Video Message from Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee
Jul. 24, 2025
Dear friends, distinguished guests, survivors, students, and all those gathered here in Hiroshima.
"There lies before us,"
"if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom."
"Shall we, instead, choose death,"
"because we cannot forget our quarrels?"
"We appeal as human beings to human beings: "
"Remember your humanity, and forget the rest."
These words spoken by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in 1955 echo through time with haunting clarity.
They were a call to conscience then.
They are a cry for responsibility.
This past October, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, the Confederation of Atomic Bomb Survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It was awarded for their tireless efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for their extraordinary and unwavering commitment to testifying over decades to the unspeakable humanitarian consequences of nuclear war.
Their voices, your voices, are a moral compass in a world that sometimes forgets its direction.
Through you, we remember what nuclear weapons really are, not abstract tools of deterrence, but instruments of mass death.
Through you, we are reminded that history is not a collection of statistics or slogans, but the flesh, blood and memory of individual lives.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as the first and only cities in history to suffer nuclear attack, occupy a unique place in the moral imagination of the world.
You are not only victims of war, you are witnesses and teachers, you have turned ashes into testimony, and testimony into global awareness.
You gave the world a vocabulary of never again.
Gradually, an international norm has developed that stigmatizes the use of nuclear weapons as morally unacceptable.
This norm is often referred to as the nuclear taboo.
Like other international norms, the nuclear taboo is maintained by collective agreement, by widespread moral outrage at the prospect of using nuclear weapons, and by a mutual fear of the abyss awaiting humanity if the norm is violated.
But the taboo is fragile, and it becomes some more with the passage of time.
We therefore need reminding.
Today, it is more urgent than ever to listen.
We stand, as many analysts now say, at edge of a new and unstable nuclear age.
Nuclear powers are modernizing their arsenals.
New states appear to be preparing to acquire them.
Treaties are expiring.
Threats of nuclear use have been made openly even as war rages.
In the face of this, we must return to Hiroshima, not only geographically, but morally.
Because the significance of awarding the Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo lies in this.
To lift up the human voice in a time of geopolitical noise, to anchor disarmament in memory, to recall as we and the Nobel Committee said in December, that we are not doomed by some genetic code to repeat the mistakes of the past.
We can learn.
But learning requires memory, and memory demands effort.
That is why your work to collect and preserve materials documenting the damage of the bombings, your photographs, testimonies, objects, and stories is of such a global importance.
This is not just Japanese history.
It is world history.
and it must not be lost to time, bureaucracy, or indifference.
Today's generation of students and young people cannot touch 1945, but they can read a diary.
They can hear the voice of hibakusha trembling but unbroken.
They can choose not to forget.
We know that survivors are aging.
Time is precious.
That makes the task of preservation even more sacred.
Let me say this clearly.
The work of remembrance you do in Hiroshima, through your museums, archives, literature and education is peace work.
It is part of disarmament.
It is part of building the world we want our children to live in.
As I said in Oslo in December, memory work can be an act of resistance, a force for change.
I am 40 years old.
I belong to a generation in Norway with no direct experience of war.
We grew up after the Cold War in a bubble of optimism.
That bubble has burst.
In my work, I've seen what trauma does to individuals and how societies, too, carry grief.
I've learned that if we do not confront the past, the past confronts us.
There are those who wish to forget, for convenience or for political gain, but we must not let this happen.
As the South Korean writer, Han Kang, who received the Nobel Prize in literature last year has written,
"Through our pained and silent embrace of grief"
"over the course of a whole life,"
"life is perhaps paradoxically made possible."
That is what you have done in Hiroshima.
You've made life possible, not just survival, but life with meaning, with dignity, with hope.
To all the Hibakusha here and to those who continue your work, you stood tall when others choose denial.
You refuse to be defined by victimhood.
You help the world to see with clear eyes what nuclear weapons really mean.
You are the light the world needs.
To the people of Hiroshima, your story is universal.
Your local memory is a global responsibility, and I assure you, your voice was heard in Oslo.
And it will be heard tomorrow if we have the courage to keep listening.
To the young people in this room, you are the future custodians of this memory.
You are the new stewards of this truth.
Take up the torch.
Do not let silence grow.
Tell the stories.
Study history.
Resist forgetting, and raise your voice.
Because as I said in Oslo, our survival depends on it.
Let me end here where I began with Russell and Einstein.
"Remember your humanity and forget the rest."
Before ending, on the 27th of July, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, in collaboration with Sophia University in Tokyo, is hosting a major event on nuclear disarmament.
I will be giving a keynote address alongside two representatives of last year's Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Terumi Tanaka and Michiko Kodama, both from Nihon Hidankyo.
The seminar will capture the state of affairs in nuclear disarmament, drawing on update analysis of what has been achieved, and what challenge the world is now facing.
Contributors will be leading experts from Japan, from Norway, and from around the world.
You are welcome to join.
Video Message
"There lies before us,"
"if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom."
"Shall we, instead, choose death,"
"because we cannot forget our quarrels?"
"We appeal as human beings to human beings: "
"Remember your humanity, and forget the rest."
These words spoken by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in 1955 echo through time with haunting clarity.
They were a call to conscience then.
They are a cry for responsibility.
This past October, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, the Confederation of Atomic Bomb Survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It was awarded for their tireless efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for their extraordinary and unwavering commitment to testifying over decades to the unspeakable humanitarian consequences of nuclear war.
Their voices, your voices, are a moral compass in a world that sometimes forgets its direction.
Through you, we remember what nuclear weapons really are, not abstract tools of deterrence, but instruments of mass death.
Through you, we are reminded that history is not a collection of statistics or slogans, but the flesh, blood and memory of individual lives.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as the first and only cities in history to suffer nuclear attack, occupy a unique place in the moral imagination of the world.
You are not only victims of war, you are witnesses and teachers, you have turned ashes into testimony, and testimony into global awareness.
You gave the world a vocabulary of never again.
Gradually, an international norm has developed that stigmatizes the use of nuclear weapons as morally unacceptable.
This norm is often referred to as the nuclear taboo.
Like other international norms, the nuclear taboo is maintained by collective agreement, by widespread moral outrage at the prospect of using nuclear weapons, and by a mutual fear of the abyss awaiting humanity if the norm is violated.
But the taboo is fragile, and it becomes some more with the passage of time.
We therefore need reminding.
Today, it is more urgent than ever to listen.
We stand, as many analysts now say, at edge of a new and unstable nuclear age.
Nuclear powers are modernizing their arsenals.
New states appear to be preparing to acquire them.
Treaties are expiring.
Threats of nuclear use have been made openly even as war rages.
In the face of this, we must return to Hiroshima, not only geographically, but morally.
Because the significance of awarding the Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo lies in this.
To lift up the human voice in a time of geopolitical noise, to anchor disarmament in memory, to recall as we and the Nobel Committee said in December, that we are not doomed by some genetic code to repeat the mistakes of the past.
We can learn.
But learning requires memory, and memory demands effort.
That is why your work to collect and preserve materials documenting the damage of the bombings, your photographs, testimonies, objects, and stories is of such a global importance.
This is not just Japanese history.
It is world history.
and it must not be lost to time, bureaucracy, or indifference.
Today's generation of students and young people cannot touch 1945, but they can read a diary.
They can hear the voice of hibakusha trembling but unbroken.
They can choose not to forget.
We know that survivors are aging.
Time is precious.
That makes the task of preservation even more sacred.
Let me say this clearly.
The work of remembrance you do in Hiroshima, through your museums, archives, literature and education is peace work.
It is part of disarmament.
It is part of building the world we want our children to live in.
As I said in Oslo in December, memory work can be an act of resistance, a force for change.
I am 40 years old.
I belong to a generation in Norway with no direct experience of war.
We grew up after the Cold War in a bubble of optimism.
That bubble has burst.
In my work, I've seen what trauma does to individuals and how societies, too, carry grief.
I've learned that if we do not confront the past, the past confronts us.
There are those who wish to forget, for convenience or for political gain, but we must not let this happen.
As the South Korean writer, Han Kang, who received the Nobel Prize in literature last year has written,
"Through our pained and silent embrace of grief"
"over the course of a whole life,"
"life is perhaps paradoxically made possible."
That is what you have done in Hiroshima.
You've made life possible, not just survival, but life with meaning, with dignity, with hope.
To all the Hibakusha here and to those who continue your work, you stood tall when others choose denial.
You refuse to be defined by victimhood.
You help the world to see with clear eyes what nuclear weapons really mean.
You are the light the world needs.
To the people of Hiroshima, your story is universal.
Your local memory is a global responsibility, and I assure you, your voice was heard in Oslo.
And it will be heard tomorrow if we have the courage to keep listening.
To the young people in this room, you are the future custodians of this memory.
You are the new stewards of this truth.
Take up the torch.
Do not let silence grow.
Tell the stories.
Study history.
Resist forgetting, and raise your voice.
Because as I said in Oslo, our survival depends on it.
Let me end here where I began with Russell and Einstein.
"Remember your humanity and forget the rest."
Before ending, on the 27th of July, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, in collaboration with Sophia University in Tokyo, is hosting a major event on nuclear disarmament.
I will be giving a keynote address alongside two representatives of last year's Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Terumi Tanaka and Michiko Kodama, both from Nihon Hidankyo.
The seminar will capture the state of affairs in nuclear disarmament, drawing on update analysis of what has been achieved, and what challenge the world is now facing.
Contributors will be leading experts from Japan, from Norway, and from around the world.
You are welcome to join.
Video Message
