Local advocates of nuclear disarmament are cheering the awarding of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, a group of survivors of the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“We are so excited that Nihon Hidankyo has won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize,” said Cole Harrison, the administrative director of the group Massachusetts Peace Action.
“The Hibakusha, or the survivors of the atomic bomb attacks in … Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are the world’s conscience when it comes to the danger of nuclear weapons,” Harrison added. “They’re the people that experienced the tragedy of those days, and they have been tireless in their advocacy for almost 80 years, trying to get the world to listen to their calls and end the threat of nuclear weapons that threatens the whole planet.”
Gregory Kulacki, the East Asia Project Manager at the Cambridge-based Union of Concerned Scientists, says Nihon Hidankyo’s approach is predicated on the idea that bearing firsthand witness to painful events is politically powerful.
“They simply retell what happened to them that day, and the more you listen to the stories, the more you realize how unique and individual the particular experiences were,” Kulacki said.
“They do this because they have a deep-seated belief that retelling those stories is probably the most effective way of trying to communicate to citizens and policymakers around the world just how horrible nuclear war can be,” he added.
Joseph Gerson, the executive director of the Watertown-based Campaign for Peace, Disarmament, and Common Security, said he’s worked with Nihon Hidankyo for decades in Japan and the United States. He described the group’s message as especially resonant right now, amid Russia’s war in Ukraine and simmering tensions in East Asia
“We are facing an ever-increasing danger of nuclear war,” Gerson said. “All the nuclear powers are lowering the threshold for their possible use [of nuclear weapons]. There’s increasing discussion of [trying] to fight a limited nuclear war … We have all of the nuclear powers upgrading their nuclear arsenals.”
“What I really appreciate about the Nobel award, in addition to recognizing just the extraordinary courage of the Hibakusha, the work that they’ve done and the suffering they’ve been through, is … international attention on the urgent need to eliminate nuclear weapons,” Gerson added.
Ira Helfand – a co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility and a past president of the group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 – had similar praise for the Nobel committee’s selection.
“I was very grateful to the Nobel committee for again trying to focus the world’s attention on the incredibly grave danger of nuclear war, and also grateful to them for recognizing the wonderful work which Nihon Hidankyo has done over decades in Japan as a grassroots organization, trying to keep the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki alive, and trying to keep the urgent need to eliminate all nuclear weapons in the forefront of people’s thinking,” Helfand said.
“We are closer to nuclear war than we have ever been,” he continued. “People don’t believe that. They think it can’t happen. It can. And if we keep acting the way we are today, it’s going to happen. And if it does happen it’s going to be far more catastrophic than we can possibly imagine.”
According to recently released studies, Helfand said, a nuclear war between the United States and Russia would kill several hundred million people on the first day and 5 billion people in the following two years, due to climate disruption and famine.
“This is an all-hands-on deck, five-alarm situation. And we’re not acting that way, and we need to start acting that way.”
