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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
Today, the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Japanese group Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots organization of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki three days later, on August 9th, ’45. The survivors of the only two nuclear bombs ever used in conflict went on to dedicate their lives to struggle for a nuclear-free world for nearly eight decades. Known as hibakusha, the atomic bomb survivors are being recognized for, quote, “demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.” The Nobel Committee noted the taboo against nuclear weapons use now, quote, was now “under pressure.” This is Nobel Committee Chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes.
JØRGEN WATNE FRYDNES: Next year will mark 80 years since two American atomic bombs killed an estimated of 120,000 inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A comparable number died of burn and radiation injuries in the months and years that followed. Today’s nuclear weapons have far greater destructive power. They can kill millions and would impact the climate catastrophically. A nuclear war could destroy our civilization.
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.”
For more, we go to Boston, where we’re joined by Joseph Gerson, longtime peace and disarmament activist, who has worked closely with Nihon Hidankyo for the past 40 years, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, former vice president of the International Peace Bureau and worked with AFSC.
We welcome you to Democracy Now! In a moment, we’re going to hear from a hibakusha, but can you talk about the significance, Joe, of this group being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?
JOSEPH GERSON: Well, I think there are two things to say. First of all, the courage of these people is staggering. I mean, to understand that the situation that they faced, literal hell — I mean, the descriptions of people that I know, who, you know, suffered burns, saw people with their eyeballs hanging out, ghosts, the whole city destroyed in an instant. I mean, these people literally survived hell. And they turned their experiences, their suffering, into what Wilfred Burchett, the first Western journalist to go into Hiroshima, later described as the most important force for the abolition of nuclear weapons among humanity.
And then to say that it could not come at a better time. What most people don’t understand is the increasing danger of nuclear war at this point, you know, not only in Ukraine, also, especially as United States and China confront one another, the reality that among all the nuclear powers, the threshold for nuclear use is decreasing, and all the nuclear powers are in the process of so-called modernizing their nuclear arsenals. This is a very dangerous moment. And what the Nobel Committee has done has been, in a way, to answer the Oppenheimer film. We must, as the hibakusha say, recognize that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist, and we have to work for their abolition.
AMY GOODMAN: And very interesting that the head of the group said he compared Gaza today to Japan after the atomic bombing, and the threats of Israel to perhaps blow up a nuclear site in Iran.
I wanted to go back to 2016, when Democracy Now! spoke to Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. She is a member of Nihon Hidankyo.
SETSUKO THURLOW: I was a 13-year-old, grade eight student at the girls’ school. And I was mobilized by the army, like together with a group of about 30 schoolmates. And we were trained to act as decoding assistants. And that very day, being Monday, we were to start the day’s work, the full-fledged decoding assistant. At 8:00, we had a morning assembly, and the Major Yanai gave us a pep talk. And we said, “We will do our best for emperor’s sake.” And at the moment, I saw the bluish white flash in the windows. I was on the second floor of the wooden building, which was one mile, or 1.8 kilometers, away from the ground zero. And after seeing the flash, I had a sensation of floating in the air. All the buildings were flattened by the blast and falling. And, obviously, the building I was in was falling, and my body was falling together with it. That’s the end of my recollection.
Then I regained my consciousness. And when I regained, I found myself in a total darkness and a silence. I tried to move my body, but I couldn’t. So I knew I was faced with death. I thought, “Finally, Americans got us.” Then I started hearing the whispering voices of my classmates who were around me in the same room: “Mother, help me. God, help me.” And all of a sudden, strong male voice said, “Don’t give up. I’m trying to free you. Keep moving. Keep pushing. And you see the sun ray coming through that opening. Get moving toward that direction. Crawl.” That’s what I did in the total darkness. I didn’t see anything.
But by the time I came out, the building was on fire. That meant all my classmates who were with me, about 30 of them, were burned to death alive. And I and two other girls managed to come out. The three of us looked around outside. And although it happened in the morning, it was dark, dark as twilight. And as our eyes got used to recognize things, those dark moving objects happened to be human beings. It was like a procession of ghosts. I say “ghosts” because they simply did not look like human beings. Their hair was rising upwards, and they were covered with blood and dirt, and they were burned and blackened and swollen. Their skin and flesh were hanging, and parts of the bodies were missing. Some were carrying their own eyeballs. And they collapsed onto the ground. Their stomach burst open, and intestines start stretching out.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Setsuko Thurlow speaking on Democracy Now! in 2016, a survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, also a member of Nihon Hidankyo, which just won the Nobel Peace Prize. She has lived in Canada for decades. She is well over 90 years old. Thanks so much to Joseph Gerson, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security and former vice president of the International Peace Bureau.
Coming up, The Apprentice, “the movie Trump doesn’t want you to see.” Stay with us.
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