A Japanese man who lived through the American atomic bombing of Nagasaki has accepted this year’s Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of an organization of survivors
ByFANNY BRODERSEN Associated Press and VANESSA GERA Associated Press
December 10, 2024
OSLO, Norway -- A 92-year-old Japanese man who lived through the American atomic bombing of Nagasaki described on Tuesday the agony he witnessed in 1945, including the charred corpses of his loved ones and the ruins of his city, as he accepted this year's Nobel Peace Prize on his organization's behalf.
The prize was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of Japanese atomic bombing survivors who have worked for nearly 70 years to maintain a taboo around the use of nuclear weapons. The weapons have grown exponentially in power and number since being used for the first and only time in warfare by the United States on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945.
The bombings pushed Japan to surrender to the Allies. They killed some 210,000 people by the end of 1945, but the full death toll from radiation is certainly higher.
As the survivors reach the twilight of their lives, they are grappling with the fear that the taboo against using the weapons appears to be weakening. It was a concern expressed by the 92-year-old-survivor, Terumi Tanaka, who delivered the acceptance lecture in Oslo's City Hall to an audience that included Norway's royal family.
“The nuclear superpower Russia threatens to use nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine, and a cabinet member of Israel, in the midst of its unrelenting attacks on Gaza in Palestine, even spoke of the possible use of nuclear arms,” Tanaka said. “I am infinitely saddened and angered that the nuclear taboo threatens to be broken.”
That concern drove the Norwegian Nobel committee to award this year's prize to the Japanese organization, though it had honored other nuclear non-proliferation work in the past.
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the committee, said in introducing the laureates that it was important to learn from their testimony as the nuclear dangers grow.
“None of the nine countries that possess nuclear weapons — the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — appear interested in nuclear disarmament and arms control at present,” he said. “On the contrary, they are modernizing and building up their nuclear arsenals.”
He said the Norwegian Nobel Committee was calling upon the five nuclear weapon states that have signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons — the U.S., Russia, China, France and the U.K. — to take seriously their obligations under the treaty, and said others must ratify it.
“It is naive to believe our civilization can survive a world order in which global security depends on nuclear weapons,” Frydnes said. “The world is not meant to be a prison in which we await collective annihilation.”
In his speech, Tanaka described the attack on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, three days after the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
He recalled the buzzing sound of a bomber jet followed by a “bright, white light," and then an intense shock wave. Three days later, he and his mother sought out loved ones who lived near the hypocenter.
“Many people who were badly injured or burned, but still alive, were left unattended, with no help whatsoever. I became almost devoid of emotion, somehow closing off my sense of humanity, and simply headed intently for my destination,” he said.
He found the charred body of an aunt, the body of her grandson, his grandfather on the brink of death with severe burns and another aunt who had been severely burned and died just before he arrived. In all, five family members were killed.
He described the efforts of survivors to use their experiences to try to abolish nuclear weapons for the sake of humanity, and to try to receive compensation from the Japanese state, which started the war, for their suffering.
“I hope that the belief that nuclear weapons cannot — and must not — coexist with humanity will take firm hold among citizens of the nuclear weapon states and their allies, and that this will become a force for change in the nuclear policies of their governments,” he said.
Tue Tuesday 10 December, 2024
Terumi Tanaka, a survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bombing in 1945, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of Nihon Hidankyo, an anti-nuclear organisation.
In short:
A group of Japanese atomic bombing survivors have been awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo.
Terumi Tanaka, the co-chair of the Nobel laureate group Nihon Hidankyo, called for young people to take up their fight against nuclear weapons.
He warned that threats in Ukraine and Gaza to use nuclear weapons were undermining the group's mission of creating a nuclear-free world.
A Japanese atomic bomb survivors' group has urged young people to take up the fight for a nuclear-free world while accepting this year's Nobel Peace Prize.
Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of survivors of the 1945 nuclear bombings of Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is campaigning for a world free of nuclear weapons using witness testimony.
Nihon Hidankyo's ranks are dwindling with every year. The Japanese government lists around 106,800 survivors of the bombings, also known as "hibakusha", still alive today. Their average age is 85.
"Any one of you could become either a victim or a perpetrator, at any time," Terumi Tanaka, 92, told the audience.
"Ten years from now, there may only be a handful of us able to give testimony as firsthand survivors. From now on, I hope that the next generation will find ways to build on our efforts and develop the movement even further."
Mr Tanaka's group had "undoubtedly" played a major role in creating the worldwide standard that it was unacceptable to use atomic weapons, or 'nuclear taboo', he said. But he warned that standard was being weakened.
"In addition to the civilian casualties, I am infinitely saddened and angered that the 'nuclear taboo' risks being broken," he said.
Terumi Tanaka, Shigemitsu Tanaka, and Toshiyuki Mimaki accepted the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo. (AP: Kin Cheung)
Nihon Hidankyo was also represented at the ceremony by its two other co-chairs, Shigemitsu Tanaka, 84, and Toshiyuki Mimaki, 82.
An estimated 210,000 people died, either immediately or over time, as a result of the bombs dropped in August 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today's nuclear weapons are far more powerful than those used at that time.
Mr Tanaka was 13 years old at the time of the Nagasaki bombing, and although he survived the explosion almost unharmed at his home some 3km from ground zero, he lost five family members and recalled the harrowing experience.
"The deaths I witnessed at that time could hardly be described as human deaths. There were hundreds of people suffering in agony, unable to receive any kind of medical attention," Mr Tanaka told the audience.
"I strongly felt that even in war, such killing and maiming must never be allowed to happen."
Group warns of nuclear weapon threats
Mr Tanaka expressed concern over threats to use nuclear weapons in the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
"There still remain 12,000 nuclear warheads on Earth today, 4,000 of which are operationally deployed, ready for immediate launch," Mr Tanaka said.
In 2017, 122 governments negotiated and adopted the historic UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), but the text is considered largely symbolic as no nuclear power has signed it.
THE GANG OF FOUR
While all ambassadors stationed in Oslo were invited to Tuesday's ceremony, the only nuclear powers in attendance were Britain, France, India, Pakistan and the United States. Russia, China, Israel and Iran were not present, the Nobel Institute said.
Expressing concern about the world entering "a new, more unstable nuclear age", Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Jørgen Watne Frydnes warned that "a nuclear war could destroy our civilisation".
"Today's nuclear weapons ... have far greater destructive power than the two bombs used against Japan in 1945. They could kill millions of us in an instant, injure even more, and disrupt the climate catastrophically," Mr Frydnes said.
Reuters/AFP
Nuclear War: How Western Media Preps The World – OpEd
Recent modification by the Russian government of its nuclear doctrine has given rise to a wave of news reports and analysis by western media that appears less concerned about the application of the updated doctrine than to tell the world that anything the Russians may want to do in its militarism, the West can do better.
In a 2020 decree, well before its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia had warned that it may use nuclear weapons in case of a nuclear attack by an enemy or conventional attack that threatened the existence of the Russian state. This doctrine – enacted well before the war with Ukraine in 2022 – did not cause concern as it mirrored a similar if unpublicised doctrine of the United States and its western allies.
A later version of this decree proposed in September 2024 for a broadening of the threats under which Russia would consider a nuclear strike. It also included Belarus, an ally, under Russia’s nuclear umbrella and the warning that a rival nuclear power supporting a conventional strike on Russia or its ally would also be considered to be attacking it.
Since then there has been a worsening of the war situation in Ukraine with President Biden’s approval of the use of US long range missiles to strike targets within Russia. This was responded to by President Putin signing into law the earlier proposed September changes. To remind the West of the new red lines, Putin approved the launching of a potentially nuclear warhead carrying missile into Ukraine. Nicknamed ‘Oreshnik’, the hypersonic missile is capable of carrying six nuclear warheads and reaching its targets in Europe in 15-30 minutes.
Western Media Response to Oreshnik
Much of the reaction in western media circles, war analysts and think tanks has been not only to pour cold water on Russia’s capacity to begin a qualitatively new and more destructive phase of military combat. The Ukrainian newspaper. The Kyiv Independent, argued that Russia is engaged in a psych and propaganda offensive to create a climate of fear and scare Ukrainians and the West into submission (https://kyivindependent.com/oreshnik-strike-propaganda/)
Quoting The Moscow Times, a pro-west paper, the paper claimed that the propaganda offensive was coordinated between government, military, and intelligence officials, as well as PR experts as a response to the West’s decision to permit Ukraine to strike inside Russia with US and ally ATACM missiles (Army Tactical Missile System).
Although the US has said that it will not change its nuclear posture despite the lowering of the Russian threshold, western media have begun a counter propaganda offensive aimed at heightening condemnation of the Russian measures. At the same time a more intensive propaganda campaign is now ongoing amongst the wolf warrior forces of the west to impress western public on the ability of the US to successfully conduct a nuclear war.
Engaged are also more reputed western media channels intent on increasing their readership by putting up the nuclear war subject in their front page whilst assigning the blame for the start of any nuclear war to the enemies of the West.
For the ‘benefit’ of its Asian readership, the latest report by American weekly, Newsweek, which claims a large multicultural audience and ‘fair and independent’ journalism, provides detailed maps of the impact of a US initiated nuclear war in Asia. The report starts off with the following lead statement which is intended to absolve the US from responsibility in any of the wars taking place.
“The U.S. is inadvertently involved in multiple conflicts around the world in backing its allies, while also facing tensions with China over several issues including trade.”
According to the report casualties, in an US initiated first nuclear strike, would be of the following magnitude:
What is especially noteworthy in the report is that it is a follow up to initial modelling of the casualties likely from a Russian nuclear strike against the US and NATO capitals. This appears to give the impression that the magazine is fair in its reportage although the emphasis on the American ‘inadvertent involvement’ in multiple conflicts clearly exposes the paper’s real intentions.
The impact of such obviously slanted and clearly mischievous journalism is not only to play up the war fantasies of the forces and lobbies of war in the US and NATO. It is also to desensitize and harden the public into acceptance of the lives to be paid for in any nuclear conflict; and to justify this by assigning blame and responsibility to Russia, China and North Korea.
Policy of NFU on Nuclear Weapons
Most important and crucially missing from the current news reports and analysis on the possibility of a nuclear war taking place is discussion on the policy of first use of nuclear weapons (NFU). For now, China and India are the only two nuclear power countries that have formally committed to a no first use policy. In 1964, following the detonation of its first atomic bomb, China declared that it would never be the first to use nuclear weapons. Today it is the only nuclear-armed nation with an unconditional policy of NFU of nuclear weapons.
In contrast the US and NATO, and its member states of France and the United Kingdom, have repeatedly spurned demands from their public to commit to a NFU policy, thus showing a policy intent not only aimed at deterrence but also to warfighting and first strike.
Media and other stake players committed to preventing a nuclear conflict would do well to highlight the importance of all nations in subscribing to NFU. This would be a more constructive and worthwhile subject for their front pages than what they are now focusing on to prevent a nuclear holocaust.
Lim Teck Ghee
Lim Teck Ghee PhD is a Malaysian economic historian, policy analyst and public intellectual whose career has straddled academia, civil society organisations and international development agencies. He has a regular column, Another Take, in The Sun, a Malaysian daily; and is author of Challenging the Status Quo in Malaysia.
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