Vladimir Putin has frequently threatened nuclear attacks on Ukraine, while in November 2023 Israel suspended Amihai Eliyahu, a government minister, for saying that a nuclear strike on Gaza was a “possibility”.
Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, although it has never explicitly confirmed this, and it has never carried out public nuclear tests.
Survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, the only two occasions in history where nuclear weapons have been used in anger, are known in Japan as “hibakusha”.
“Hibakusha are receiving the Peace Prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again,” the committee said in a statement.
“The Hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons.”
Mr Mimaki said he hoped that the decision to give his group the Nobel Peace Prize would further efforts to abolish nuclear weapons and raise awareness of the horrors of nuclear war.
“It will be a great force to appeal to the world that the abolition of nuclear weapons and everlasting peace can be achieved. Nuclear weapons should absolutely be abolished,” he said.
‘The end of humanity’
In a statement to Reuters, Joergen Watne Frydnes, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel committee, said nuclear war was a concern but declined to name any specific countries.
“In a world ridden with conflicts, where nuclear weapons are definitely part of it, we wanted to highlight the importance of strengthening the nuclear taboo, the international norm, against the use of nuclear weapons,” he said.
Mr Frydnes: “We see it as very alarming that the nuclear taboo … is being reduced by threatening, but also the situation in the world where the nuclear powers are modernising and upgrading their arsenals. These weapons should never be used again anywhere in the world. Nuclear war could mean the end of humanity, [the] end of our civilisation.”
It follows internet speculation that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was a contender to win the prize, after it was identified as a potential front-runner by a panel of experts.
The speculation caused offence to the relatives of the victims of the Hamas massacre, who pointed to UNRWA having dismissed some of its staff due to concerns they had taken part in the attack.
After the war, Hibakusha for many decades faced discrimination in Japan as they were assumed by others to be carrying contagious or hereditary radiation sickness.
The Telegraph in 2017 interviewed a Hiroshima survivor who revealed that she avoided death in the explosion as her father woke up with a bad feeling that morning and told her to stay at home.
Keiko Ogura, who was eight years old when the US dropped the “Little Boy” nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, said: “My father had a kind of inspiration. He suspected something major was about to happen because there had been so many air-raid warnings.”
Extraordinarily, her father also survived the bombing. “He was behind a pine tree and because of that he survived,” said Ms Ogura, who went on to become the director of the Hiroshima Interpreters for Peace group.