[80 Years After the Atomic Bombing: Relay Essays]Passing on the hope for peace, Nassrine Azimi, co founder/coordinator, Green Legacy Hiroshima
Jul. 26, 2025
In October 2024 I read a daunting article, result of a 6-month investigation by the New York Times, on the ongoing nuclear weapon modernization in the United States.
A few weeks later the Nihon Hidankyo won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. When I heard the news I confess I wept, struggling with two contradictory feelings.
On the one hand it felt so well-deserved. Yet at the same time, with rising tensions and nuclear-weapon countries all ‘modernizing’ their arsenal, it seemed so little, so late.
It reminded me of the long path ahead, of how the hibakusha never give up, and of how past Nobel Peace Prize awardees, despite setbacks, sacrifices or even death, have never given up, either.
Let us remember some of their names, we must never forget.
The brave Iranian lawyer Narges Mohammadi, winner of the 2023 prize, in and out of the regime’s prison, separated from her children for close to a decade. She is still defiant.
The gentle Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatsiki, co-winner of the 2022 prize, also still in prison, and also unrepentant.
The heroic Dr. Denis Mukwege and the Yazidi activist Nadia Murad, winners of the 2018 prize, still fighting against sexual violence in times of conflict.
ICAN — the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and winner of the 2017 award — still campaigning, despite the depressing rise in nuclear weapon arsenal development.
The 2010 awardee, the lyrical and courageous Chinese philosopher and literary critic Liu Xiaobo, who died in 2017, after languishing in government prisons for years.
The list goes on. These heroes never gave up, and neither should we.
With the kinds of cruel men in power now, misgoverning in so many parts of the world, sometimes our peace efforts may feel desperate, quixotic even, removed from reality.
Yet every time I feel despair, I visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. For a tree-campaigner and avid student of architecture like myself, the Peace Park is healing— a vivid reminder of all the beauty that nature’s generosity and mankind’s intelligence could bring forth, if only we tried.
Those of us living in Hiroshima or Nagasaki have a mission, to keep reminding of the perils of nuclear war, but also of the promises of peace. I find the energy to continue in the hopeful faces of my students and young colleagues, in the architecture of Tange Kenzo, and every time a new Green Legacy Hiroshima partner plants a single seed of the hibakujumoku, somewhere around the world.
A few weeks later the Nihon Hidankyo won the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. When I heard the news I confess I wept, struggling with two contradictory feelings.
On the one hand it felt so well-deserved. Yet at the same time, with rising tensions and nuclear-weapon countries all ‘modernizing’ their arsenal, it seemed so little, so late.
It reminded me of the long path ahead, of how the hibakusha never give up, and of how past Nobel Peace Prize awardees, despite setbacks, sacrifices or even death, have never given up, either.
Let us remember some of their names, we must never forget.
The brave Iranian lawyer Narges Mohammadi, winner of the 2023 prize, in and out of the regime’s prison, separated from her children for close to a decade. She is still defiant.
The gentle Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatsiki, co-winner of the 2022 prize, also still in prison, and also unrepentant.
The heroic Dr. Denis Mukwege and the Yazidi activist Nadia Murad, winners of the 2018 prize, still fighting against sexual violence in times of conflict.
ICAN — the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and winner of the 2017 award — still campaigning, despite the depressing rise in nuclear weapon arsenal development.
The 2010 awardee, the lyrical and courageous Chinese philosopher and literary critic Liu Xiaobo, who died in 2017, after languishing in government prisons for years.
The list goes on. These heroes never gave up, and neither should we.
With the kinds of cruel men in power now, misgoverning in so many parts of the world, sometimes our peace efforts may feel desperate, quixotic even, removed from reality.
Yet every time I feel despair, I visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. For a tree-campaigner and avid student of architecture like myself, the Peace Park is healing— a vivid reminder of all the beauty that nature’s generosity and mankind’s intelligence could bring forth, if only we tried.
Those of us living in Hiroshima or Nagasaki have a mission, to keep reminding of the perils of nuclear war, but also of the promises of peace. I find the energy to continue in the hopeful faces of my students and young colleagues, in the architecture of Tange Kenzo, and every time a new Green Legacy Hiroshima partner plants a single seed of the hibakujumoku, somewhere around the world.
