Nobel Peace Prize winner: Gaza like Japan after U.S. atomic bombs

Toshiyuki Mimaki, co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese organization honored with the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize for its anti-nuclear activism, drew comparisons between the plight of children in Gaza and those impacted by the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

“In Gaza, bleeding children are being held (by their parents). It’s like Japan 80 years ago,” Mimaki said at a news conference in Tokyo. “Children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki lost their fathers in the war and their mothers in the bombings. They became orphans.”

Mimaki expressed his belief that “the dedicated individuals working in Gaza” should have received the Peace Prize, specifically mentioning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), also a nominee for the award.

Mimaki was three years old when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, killing over 200,000 including deaths from radiation poisoning. 

Three days later, another bomb hit Nagasaki, killing an additional 100,000. About 70,000 of those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were enslaved Korean laborers.

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement representing survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known as Hibakusha.

Nihon Hidankyo, founded in 1956, has been a voice for atomic bomb survivors, providing testimony of the horrors of nuclear warfare and advocating for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.