Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Atomic Bomb Survivors October 11, 2024

Award comes at a time of heightened nuclear threats

The last survivors of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”

The bombings of the two cities in August 1945 ended World War II the following Sept. 2 when the official surrender document was signed aboard the USS Missouri. Together, the attacks killed 500,000 people. Today, the average age of the remaining 106,000 survivors in Japan is 86.

Watch video of the official announcement in Oslo

Known as hibakusha, many are affiliated with Nihon Hidankyo, formally the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations, which was honored by the Norwegian Nobel Committee “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 hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons,” the committee said.

The timing of the award is notable as Vladimir Putin continues to rattle his nuclear saber. Putin warned in late September that if conventional weapons were used against Russia or Belarus, a nuclear option would be on his table. He also warned that Moscow any assault that was “supported by a nuclear power,” such as the US, would be considered a “joint attack” and subject to the same retaliation scenario, according to Reuters.

“We can no longer ignore this existential threat.”

– Ira Helfand

Ira Helfand, co-founder and past president of PSR, a two-time Nobel Peace Prize recipient for his life-long commitment to abolishing nuclear weapons, said he is “very grateful to the Nobel committee for again trying to draw the world’s attention to the nuclear danger and the great work being done by this grassroots organization in Japan.”

As a founding partner of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the prize in 2017, he is also a co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), which shared in a Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 as the US affiliate of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.  

For Helfand, the award “underlined two facts.”

“First that the danger of nuclear war is greater than ever, and we can no longer ignore this existential threat to humans survival.

“And second, that grassroots movements like Nihon Hidankyo—and Back from the Brink in the United States—are essential to confronting this threat.”

More Campaign Update

Disappointing End to Budget Talks for RECA Survivors

The Leader of the House Turns a Cold Shoulder to America's Known Victims of the Cold War It took less than two months between December...
More about Disappointing End to Budget Talks for RECA Survivors

Protest Pinyon Plain Uranium Mine Haul Route! 

PSR Northern Arizona will be joining the Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club at an Emergency Rally to protest the hauling of radioactive uranium...
More about Protest Pinyon Plain Uranium Mine Haul Route! 

Summer Reading

It's Still Hot Outside! Good News, Iffy News & Some Great News Rep. Raúl Grijalva in his Tucson office. So much news, so little space....
More about Summer Reading