Commemoration of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese organization of atomic bombing survivors.*

Commemoration of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese organization of atomic bombing survivors.*

Researched by Dr Abe V Rotor

The United States dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, destroying the city and killing 140,000 people. A second attack three days later on Nagasaki killed 70,000 more people.

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"If only that child is alive today..."  

Song presented by schoolchildren at the Nagasaki Memorial, 

August 8, 2024

1. In solemn memory of the victims of WWII Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.”

 

Atomic bomb obliterates Hiroshima, ends WWII, immediately killing 80,000 people.

                       

 Among the few buildings that survived after the plutonium

 bomb decimated Nagasaki is the Christian church.

"Peace is the world's heritage." 

- Nagasaki survivor (79th anniversary message, August 8, 2024 

at the bomb's memorial site)

2. Memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-Bombing

Enshrined in an Old Industry  

I was a very young child barely 5, in a small town in the Philippines, youngest in the family of three, when this dreadful, ignominious incident took place. I was sort of helping my widowed father in our small basi wine cellar.  

Impressions, innocent they may be in early age, seek their true expressions in later age and may remain indelible. As these become integrated with those of others and the whole of humanity for that matter, they become public images which we know today 79 years after.  

When I retired from government service and from the academe, and returned to my ancestral home, a scenario of my childhood about the Second World War, flashed in my mind like a nightmare. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-Bombing!  

On my part, reviving a dying art and industry, is my humble compassion with the victims, and a small contribution to world peace. 

Basi wine brewed in commemoration of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings' 75th anniversary in 2017. One jar (250 liters) is still undergoing aging to this day. This year marks the 79th anniversary of the apocalyptic incidents that ended World War II in 1945.  Living with Nature wine cellar, San Vicente, Ilocos Sur.)

 

Basi wine undergoing aging in glazed jars (burnay) in an 18th century wine cellar 

- a tourists' attraction. Living with Nature Center, San Vicente, Ilocos Sur

 

Basi and fruit wine for balikbayan, (returning and visiting residents) 

and tourists

"Never again..."

António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations,

79th Nagasaki commemoration message

"Japan to lead a world without nuclear weapon..."

- PM Fumio Kishida's message Nagasaki Memorial Aug 8, 2024 ~

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ANNEX 1
Nihon Hidankyo Facts
Ill. Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach

Nihon Hidankyo
The Nobel Peace Prize 2024
Founded: 1956
Residence at the time of the award: Tokyo, Japan

Prize motivation: “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” (Prize share: 1/1)
For demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.

Aftermath of A-bombing of Hiroshima
The two American atomic bombs that were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 killed approximately 120 000 people. A comparable number died later of burn and radiation injuries. It is estimated that 650 000 people survived the attacks. These survivors are known as Hibakusha in Japanese.

The fate of the survivors was long concealed and ignored. In 1956, local Hibakusha associations along with victims of nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific formed The Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations, shortened in Japanese to Nihon Hidankyo. This grassroots movement soon became the largest and most widely representative Hibakusha organisation in Japan.

Nihon Hidankyo has two main objectives. The first is to promote the social and economic rights of all Hibakusha, including those living outside Japan. The second is to ensure that no one ever again is subjected to the catastrophe that befell the Hibakusha.

Through personal witness statements, Nihon Hidankyo has carried out extensive educational work on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. Hence the motto “No more Hibakusha”.~

ANNEX 2 Hiroshima-Nagasaki A-bombing Images

 

Urakami Cathedral (Roman Catholic), Nagasaki, September, 1945.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock; Nagasaki, September, 1945.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Hiroshima streetcar, September, 1945.

J. R. Eyerman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nagasaki, Japan, September 1945.

Bernard Hoffman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

 

Acknowledgement with gratitude: Channel 58 NHK, LFE Pictures, Shutterstock, photographers Bernard Hoffman and J. R. Eyerman, Google, Internet