Nobel laureate Hidankyo, co-chair, is concerned about children in Israel and Gaza

By Chang-Ran Kim

TOKYO (Reuters) – Toshiyuki Mimaki was beside himself with joy when he discovered that the group of atomic bomb survivors he co-chaired had won the Nobel Peace Prize, but later suppressed tears of sadness as he imagined children coming out of their wounds bled in Israel and Gaza.

The Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of survivors of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, won the prize on Friday in what was seen as a plea to nuclear-weapon countries not to use those weapons.

While Mimaki said the prize would give a major boost to his group’s efforts to demonstrate that it is possible to abolish nuclear weapons, he acknowledged that many countries did not seem interested in a world without nuclear weapons.

“You hear countries making threats like, ‘We will always use nuclear weapons,’” ​​he said in a live interview on public broadcaster NHK, hours after the award was announced.

“The United Nations has decided that there will be five countries with nuclear weapons, but more and more countries are acquiring them. The idea that the world is safe because there are nuclear weapons – we are absolutely against that.

“It is impossible to maintain world peace in a world with nuclear weapons,” he said.

Mimaki, who was three years old when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, accused governments of waging wars while their citizens longed for peace.

“Especially in places like Israel and Gaza, children are covered in blood and living without food every day, with their schools destroyed, stations vandalized and bridges destroyed,” he said, appearing to fight back tears.

‘The people want peace. But politicians insist on going to war, saying, ‘We won’t stop until we win.’ I think this is true of Russia and Israel, and I always wonder if the power of the United Nations could do that. don’t put an end to it.”

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned the West of possible nuclear consequences since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

This month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would accelerate steps toward becoming a nuclear-armed military superpower, and would not rule out using it if the country were attacked.

Nihon Hidankyo was founded in 1956, partly in response to the United States testing a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean in 1954.

(Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Kevin Liffey)