I recently went to the Hiroshima museum. I had originally thought that people simply vaporized when the bomb hit, but that is not the case. The museum shows how people's skin simply sloughed off and some were holding parts in their hands as they walked around to find their loved ones.<p>But the worst part was radiation poisoning. Many that did not initially get hit and burned directly went towards the center of the city to find their families and over the course of days, months and years, they almost always died a slow, painful death, with their teeth falling out and their skin and organs becoming necrotic.<p>Truly, everyone should visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki at some point, if only to understand what true horrors nuclear weapons create. And those are only atomic weapons of the 1940s, the hydrogen bombs we have today that fuse instead of fiss are orders of magnitude more powerful, but at least those under their effects (near the epicenter) will die a quick vaporized death instantaneously.
This is indeed a very timely award. I sometimes feel like the world has forgotten that nuclear weapons still exist and are still on hair-trigger alert to obliterate major cities. Maybe the end of atmospheric testing and the success of (now defunct) weapons reduction treaties has blunted public perception to the ongoing threat that they represent, and to the need to tread carefully where nuclear powers are involved.
In "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Rhodes, a poignant point was made, originating from people like Bohr, who were definitely on the peaceful side: without demonstrating the effect of the atomic bomb, the "nuclear taboo" would not have come into existence, and the first large conflict between nuclear powers would have seen a terrible outcome. The use of the bomb was inevitable, so it was sadly better to use it in a restricted war, before the US and the CCCP would use them against each other and the rest of the world.
This is the organisation that has won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize:<p><a href="https://www.ne.jp/asahi/hidankyo/nihon/english/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ne.jp/asahi/hidankyo/nihon/english/</a>
Phenomenal choice. While 80 years is nice- it's a blip on the timescale of history.<p>I personally think we're a button click away from going back to the stone age. I know others will disagree, but it's not something you wanna take a gamble on.<p>I think it's one of the reasons we have to be self sustaining on other heavenly bodies.<p>And also why wars or proxy wars between nuclear powers are extremely foolish and should be stopped with great urgency.
At home I have a book telling stories of Dutch WW2 survivors still living today. One of them was an eye witness account of the Hiroshima bomb. He was a POW and worked in a quarry or mine on the outskirts of town. He saw a single plane fly over. A bomb dropped with a parachute attached. Moments later he was flung to the back of the quarry and the city was gone. I would never have guessed there were eyewitnesses like this, let alone coutrymen of mine.
One of my friends grandmothers was an atomic bomb survivor - she was just a baby when the bomb hit and was blind the rest of her life.<p>One thing I was surprised by was the number of survivors and also that there was at least one person who survived both bombs [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi</a>
The Hiroshimia/Nagasaki situation is one of the best examples I can think of with plenty of evidence of the "history is written by the winners" concept.<p>It has been justified repeatedly over the years both in terms of relativism ("The firebombing of Tokyo killed more people, yet isn't so controversial"), and in terms of hypotheticals becoming certainties ("The empire was never going to surrender without a massive fight. The US anticipated unprecedented losses from an invasion of the main island, and is still giving out purple hearts printed in anticipation of this invasion")<p>In the end the historical narrative was that dropping the bombs was necessary to end the war, as written by the winners.<p>The reality is that we just don't know what would've happened if the US waited. Japan was not an active threat any longer. What was? The Soviet Union that would've certainly "helped" invade Japan, and would've also demanded to carve it up post-war the way they did with Germany.<p>From evaluating the overall evidence it seems pretty clear that this is what was driving the urgency to drop the bomb, not once, but twice.<p>The irony is that it's entirely possible that for the population of Japan this ended up a better outcome than having half of it face the "East Germany" scenario for the next 40 years.<p>And while the "blight" of having actually used nuclear weapons to kill civilians may be on the US forever as the only nation to have done so, the horrors of Hiroshima or Nagasaki almost certainly helped prevent nuclear weapon usage throughout the cold war. If they were never tried, it's almost certain that either the US or the USSR would've been itchy to be the first in some future engagement, and then who knows what would've happened.<p>So the truth is messy. My position is that the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings were NOT necessary to end WW2 and did not reduce the overall bloodshed within THAT conflict. But this action counterintuitively helped improve Japan's prosperity over the rest of the 20th century and may have reduced the likelihood of an actual nuclear war over the rest of the Cold War.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings...<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi</a>
I watched the film “Threads” last night, anyone in any doubt about the horrific consequences of a nuclear exchange should watch it. The speed at which society falls apart is simply terrifying. Those poor souls unlucky to be in a war zone will understand better than I ever will. The world needs a new order.
Congratulations to Nihon Hidankyo!<p>As said in the announcement, even 80 years after those bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we still need to highlight the dangers of nuclear weapons.<p>The threat and use of such weapons is still allowed by customary international law. Maybe movements like this will help change this sad fact. There has been progress in this direction. However, of course, nuclear-weapon states have been vehemently opposed to that, although they are obliged to negotiate a general and complete nuclear disarmament.
I visited the Hiroshima museum last year. They've got a set of stone steps, a person was sat there when the bomb went off and they were simply vaporised. The stone steps bear the residue of the person, almost like a shadow.
Of course the reminder of the impact there and the ongoing risk is nice but is this really a relevant and current choice? Why not last year? Why not ten years ago? What success have they even had? Considering where we are right now.
This isn't a group making an impact on the ground anywhere right now. Many of the winners in recent years have been civil & human rights activists in real fights on the ground in their countries/regions. The public will take the reminder but mostly shrug the news off.
As some other commenters have pointed out:
It is lamentable that the focus is almost always on the atomic bombing itself instead of why it came to that point at all.<p>Many Asian countries feel scant sympathy toward Japan. From Indonesia to Malaysia to the Philipipines or even worse and for much longer, in Korea and China. In each of these countries the Japanese perpetrated massacre, forced labour, gang rape and forced prostitution in the millions. Even European women who were stranded in their former colonies were not spared. In fact their diaries are the foremost historical sources.<p>Their brutality is such that the hatred towards colonialist European nations were ameliorated and pretty much forgotten these days. It's sickening to me that outside East and Southeast Asia itself, most of the world only remember Nagasaki and Hiroshima when it comes to casualties in the Pacific theatre of WW2.<p>This sympathy felt even more misplaced considering even to this very day, unlike Germany, Japanese historiograpy deliberately downplays Japan brutality during occupation or that there was any aggression on their part at all. Most Japanese college mates in the US that I've talked to were not even aware that Japan occupied my country for years resulting in millions of casualties.
Not sure if that organisation is making progress, sounds like a smoke bomb, to please people who care about these meaningless rewards<p><a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3852169/joint-statement-of-the-security-consultative-committee-22/" rel="nofollow">https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/385216...</a>
The chances of a nuclear bomb being used in the next 30 years is at least 90%. That's an opinion so don't ask for a link.<p>Why? Purely because of the combinatorial math of proliferation, and the likelihood of either an accident or a crazy person getting control of a bomb.<p>I wish it weren't so, but eventually your luck runs out.
Nuclear weapons are not used not because they are morally unacceptable, but rather because of MAD and their limited efficiency when used against armies.<p>If you wanted to give a Nobel Prize to someone for preventing nuclear wars, give it to Nuclear Winter researchers and military analysts.
I have no issue with this laureate, but it is sad that the comittee could not find someone deserving that is working on a more current conflict. I guess this is not a positive outlook for the current state international conflicts.
What makes me really angry are the NPCs that constantly try to justify the bombing and that it was "painless". When I visited Hiroshima and I read about what had happened, I realized our history books were egregiously nonchalant about quite possibly the worst acts of crime against humanity.<p>Now that it appears the world is once again creeping towards nuclear stand-off this time with a very large non-zero chance that a country pushed towards existential crisis will not hesitate to detonate a nuclear device, it makes the people justifying Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuking as completely deranged.<p>I urge y'all to visit Hiroshima and see first hand the horrors of nuclear terrorism. When you attack civilians directly, its terrorism no matter what side of the fence you are on.
It's a bit unclear to me why you need an organization that advocates against nuclear weapons. I'd argue the “nuclear taboo” is just the product of.. I don't just seeing one nuclear test video? It doesn't take the cataloging of witness testimony to see it's terror (though that may be important in its own right)<p>I'm not intimately familiar with Japanese self-perceptions - but from the outside it seems like post-WW2 the country really leaned into a view that "nuclear weapons are terrible" to the point of distraction - instead of a more self-reflective "nationalism is terrible" or something along those lines. There seems to be much less anxiety about preventing getting into a similar situations that triggered WW2: neo-colonial military bullying and domination of neighbors, xenaphobic oppression of ethnic groups, sycophantic following of cultural leaders etc. and an intense worry about the more tangeable use of nuclear weapons - which I'd argue is something that even if it were to come to pass would almost certainly never involve the Japanese people.<p>I wonder how this seeming diversion of public attention is perceived in Japan itself.<p>As I understand it, the anti-nationalist narrative was repressed due to anti-communist agendas of the occupation forces (ex: freeing of nationalist war criminals)<p>Would be curious to hear from anyone Japanese on the topic
Nice to see they do somehow recognize the whole association of people and not push to much about a single person. But the committee is trapped with the rules that push for this ridiculous individual centric point of view which is so out of touch with measurable realities considering what forces actually come at play to anything with large social impact.<p>Also on a side note:<p>>the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen.<p>Well, first thing, this is a quite restrictive anthropocentric and restrictive POV for what count for a weapon. Putting appart all things that triggered previous mass extinction as they might not really fit the expectation of weapon and "ever witnessed as implied agent", ok. But let's consider European invasion of America: while this was not intended and per design, it somehow greatly leveraged on bacteriological weapons.<p>Currently humanity is also at war with biodiversity, and the scale is massive and worldwide, using a large panel of tools.<p>Of course we are more prone to empathy to our fellow humans, and nuclear weapons are abominations.