NAGASAKI - Nihon Hidankyo, Japan's leading group of atomic bomb survivors, renewed its pledge Monday to continue its efforts toward realizing a world free of nuclear weapons as it marked the 70th anniversary of its founding.
"It is each citizen of world who will build a human society without nuclear weapons and wars. We will keep calling for it as long as we are alive," the group, formally known as the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, said in a statement.
The grassroots movement led by the group, which has focused on sharing the testimonies of survivors across the country and abroad, has contributed to the creation of an international taboo against the use of nuclear weapons.
The group, established in Nagasaki on Aug. 10, 1956, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2024 "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."
Around 214,000 people are estimated to have died by the end of 1945 due to the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9 of that year, toward the end of World War II.
"Nuclear bombs were dropped because there was a war. We must not engage in war anymore," Shigemitsu Tanaka, an 85-year-old co-chairman of the group, said at a press conference in Nagasaki, calling for greater public awareness of the issue.
In the statement, Hidankyo urged the Japanese government to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, calling it the "historic responsibility" of the atomic-bombed country and the "first step toward a world of peace."
In addition to compensation for the victims of the atomic bombings, the group has also called for Japan's pacifist Constitution to be maintained, claiming the government of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is aiming to revise it and change the country's nonnuclear principles without sufficient debate.
The government is reportedly reconsidering the three principles of not possessing, producing or allowing nuclear weapons in Japan, ahead of the revision of key national security documents by the end of the year.
Hidankyo adheres to a pair of basic demands adopted in 1984 -- demanding that the state, which started the war, should compensate victims for the damage caused by the atomic bombs, and calling for the immediate abolition of nuclear weapons.
With the average age of atomic bomb survivors standing at 86.66 as of the end of March, according to the welfare ministry, Hidankyo and local chapters are aiming to decide on its future course around next year.
