When Nihon Hidankyo (the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations), a non-government organisation that has campaigned against nuclear weapons for the past 70 years, was announced as the recipient of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize on October 12, its representative Masako Wada reacted by warning that “the world is currently moving backwards on nuclear disarmament”.
“We have been trying to tell the story about the humanitarian consequences if the A-bomb is used for the third time. So we have to stop. We have to cease that risk,” she said in an with Robin Hardy from the Nobel Peace Prize organisation.
Wada called on all countries to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
While have signed the TPNW, Australia and the nine nuclear weapons states — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, Israel, France, India, North Korea and Pakistan — have not. When he was last US president, Donald Trump campaigned against the treaty.
The two atomic bombs that were dropped by US air force on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 killed approximately 120,000 people. A similar number died later of burn and radiation injuries.
It is estimated that 650,000 people survived the attacks.
The fate of the survivors (hibakusha) was hidden for years, but in 1956 local hibakusha associations, along with victims of nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific, formed Nihon Hidankyo.
Korean victims ignored
While Nihon Hidankyo campaigns for all the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading Korean anti-nuclear and anti-war activists were disappointed that the Nobel Prize organisation has made no mention of the tens of thousands of Koreans killed and injured in the bombings.
Large numbers of Koreans were forcibly mobilised by the Japanese occupying forces in Korea to work in Japanese arms factories.
In an October 15 statement, Shim Jin-tae, chairperson of the Hapcheon Chapter of the Korea Atomic Bombs Victim Association, along with: Shim Jin-tae, director of Hapcheon Atomic Bomb Museum; Lee Tae-jae, chairperson of the Korean Association of Atomic Bomb Victim Descendants; Han Jung Soon, chairperson of the Korea Second-Generation Atomic Bomb Patients Association; and Lee Nam-jae, director of the Hapcheon Peace House, congratulated Nihon Hidankyo, but called for recognition and compensation for the Korean victims.
“Korea has the second largest number of atomic bomb victims in the world. More than 100,000 people, including Koreans who were forcibly mobilised [by] Japanese imperialism, are victims of atomic bombs, and more than 50,000 of them were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. But its existence was not well known to the world…
“Currently, the desperate lives of the second and third generations of atomic bomb victims continue in Korea, living a hard life amid indifference from the government and society. Their parents were forcibly mobilised to Japan and exposed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where their lives were violated.”
These activists called upon the Japanese government to “take responsibility for the forced mobilisation of Korean workers and victims of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery and make an official apology”.
According to an October 16 report in the Korean publication , Korean survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing were largely left out of restitution efforts for bomb victims.
“Korean atomic bomb survivors tried filing damages lawsuits in Japanese courts, but those lawsuits were rejected on the grounds of an agreement reached by South Korea and Japan in 1965 that purported to settle outstanding claims.
“Korea’s survivors don’t have much time left.
“In particular, very few of the ‘first generation’ of atomic bomb survivors are still with us today. Korea’s National Human Rights Commission estimated in 2005 that there were 7,500 or so living atomic bomb survivors in the country. But according to figures released by the Red Cross last year, only 1,834 are still living.”
The Korean activists also demanded that the US government “formally apologise and compensate civilians for their anti-human and anti-life nuclear bombings” and for all the nuclear-armed states to sign the TPNW.
Lee Jong Kuen, who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as a 16-year-old Korean railway worker, described what he experienced as "hell" (see video account below). Before he passed away in 2022, he spoke to audiences around the world through the project. His message: "The abolition of nuclear weapons is an absolute necessity, it must be done."