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Mr. Hayashida served as campaign leader of the Hibakusha Appeal, a signature-collecting campaign from 2016 to 2020 calling on all nations to ratify the treaty to ban and abolish nuclear weapons, and collected 13.7 million signatures with other groups, including the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo).

I had a valuable experience during the campaign. In addition to collecting signatures, I held meetings and visited A-bomb survivor organizations across Japan to explain why the treaty is needed and the significance of it. In particular, I learned a lot from Mikiso Iwasa (died in 2020 at the age of 91), one of the initiators of the Hibakusha Appeal and former co-chairperson of Nihon Hidankyo. He told me to learn about the history of the organization, so I read books and asked him questions where I wanted to know more details. It was like a college seminar.

Born and raised in Nagasaki City, Mr. Hayashida became a High School Peace Ambassador. He has been actively involved in overseas campaigning since he was a teenager, and has seen A-bomb survivors calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons up close.

I feel the people of the world have a “strength” image of nuclear weapons, and some countries still use the weapon as a means of threatening others. I want the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Nihon Hidankyo to be an opportunity to change such value. We have to appeal to the world for the need to look at the issue from a human perspective; how people died in the bombings and the suffering that the survivors went through.

When war breaks out, A-bomb survivors are always on the side of the citizens living on the battlefield whose lives are taken by bullets, and it is not a matter of which country is right. They teach us how to face the world.

As an approach toward a world free of nuclear weapons, he focuses on the long-standing struggle of the Hidankyo, which has overcome the theory of “endurance of suffering,” the idea that people should bear the war damage equally, and sought state compensation from the national government for the damage caused by the atomic bombings.

A-bomb survivors were not born of a natural disaster or an infectious disease. If the state admits a cause-and-effect relationship between the war and the atomic bombings, then it leads to feelings of strangeness as to why the United States, which exposed children and private citizens to the bomb, will not contribute a single yen to relieve them.

I would venture to say that overcoming the theory of “endurance of suffering” means discussing how troublesome it is to make the next A-bombed site. Is it a good choice for human beings to use a nuclear weapon? Once used, of course, a lot of people would be killed, but we also need to talk about the foolishness of the weapon from various angles, including the issue of compensation.

The Nobel Committee mentioned that one of the reasons for awarding the prize to the Nihon Hidankyo is their efforts to pass down the legacy of their experience to younger generations. Mr. Hayashida will be the only young person to attend the award ceremony as a representative of the organization.

People say young people are indifferent to nuclear issues, but I am not pessimistic about it at all. Young people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the students who visited the A-bombed cities on a school trip understand the life of each victim and the hardship experienced by the survivors, which is the result of the peace education accumulated by the survivors. It is important to support these young people, who are rare in the world and have great power.

By attending the ceremony, I want to say that the issue of nuclear weapons concerns everyone, not just A-bomb survivors.

(Interviewed by Michio Shimotaka, Staff Writer)

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Mitsuhiro Hayashida
Mr. Hayashida, whose grandfather is a survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, currently runs Peace Education Lab Nagasaki, a general incorporated association that provides peace education programs through experience to students on a school trip. He lives in Nagasaki City and is 32 years old.

(Originally published on November 24, 2024)