Nobel prize a timely reminder, Hiroshima locals say

Members of the Nihon Hidankyo and atomic bomb survivors, assistant secretary general Toshiko Hamanaka (L) and co-chair Terumi Tanaka attend a press conference in Tokyo on October 12, 2024. The Nobel Peace Prize was on October 11 awarded to the Japanese anti-nuclear group Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha. [AFP]

Just like the dwindling group of survivors now recognised with a Nobel prize, Hiroshima's residents hope that the world never forgets the atomic bombing of 1945 -- now more than ever.

Susumu Ogawa, 84, was five when the bomb dropped by the United States all but obliterated the Japanese city 79 years ago, and many of his family were among the 140,000 people killed.

"My mother, my aunt, my grandfather, and my grandmother all died," Ogawa told AFP a day after the survivors' group Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ogawa recalls very little but the snippets he garnered from surviving relatives and others painted a hellish picture.

"All they could do was to evacuate and save their own lives, while they saw other people (perish) inside the inferno," he said.

"All nuclear weapons in the world have to be abandoned," Ogawa said. "We know the horror of nuclear weapons, because we know what happened in Hiroshima."

What is happening now in the Middle East saddens him greatly.

"Why do people fight each other?... Hurting each other won't bring anything good," he said.

'Great thing' 

On a sunny Saturday, tourists and residents strolled around the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park where "Little Boy" detonated with a force equivalent to 15,000 tonnes of TNT.

Temperatures reached an estimated 7,000 degrees Celsius (12,600 Fahrenheit). A firestorm sucked the oxygen out of the air and homes blazed for miles around.

A preserved skeleton of a building close to ground zero and a statue of a girl with outstretched arms are poignant reminders today.

Nihon Hidankyo was formed in 1956, tasked with telling the stories of "hibakusha" -- the survivors -- and pressing for a world without nuclear weapons.

Visiting the Hiroshima memorial, Kiyoharu Bajo, 69, said he hopes that the Nobel prize will help "further spread the experiences of atomic bomb survivors around the world" and persuade others to visit.

With the average age among the roughly 105,000 hibakusha still alive now 85, it is vital that young people continue to be taught about what happened, added the retired business consultant.

"I was born 10 years after the atom bomb was dropped, so there were many atom bomb survivors around me. I felt the incident as something familiar to me," he said.

"But for the future, it will be an issue."

Like rain 

Three days after Hiroshima, on August 9, 1945, the United States dropped a second nuclear weapon on the southern city of Nagasaki, killing around 74,000 people.

The bombings, the only times nuclear weapons have been used in history, were the final blow to imperial Japan and its brutal rampage across Asia. It surrendered on August 15, 1945.

Shigemitsu Tanaka was four and survived.

Today the 83-year-old is co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo and had almost given up on the group winning the Nobel, he told a packed news conference in Tokyo on Saturday.

"Our early members shared their experiences in Japan and abroad despite discrimination and their health issues. I think (their message) penetrated like rain," he said by video link.

"We heard the news on a plane... I almost gave up as it wasn't showing the news. But the words 'Hidankyo won' appeared on the screen, and I shouted 'Yes!'," he said.

Terumi Tanaka, 92, another co-chair, was 13 and at his hillside home when the bomb hit Nagasaki.

"I wanted to be a soldier... Then I experienced the atomic bomb. Five of my relatives died from it," he told the same event.

"I saw the atrocities. Bodies were everywhere," he said.

He welcomed the Nobel prize but said that the danger of a nuclear war was still very real, almost 80 years on.

"I'm a victim but you could be victims too in the future," he said.

Jiro Hamasumi's father was at work when the bomb hit Hiroshima, just a few hundred metres (yards) from the epicentre. He was killed.

"I thought of my father (when I heard about the Nobel). Not a day goes by without me remembering him. I wanted to tell him about the prize, I thought," the 78-year-old said Saturday.

Hidankyo has had to disband in 11 out of Japan's 47 prefectures, partly due to its ageing membership.

"It's tough, but I want to keep trying. I don't want Nihon Hidankyo to stop its activities," Hamasumi said.