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OPINION
Nobel Peace Prize Honors Activists Who Helped Establish the ‘Nuclear Taboo’
For decades atomic bomb survivors have been speaking truth to power, now it’s our turn
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize goes to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese organization whose members are atom bomb survivors. Their activism brought global awareness to the effects of nuclear radiation and helped establish the idea that using nuclear weapons is the ultimate taboo.
It’s been 79 years since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the decades since, members of Nihon Hidankyo have borne witness to its consequences. They have bravely spoken of the societal stigma, emotional scars, and physical turmoil they’ve endured throughout their life. This hasn’t been easy.
Reliving the painful memories of those two events and their aftermath is not something that every hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor) has been willing to do. Both of my wife’s parents were hibakusha: her father a young boy on the day Hiroshima was bombed; her mother a young girl on the day Nagasaki was bombed three days later. During the 41 years that I knew them they never spoke of those days.
Their way of dealing with the gruesome images they saw, and the agony of family members dying in…
