TOKYO – Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Jorgen Watne Frydnes on Friday hailed atomic bomb survivors’ testimonies as an “inspirational” force for eliminating nuclear weapons, while urging Japan and other countries to take action against the threat they pose.
“You really feel inspirational of how can you turn memory into a force for change and a force for peace,” Frydnes said in an interview with Kyodo News in Tokyo, during his first visit to Japan. He was involved in awarding the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, Japan’s leading group of atomic bomb survivors.
Frydnes has visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki — the two cities devastated by the U.S. atomic bombing in the final days of World War II — and also met with atomic bomb survivors, including 83-year-old Nihon Hidankyo representative Toshiyuki Mimaki, and local activists working toward nuclear abolition.
As time is running out to hear directly from atomic bomb survivors, who are called hibakusha in Japanese, Frydnes said, “Now we need to listen. Tomorrow, we need to act.”
The 40-year-old also said, “Telling stories across generations and across oceans matters,” recalling how he learned about hibakusha and the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons as a child in Norway.
While expressing hope that all governments, including Japan’s, will do more to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons, he acknowledged that the path is “filled with dilemmas.”
Drawing parallels with Norway, which, as a member of NATO, relies on nuclear deterrence for protection, Frydnes said, “In countries like ourselves, it starts with the people and the inhabitants.”
Japan, the only country to have suffered nuclear attacks, advocates for a world free of nuclear weapons. However, it relies on the U.S. nuclear umbrella for deterrence and has not joined a U.N. treaty banning the weapons.
Norway has also not signed the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in 2021.
“Even though it will be a long and challenging road ahead, we should not give up on the vision that the world should be free of nuclear weapons at some point, and (there will be) no more hibakusha,” Frydnes said.
Amid rising geopolitical instability, Frydnes noted that the “nuclear taboo,” which survivors have been instrumental in establishing, is under threat.
He described awarding the Nobel Peace Prize as both sounding an “alarm bell” and “honoring those who have done a tremendous job of establishing the taboo.”
Nihon Hidankyo, or the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, received the prestigious award for what the Nobel committee called “efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”
The United States dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and detonated a second one above Nagasaki three days later. Japan surrendered six days after the Nagasaki bombing, bringing an end to World War II.
The attacks killed an estimated 214,000 people by the end of 1945, leaving numerous survivors grappling with long-term physical and mental health challenges.
AloJapan.com