(l to r) Hidankyo co-chairs Toshiki Fujimori and Terumi Tanaka, YANY President Linda S. Chapman, Nagasaki hibakusha and Hibakusha Stories member Yasuaki Yamashita, and YANY Founder Robert Croonquist at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, NYC 2015.
Photo: Paule Saviano

Hibakusha Stories & Youth Arts New York are thrilled that Nihon Hidankyo has won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. Since 2008, Hibakusha Stories has provided a forum for scores of Hidankyo members to tell their stories to upwards of 50,000 high school and university students, primarily in NYC but also Japan, Spain, Austria, Ireland, the UK, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Florida, and Vermont. The Nobel Committee emphasized the importance of atomic bomb survivors sharing their stories. Hibakusha testimony has been the centerpiece of our work. Seven years ago, our Hibakusha Stories Fellow Setsuko Thurlow gave the Nobel lecture on behalf of ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. It is very rewarding that the Nobel Committee is now recognizing the importance of the sacrifice that Japanese survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have made over the last 70 + years in shifting the nuclear narrative from deterrence to the humanitarian and environmental consequences of nuclear war. It was this narrative shift that helped frame the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in July of 2017. Over the years Hibakusha Stories, through direct testimony, concerts, exhibitions, films and other applied arts, has highlighted the testimony of these brave and tireless activists. One memorable event among many was when the Himawari Hibakusha Choir comprised of 20 survivors from Nagasaki performed, with 35 students from LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, an oratorio written by Jean Rohe for a concert we produced at the Ethical Cultural Society where a young J.Robert Oppenheimer studied, emceed by Harry Truman’s grandson, Clifton Truman Daniel. The oratorio is 30 minutes into this video. It is sung from the point of view of people beyond time and space, “the eyes that saw violence are the eyes that can envision the dawn.” For another important moment in our advocacy that centered hibakusha testimony, see our 5 minute video “If You Love this Planet” an animation by Amber Cooper-Davies of the closing address made by Setsuko on July 7 2017, when the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted at the United Nations in New York.

Kathleen Sullivan has written Statement on Nihon Hidankyo for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Read her thoughts on this momentous occasion.

Second generation hibakusha and YANY Vice President Mitchie Takeuchi.
Photo: Robert Croonquist

Mutsuko Yoshida and Nagasaki survivor and Hidankyo member Sakue Shimohara at City as School, NYC.
Photo: Janis Lewin

Hidankyo and Hibakusha Stories member Reiko Yamada with NYC high school students.
Photo: Kathleen Sullivan