a day ago
Nobel committee chair calls for listening to voices of Hibakusha
Norwegian Nobel Committee chair Jorgen Frydnes delivered a speech at Sophia University in Tokyo on Sunday, highlighting the need to listen to the voices of hibakusha, who survived the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Hibakusha are "not only victims of war" but also "witnesses and teachers," Frydnes, 40, said during the Nobel Peace Prize Conference, hosted by the Norwegian Nobel Institute, which serves as the secretariat of the committee.
"You (hibakusha) have turned ashes into testimony and testimony into global awareness. Over time, an international norm took shape ... that stigmatizes the use of nuclear weapons as morally unacceptable. That norm is often referred to as the nuclear taboo," the committee chair noted.
"The taboo is fragile, and memory fades. That is why we must listen (to the voices of hibakusha), especially now," he added.
As the world is "at the edge of a new, more unstable nuclear age," Frydnes said, "We must return to the truth at the heart of the hibakusha's message."
"We know that survivors are aging. Time is precious. That makes the task of preservation (of hibakusha's memories) even more sacred," he also said.
Emphasizing the importance of passing on hibakusha's memories, Frydnes called young people the "future custodians" of those memories.
Frydnes is visiting Japan after the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, also known as Nihon Hidankyo, won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, and before the 80th anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, respectively.
According to Frydnes, he is the first from the committee to visit the country of a winner of the prize.
The Nobel committee chair visited the two atomic-bombed cities earlier this month, laying flowers at the cenotaphs for the victims and interacting with hibakusha.
During the conference on Sunday, Nihon Hidankyo co-chair Terumi Tanaka, 92, expressed hope that people in the next generation will continue the group's activities.
