The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to a Japanese anti-nuclear group made up of survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Nihon Hidankyo received the prize “for his efforts to achieve a world without nuclear weapons,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said. “And for demonstrating, through testimony, that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”
The United States dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II in 1945, killing an estimated 120,000 people in the only time such weapons have been used in a conflict. After the decades-long nuclear scare of the Cold War, these world-destroying weapons are once again causing global unrest amid wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
“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,” the committee said. “At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen.”
It was a surprise that the prize was awarded to a little-known Japanese nonproliferation group, given the scale of the active conflicts raging around the world.
Accepting the prize in Tokyo, the group’s chairman, Toshiyuki Mimaki, compared Japan’s nuclear fallout to the conflict in Gaza today.
“When I saw the children being carried, covered in blood,” he said of the images coming out of Gaza, “it was the same as Japan 80 years ago. The images overlap.”
The fact that no weapons have been used to express anger in 80 years is “an encouraging fact,” something to which the Japanese grassroots movement, also known as Hibakusha, “has made a great contribution,” the Nobel committee said.
Its members have used their personal, first-hand accounts of the explosions and their horrific aftermath to launch educational campaigns. These testimonies “help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons,” the committee said, adding that it had not yet been able to contact the group’s members to tell them the news.
“Today’s nuclear weapons have a far greater destructive power” than Little Boy and Fat Man, the bombs that unleashed an irradiated “inferno” on the two Japanese cities in 1945, the committee said. Modern nuclear warheads “could kill millions and would have a catastrophic impact on the climate. A nuclear war could destroy our civilization.”
“It is therefore alarming that this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is being challenged today,” the committee added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has openly warned the West that he could use these bombs if the United States and its allies intervene too much in the war in Ukraine.
North Korea is estimated to have dozens of nuclear warheads. And tensions remain between India and China, and India and Pakistan, all of which have their own arsenals.
Meanwhile, Israel, widely believed to have nuclear weapons, is swapping missiles with Iran, which international observers say is now capable of developing its own warheads.
In terms of conventional warfare, this peace prize was awarded in a year of more active conflict than at any time since World War II. Geopolitics is dominated by the major wars in the Middle East and Europe, but Sudan is also torn by an ongoing civil conflict.
A number of organizations linked to those conflicts were tipped as favorites for the Nobel Prize.
“I think it’s safe to say that you’ve exceeded most expectations this year,” one journalist
said during a question-and-answer session after the announcement.
Receiving a Nobel Peace Prize is by no means a guarantee that the recipient’s efforts are or will be successful.
Last year, the prize was won by Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi, who remains in prison while the regime severely restricts women’s rights and other freedoms.
The year before, the prize was awarded to the trio of Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski and two Russian and Ukrainian human rights groups, Memorial and the Center for Civil Liberties. Two years later, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues unabated, while the Kremlin at home restricts almost every aspect of public life.