Nearly 80 years after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a group of survivors in Japan has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.” Members of the organization Nihon Hidankyo have publicly shared their experiences of the 1945 attacks, which killed at least 110,000 people and instantly devastated both cities. As the years went on, many who lived through the bombings charted long-term, often fatal health consequences from the radiation, including a sharply elevated incidence of several different types of cancer. Educational efforts by survivors, known as 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 Nobel Committee said in its announcement. In 2024, certain countries (namely Russia and North Korea) seem to have softened on the “taboo against the use of nuclear weapons,” the committee said, making Nihon Hidankyo’s work more important than ever: “At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen.”
