The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a movement of atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, reflects the widespread fear that the planet has never been closer to nuclear war.
"At this moment in human history, it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen," the Nobel committee said.
In the past few weeks, Russia has lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons and warned the United States and its allies that support for Ukraine could lead to a direct conflict with Moscow that could go nuclear.
In the Middle East, Israel, which weapons experts believe has about 90 nuclear warheads, faces Iran. There has been speculation that he may attack facilities where he believes Tehran, despite its denials, is developing its atomic weapons.
And North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said this Sunday that his country will accelerate efforts to become a "military and nuclear superpower." The Federation of American Scientists estimates that Pyongyang already has 50 nuclear warheads.
"At a time when Russia is threatening to use nuclear weapons, when all nuclear weapon states are rearming, and arms control agreements are falling apart, this warning is necessary!" said Ulrich Kuhn, a weapons expert from the Institute for Peace and Security Policy in Hamburg, praising the awarding of the Nobel Prize to the Japanese movement "Nihon Hidankyo".
"Few Nobel Peace Prizes have been more timely, more deserved and more meaningful for the message they convey," said Magnus Lovold of the Norwegian Academy of International Law.
This award comes for three days before NATO starts its annual Nuclear Exercise "Steadfast Noon", in which about 60 aircraft from 13 countries, including F-35A combat aircraft and bombers B-52.
Many of the survivors of the only two nuclear bombs ever used in conflict, known in Japan as "hibakusha", have dedicated their lives to fighting for a world without nuclear weapons.
"Hibakusha help us to describe the unspeakable, to imagine the unimaginable and to somehow understand the unfathomable pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons," said the Nobel Committee.
"I can't believe this is real," said Toshiyuki Mimaki, chairman of the Nihon Hidankyo organization, at a press conference in Hiroshima, where the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, at the end of World War II.
While Mimaki said the award would make a significant contribution to his group's efforts to demonstrate that nuclear disarmament is possible, he acknowledged that many countries do not appear to be interested in a world without nuclear weapons.
"We hear countries threatening with words like, 'We will use nuclear weapons anytime,'" he said in an interview with NHK television hours after the award was announced. “The United Nations has decided that there will be five countries with nuclear weapons, but more and more countries are acquiring them. We are absolutely opposed to the idea that the world is safe because there are nuclear weapons. It is impossible to maintain peace in the world with nuclear weapons," he said.
Some will see the award as a criticism of Japan's conservative government, which relies on the US nuclear umbrella for its defense and is not among the more than 60 countries that have ratified the 2021 treaty banning the possession and use of nuclear weapons.
Between 60.000 and 80.000 people died immediately after the American B-29 “Enola Gay” bomber dropped a 15-kiloton nuclear bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and the death toll rose to 140.000 by the end of that year. Three days later, the Americans dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, killing 74.000 people.
Today, the number of people officially recognized as victims of the effects of these bombings is 344.306 in Hiroshima and 198.785 in Nagasaki.
For decades, thanks in large part to the work of the Nihon Hidankyo organization, the devastation caused by the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was widely regarded as a history lesson that the use of nuclear weapons was again too terrible to contemplate.
In Japan, hibakusha, many of whom had visible scars from radiation burns or developed radiation-related illnesses such as leukemia, were often forcibly separated from society and faced discrimination when seeking employment or marriage in the years after the war.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee regularly focuses on the issue of nuclear weapons, most recently highlighting the issue by awarding ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the award in 2017.
Beatrice Finn, former director of ICAN, posted on the X network that she cried when she heard the news of the award. She said that the award should be an incentive for as many countries as possible to join the global treaty to ban nuclear weapons.
"We still have some survivors with us, with first-hand experience of what these terrible, inhumane and illegal weapons do," Finn wrote. "We owe it to them to act now!"
This is the second Nobel Peace Prize awarded to a Japanese in the award's 123-year history, 50 years after former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato won the award in 1974 "for his contribution to the stabilization of conditions in the Pacific Rim and for the signing of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons".
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