Japanese atomic bomb survivor warns nuclear taboo is at risk in Nobel Peace Prize speech

A 92-year-old Japanese survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki described the horrors he witnessed in 1945 as he accepted this year’s Nobel Peace Prize on Tuesday on behalf of his anti-nuclear weapons group.

A 92-year-old Japanese survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki described the horrors he witnessed in 1945 as he accepted this year’s Nobel Peace Prize on Tuesday on behalf of his anti-nuclear weapons group.

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in October to Nihon Hidankyo, which is made up of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a group also known as hibakusha. The organization, founded in 1956, has battled for nearly 70 years to eliminate nuclear weapons globally by aiming to maintain a taboo around their use. 

The United States used the weapons for the first and only time in the two Japanese cities in 1945, hastening Japan’s surrender to the Allies to end World War II. By the end of that year, the bombings had killed an estimated 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki, though the death toll continued to rise for decades as people succumbed to the long-term effects of radiation exposure.

Since then, nuclear weapons have multiplied across the globe, with the ability to inflict damage hundreds or thousands of times greater than they did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As the hibakusha age, many fear that the stigma associated with the deployment of nuclear bombs will fade and their stories will be lost to history.

“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,” the 92-year-old survivor, Terumi Tanaka, said in his acceptance speech in Oslo.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/japanese-atomic-bomb-survivor-nobel-peace-prize-speech-rcna183720

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