INTERVIEW: Hidankyo’s 93-Yr-Old Exec Resolved to Move Public Opinion

Niiza, Saitama Pref., Dec. 9 (Jiji Press)–A year after Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the Japanese group’s 93-year-old co-chair continues working hard to move public opinion toward the abolition of nuclear weapons. “We’ve seen no progress toward the abolition of nuclear weapons” since the group, formally called as the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, won the prize, Terumi Tanaka said in a recent interview. “We have to change people’s will,” said Tanaka, who has been traveling around Japan giving lectures about eliminating nuclear weapons, despite his old age. In October, Tanaka spoke at a meeting of Nihon Hidankyo in Tokyo and encouraged hibakusha atomic bomb survivors from various parts of the country to give a boost to the antinuclear movement. “We have to talk to young people and do a little more to make the movement bigger as the Norwegian Nobel Committee hoped,” Tanaka said. “Everyone, let’s work a little harder.” At the Nobel Prize award ceremony in the Norwegian capital of Oslo on Dec. 10 last year, Tanaka told the audience that eliminating nuclear weapons is the “heartfelt desire” of atomic bomb sufferers. It is believed that awarding Nihon Hidankyo the Nobel Peace Prize was intended to enhance antinuclear sentiment. But the international situation is growing tense, making it difficult to push for nuclear abolition despite the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki marking this year the 80th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings. Although Japan is the only atom-bombed country in the world, its government did not participate as an observer in a meeting of signatories to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in March. “No moves toward the abolition of nuclear weapons can been seen,” said Tanaka, who has visited many places in Japan, including in the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido and the southwestern region of Kyushu, and gave lectures without much rest in the past year. He feels people are having less dialogue. “It is not easy to move people’s heart and work to promote the movement positively,” Tanaka said. Many of the people who worked with him to realize the abolition of nuclear weapons have passed away. Nihon Hidankyo “should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 10 years earlier,” he said. After Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi took office in October, a possible revision to Japan’s three nonnuclear principles–not possessing or making nuclear weapons or allowing them to be brought into the country–has come into the spotlight. Tanaka, who describes nuclear weapons as “a devil’s tool that does not even deserve to be called a weapon,” pointed out that the nuclear ban treaty prohibits a wider scope of nuclear weapons than the Japanese nonnuclear principles. “What we have to do is have our government accede to the treaty,” he said. He thinks it is necessary to change public opinion to move the government. “We have to talk to young people and expand dialogue,” Tanaka said. “Our ultimate goal is to never allow nuclear weapons to exist in the world.” END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]