Comment on Welcoming the Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Nihon Hidankyo
On October 11, 2024, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (“Nihon Hidankyo”) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee stated that Nihon Hidankyo had been awarded the 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.
The Japan Federation of Bar Associations (the “JFBA”) not only wholeheartedly welcomes the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, but also finds itself full of renewed respect for Nihon Hidankyo’s efforts to continue to pass on its experience and message to the next generation.
The two atomic bombs dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 claimed countless lives. The after-effects of the radiation from the atomic bombs persist even to this day. It is vital that we remember the “reality of the atomic bombings” and pass the memory and struggle for peace of the atomic bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (also known as “Hibakusha”) down to the future generations.
In 2025, it will be 80 years since the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, more than 12,000 nuclear weapons continue to exist around the world. It is clear that nuclear war would result in “devastation being visited upon all mankind” (the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons), and that the use of any nuclear weapons would have “catastrophic humanitarian consequences” (the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons). The Nobel Committee commended the Hibakusha as a whole (including Nihon Hidankyo) for their tremendous efforts in helping to maintain the “nuclear taboo,” which it described as making the use of nuclear weapons morally unacceptable, but at the same time it expressed concern over mounting pressure on this taboo. We must take this concern with the utmost seriousness.
It is imperative that we achieve the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.
Ever since the JFBA declared at the “Peace Congress” following its first Annual General Meeting in Hiroshima City in 1950 that the JFBA would “strive to eradicate the disaster of war in order to realize a peaceful world in which individuals, regardless of race or nationality, can live free from fear and want,” it has been engaged in various activities for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Even recently, on April 21, 2023, the JFBA issued its“
Statement calling for the Government of Japan to play an active role as host of the G7 Hiroshima Summit towards a “world without nuclear weapons.””
Following the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, the JFBA will continue to exert further efforts toward realizing “nuclear abolition” and “a peaceful world.”
October 21, 2024
Reiko Fuchigami
President, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations
