The group Nihon Hidankyo are a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha.
The group received the honour “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 Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said Friday it was alarmed that the taboo against the use of nuclear weapons was “under pressure,” as it awarded the Japanese anti-nuclear group Nihon Hidankyo the Nobel Peace Prize.
“The extraordinary efforts of Nihon Hidankyo ... have contributed greatly to the establishment of the nuclear taboo. It is therefore alarming that today this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure,” Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told a press conference where he announced the winner of this year’s prize.
He also added that: “This year’s prize is a prize that focuses on the necessity of upholding this nuclear taboo. And we have all a responsibility, particularly the nuclear powers,”
The co-head of the Japanese anti-nuclear group expressed his surprise at being given the award for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.
“Never did I dream this could happen,” Toshiyuki Mimaki of Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, told reporters with tears in his eyes.
