YANY / Hibakusha Stories as a partner of ICAN wins the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize

L TO R: SANDY PARKER, KATHLEEN SULLIVAN, BLAISE DUPUY, SETSUKO THURLOW, ROBERT CROONQUIST & ANDREW THURLOW — AT THE GRAND HOTEL, OSLO, CELEBRATING AFTER SETSUKO DELIVERED HER NOBEL LECTURE
ICAN WINS THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. Hibakusha Stories has been involved in the campaign from its inception. In 2007, our Director Kathleen Sullivan was invited to Australia to take part in the ICAN inauguration and roll out as a public speaker for youth and general audiences. Part of her first work for the campaign was to write a series of disarmament education lesson plans that were featured on ICAN’s initial website.
Our central role has been to support hibakusha testimony, to emphasize the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons with the real life experiences of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Youth Arts New York/Hibakusha Stories has brought over 100 atomic bomb survivors to more than 50,000 high school and university students. Our website serves as an educational portal, documenting hibakusha testimony, archiving our unique work in the field and providing curriculum. The individual achievements of our team members reach out even further in film, dance, visual art, policy creation, community building and more. To our knowledge, Hibakusha Stories is the only project in the whole of the United States whose sole purpose is to highlight atomic bomb testimony through the arts, inspiring action for nuclear disarmament.
We have had the exceptional honor to support many atomic bomb survivors in sharing their stories of hope, compassion and inspiration. Among them, Setsuko Thurlow has played a vital and central role in the ICAN family. In addition to her first hand experience as a Hiroshima survivor, Setsuko provides an acute awareness of the political and historical significance of nuclear weapons, paired with an intellectual rigor that has characterized her tireless advocacy — for her entire life. Specific to the Ban treaty movement we have supported Setsuko’s participation in international gatherings and conferences and at the United Nations in Geneva and New York.
A few milestones in this regard include:
What extraordinary progress over a relatively short period of time, lead by our colleagues and partners around the world in the ICAN family. During this time, and just before Ban Treaty negotiations would commence at the UN in New York, Setsuko received the Ahmadiyya Muslim Peace Prize in London for her work on nuclear disarmament.
For decades of borrowed time, non-governmental organizations worldwide have educated the public, lobbied governments and pursued strategies to warn people of the earth-destroying hazards of nuclear weapons and to build a world free of these instruments of omnicide. Hibakusha Stories’ role has been two-fold, to educate youth and the general public on the realities of nuclear weapons production, use and threat of use. We’ve also supported the voices of those who survived hell on earth with the fervent and active hope to share their experience so that others would never suffer as they did. This selfless act of courage has not only inspired thousands of young people where we have helped facilitate hibakusha testimony, but has changed the course of history through the adoption of the The Treaty on the Prohibition on Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), inspired truly by the compassion and conviction of atomic bomb survivors; Setsuko Thurlow chief among them.
Our work continues but has been buoyed by the Nobel Peace Prize that we share with anti-nuclear campaigners everywhere, and especially hibakusha and nuclear test survivors. Their enduring witness inspires us not only in our work for nuclear abolition, but to be better people; to be more kind and more loving as we use our energy to protect life on earth, and the future itself through the total elimination of nuclear weapons. As Setsuko said on the day the Ban treaty was adopted: “Together, let us go forth and change the world!”

Elayne White Goméz, President of the United Nations Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination, and Sestuko Thurlow upon the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, UNHQ, July 7, 2017 photo © Kathleen Sullivan

Setsuko Thurlow, ICAN Civil Society Forum, Vienna, Austria, December, 2014. photo © Robert Croonquist

Setsuko Thurlow, Newcomers High School, Long Island City, NY, December, 2011. photo © Robert Croonquist

Miyako Taguchi and Robert Croonquist with the replica of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki which they created for ICAN in recognition of nuclear weapons joining chemical and biological weapons as banned by UN treaty, NYC, July 7, 2017. photo © Robert Croonquist

Setsuko Thurlow challenging the Japanese government’s position on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, Vienna, Austria, December, 2014. photo © Robert Croonquist

Setsuko Thurlow, Japan Society, NYC, May, 2015. photo © Paule Saviano

Setsuko Thurlow, Newcomers High School, Long Island City, NY, December, 2011. photo © Robert Croonquist

Kathleen Sullivan and Setsuko Thurlow, Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY, November 2014. photo © Robert Croonquist

Setsuko Thurlow and a banner she takes everywhere listing the names of her classmates from Hiroshima Jogakuin High School who perished on August 6, 1945, Vienna International School, Vienna, Austria, December, 2014. photo © Robert Croonquist
