OSLO: Japan’s atomic bomb survivors’ group Nihon Hidankyo accepted its Nobel Peace Prize on Tuesday, pleading for the abolition of nuclear weapons that are resurging as a threat 80 years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

One of the three Nihon Hidankyo co-chairs, 92-year-old Nagasaki survivor Terumi Tanaka, demanded “action from governments to achieve” a nuclear-free world.

The prize was presented at a time when countries like Russia — which has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal — increasingly brandish the atomic threat.

“I am infinitely saddened and angered that the ‘nuclear taboo’ threatens to be broken,” Tanaka told dignitaries at Oslo’s City Hall, some clad in traditional Norwegian bunads or Japanese kimonos.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly made nuclear threats as he presses the war in Ukraine.

He signed a decree in November lowering the threshold for using atomic weapons. In a strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro a few days later, the Russian army fired a new hypersonic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, although in this instance it had a regular payload.

Nihon Hidankyo works to rid the planet of the weapons of mass destruction, relying on testimonies from survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known as “hibakusha”.

The US bombings of the Japanese cities on Aug 6 and 9, 1945 killed 214,000 people, leading to Japan’s surrender in World War II.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2024