Toshiyuki Mimaki, the chairman of Nihon Hidankyo, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, said his foremost wish was to “please abolish nuclear weapons while we are alive.”

Toshiyuki Mimaki, a Hiroshima bombing survivor, expressed surprise that those defending Gaza did not win the Nobel Peace Prize while accepting it on behalf of Nihon Hidankyo on Friday. At a press conference,

The co-chair of a Japanese anti-nuclear body, which won the Nobel Peace Prize, says “those fighting hard for peace in Gaza" should have won.

Toshiyuki Mimaki said he thought “the people working so hard in Gaza” would be honored, referring to UNRWA aid workers.

For many Japanese survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their relatives, Friday’s awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to a Japanese organization against nuclear weapons gives them hope for a new momentum to push for a

Many survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks have dedicated their lives to campaigning for nuclear disarmament. Their mission has grown more urgent as the number of living witnesses to the bombings has dwindled.

Hidankyo's Hiroshima branch chairperson, Toshiyuki Mimaki, who was standing by for the announcement, cheered and teared up when he received the news.

Growing up, he constantly heard rumours that survivors carried diseases and their future offspring might be tainted by the radiation from the August 1945 blast. Sakuma left Hiroshima to seek a new life in Tokyo.

OSLO/TOKYO >> Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, in a warning to countries that have nuclear weapons not to use them.

A Cameroonian ambassador in Japan recently visited here to congratulate the Nagasaki Prefecture chapter of the atomic bomb survivors' grou･･･