Nihon Hidankyo awarded Nobel Peace Prize: Materials tracing movement’s history preserved by No More Hibakusha Project draw attention after prize decision
Nov. 14, 2024
Total of 18,000 items preserved, including original manuscript of founding declaration, photos of demonstration
by Shinya Hori, Staff Writer
The Tokyo-based, non-profit organization No More Hibakusha Project, which collects and preserves materials related to the A-bomb survivor (hibakusha) movement, is drawing attention. The project group preserves a large number of materials that convey the history of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo). Numerous requests to peruse the materials have been made to the NPO from throughout Japan.
The group preserves around 18,000 such items in its archive facilities, located in Tokyo’s Nakano Ward and in Saitama City. The archived materials include the original manuscript of Nihon Hidankyo’s founding declaration of 1956, as well as photographs of an anti-nuclear demonstration held with around one million participants in New York in 1982.
Other important materials archived by the group include traces of revisions to the Nihon Hidankyo organization’s fundamental demand for enactment of the Atomic Bomb Victims Relief Law, as well as opinion statements gathered by Nihon Hidankyo from local A-bomb survivors’ groups throughout Japan. In the period after the October 11 announcement that Nihon Hidankyo had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the NPO said it has received seven inquiries from within Hiroshima Prefecture as well as from the Kanto and Kinki regions of Japan, requesting permission to look at the stored materials or speak with the person in charge of the materials.
Toshie Kurihara, 77, a staff member at the NPO’s secretariat, expressed her surprise. “We typically don’t count the number of inquiries made to our group, but we’ve never had so many one after the other like this.”
The NPO was established in 2011, based on a call made by the Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe together with A-bomb survivors. The NPO is currently supported by 439 individual and organizational members. In addition to the collection of such materials, the group is also working on digitizing its collections. In summer this year, the group began posting online its collections of A-bomb survivors’ personal notes about their experiences in the bombing.
At the time of its establishment, the NPO envisioned constructing a visitor center where people could view the collected materials, but that plan has not been made into a reality due to issues related to costs and candidate-site selection. Ms. Kurihara, who at one time worked as a clerical staff member for the Nihon Hidankyo organization, said, “It is important to communicate the contents of the valuable materials related to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Hidankyo.” Her hope for construction of the center continues to grow.
(Originally published on November 14, 2024)
