TOKYO: Japanese atomic bomb survivors’ group Nihon Hidankyo said Monday a 30-strong delegation will collect its Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo after a crowd-funding campaign to pay their travel costs.
Those going to the December 10 ceremony will include group co-chair Terumi Tanaka, 92, who witnessed the 1945 Nagasaki bombing as a child, as well as other survivors and their children.
With money provided by the Nobel Committee not enough to cover the travel expenses of such a large delegation, the group launched a crowd-funding campaign, which has so far raised over 36 million yen ($240,000).
Hidankyo member Jiro Hamasumi, 78, told reporters on Monday that the group was “very surprised” that the campaign raised 10 million yen on the first day alone.
“I’m delighted to say that our delegation will be able to go,” Hamasumi said.
He was in his mother’s womb when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
His father, who was at work just a few hundred metres from the epicentre, was killed.
“I hope I can speak from my own experience (in Oslo) about our desire not to see another victim, and that nuclear weapons must never be used,” Hamasumi said.
The grassroots anti-nuclear organisation was established in 1956 and is the only nationwide association of A-bomb survivors, who are known as hibakusha.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee nominated Nihon Hidankyo “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again”. – AFP
