Nagasaki decided not to invite Cohen to mark this year‘s 79th anniversary of the bombing, citing security reasons to avoid possible protests.
That decision prompted the ambassadors of the United States, Britain and the European Union, among others, to skip the ceremony and send lower-level officials instead.
(October 11, 2024)
AMY GOODMAN: After the Nobel Peace Prize was announced, the co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, Toshiyuki Mimaki, spoke to reporters in Tokyo.
TOSHIYUKI MIMAKI: [translated] What? Nihon Hidankyo? How did Nihon Hidankyo? It can’t be real. It can’t be real. … We will appeal to the world, as we always have done, for the abolition of nuclear weapons and the achievement of an everlasting peace. … Why Nihon Hidankyo? I thought for sure it would be the people working so hard in Gaza, as we’ve seen.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Toshiyuki Mimaki, the co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, which won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize today. He wept as he spoke. He went on to say, quote, “In Gaza, bleeding children are being held [by their parents]. It’s like in Japan 80 years ago.”
This grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha, is receiving the Peace 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.
In response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945, a global movement arose whose members have worked tirelessly to raise awareness about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of using nuclear weapons. Gradually, a powerful international norm developed, stigmatising the use of nuclear weapons as morally unacceptable. This norm has become known as “the nuclear taboo”.
The testimony of the Hibakusha – the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – is unique in this larger context.