This year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic attacks in 1945
Nihon Hidankyo, the grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, is receiving the peace prize 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 said the committee
Adding that they
wish to honour all atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki who, despite physical suffering and painful memories, have chosen to use their costly experience to cultivate hope and engagement for peace.
They help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons.
Some 200,000 people were killed when U.S. forces dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the summer of 1945, leveling large swaths of both Japanese cities.
But many more survived, some with life-changing injuries, others bearing the terrible emotional scars of the devastation and death they had witnessed.
Those survivors became known as “hibakusha,” which translates as “bomb-affected people.”
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons congratulated Nihon Hidankyo and described the hibakusha as “inspirational survivors” who “have worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the catastrophic impacts of nuclear weapons and push for their total elimination.”
