cohen—wrote that "as another anniversary of August 6 passes, it is necessary for Americans—and the globe, really—to listen to the stories of the few human beings who can still speak to the horror nuclear weapons can inflict before this approach is taken again."
However, they note that "countries like the United States, China, and Russia are spending trillions of dollars to modernize their stockpiles," while "many of the safeguards that once lowered nuclear risk are unraveling and the diplomacy needed to restore them is not happening."
"The threat of another blast can't be relegated to history," the trio wrote. But they added that nearly eight decades later, many Americans still hail the bombings as "necessary and heroic acts that brought the war to an end."
But the prevailing U.S. historical narrative—which portrays the bombings as critical to ending the war—ignores the lack of consensus and grave misgivings among senior military commanders about dropping the bombs. Seven of the eight five-star generals and admirals at the time opposed its use. One of them, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, later said as president that "the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)—which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work on the landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons—marked this year's ignominious anniversary with a report focusing on how children are affected by nuclear war and the threat thereof.
The report contains graphic descriptions of the effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, and of nuclear weapons testing on children around the world. It also explains how fear of thermonuclear annihilation affected children during the Cold War and how humanity can protect children by disarming.
"Today, several thousand nuclear weapons still exist in the arsenals of nine countries, posing a unique existential threat to people everywhere, especially children. Many have vastly greater explosive yields than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki," the ICAN report states.
"To protect humanity from the catastrophic harm that nuclear weapons are designed to inflict, governments must act with urgency to eliminate them completely—the only guarantee against their further use and testing," the publication continues. "This would be a great service to the current generation of children and to all future generations, who would grow up free from the threat of nuclear war."
"The alternative is to pass on to them a world still teetering on the brink of catastrophe," ICAN added. "Or, quite unthinkable, a world reeling from the horrors of another nuclear attack, perhaps with a death toll orders of magnitude greater than that of the atomic bombings of 1945."
Echoing ICAN, Hiroshima Gov. Hidehiko Yuzaki said during the annual commemoration of the bombing at Hiroshima Peace Park that "as long as nuclear weapons exist, they will surely be used again someday."
"Nuclear weapons abolition is not an ideal to achieve far in the future," Yuzaki stressed. "Instead, it is a pressing and real issue that we should desperately engage in at this moment since nuclear problems involve an imminent risk to human survival."
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