Nobel Prize-Winning Japanese Nuclear Survivors See Themselves in Gaza

The decision of the Truman administration to use nuclear weapons on the civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 is one of the great stains on the United States. There are other blots on our escutcheon, including the perfidious treatment of Native Americans and the enslavement of millions of Africans. But to be the only nation ever to have deployed nuclear weapons, and to be the only one to have bombed densely inhabited cities with them, makes the crime pointed and dramatic rather than unfolding over decades.

The survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of whom there are still 106,825, were known as hibakusha, literally “bombing victims.” They were often stigmatized by other Japanese and sometimes had complicated love lives. Some had disfiguring burns on their bodies or faces. They were thought to be at special risk of dying young from the effects of the nuclear weapons, and so had trouble finding mates. Some hibakusha hid their past. Some of those willing to come out of the closet formed organizations to lobby for the banning of nuclear weapons.

On Friday in Oslo, Norway, it was announced that Nihon Hidankyo, which the newspaper Asahi Shimbun refers to as “the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations,” won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza, however, hung over the victory. According to the Irish Times’s David McNeill in Tokyo, when Toshiyuki Mimaki, the co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, watched the ceremony on television and heard that his organization had won, he said tearfully, “It can’t be real, I felt so sure it would be the people of Gaza.”

Mimaki’s certainty that the “people of Gaza” would compete successfully for the Nobel with the survivors of a nuclear attack speaks volumes about how the genocide is viewed outside the North Atlantic world. And, to be sure, the sheer tonnage of bombs dropped on Gaza since October 2023 has exceeded that of the two atomic bombs deployed in 1945.

Mimaki accepted the award on behalf of Nihon Hidankyo and gave an acceptance speech in which he pointed out that “nuclear weapons can be used by terrorists. For example, if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won’t end there. Politicians should know these things.” He went on to compare the plight of Gazan children to that of Japanese children at the end of World War 2.

“In Gaza, bleeding children are being held [by their parents]. It’s like in Japan 80 years ago.”

“When it comes to Israel and the Middle East, regardless of the specifics, the underlying issue is conflict and the act of doing things that people abhor,” he added (ChatGPT was used to translate the computer-generated YouTube transcript). “Firstly, it is about killing people. This idea of killing others before being killed oneself — that is essentially what war is. Also, war involves destroying homes, demolishing buildings and taking down bridges. These actions constitute war. Japan, too, fought a major war 80 years ago, and it is said that 3 million people lost their lives. Since then, we have upheld our constitution, aiming for a world without war. I hope Japan can become a leader in promoting peace globally. …

“Nuclear weapons can be used by terrorists. … For example, if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won’t end there. Politicians should know these things.”

The situation in Gaza is very much on Mimaki’s mind and on the minds of other Japanese pacifists. They see civilian cities reduced to rubble from the sky and bleeding children in the arms of their parents, and it takes them right back to Aug. 6, 1945.

About 140,000 people were incinerated when the United States deployed an atomic bomb against Hiroshima that day. Three days later, some 74,000 more were turned into carbon dust in Nagasaki.

Gilad Cohen, Israel’s ambassador to Japan, criticized Mimaki’s sentiments, saying on X that Mimaki’s comparison “is outrageous and baseless.” He added, “Gaza is ruled by Hamas, a murderous terrorist organization committing a double war crime: targeting Israeli civilians, including women and children, while using its own people as human shields.” He accused Mimaki of dishonoring the victims of Oct. 7.

Cohen, however, is the one who misunderstands the similarities here. The Truman administration viewed Imperial Japan and generals such as Hideki Tojo (who served as prime minister during much of the war) as murderous terrorists who had launched a sneak attack that killed 2,403 Americans at Pearl Harbor, including some 68 civilians.

As for Hamas being responsible for all the Palestinian deaths in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military (!), that is a similar argument to the one made by Truman regarding Japan. It was necessary to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he said, because the United States could lose as many as a quarter of a million troops in an invasion of Japan, since the Japanese would unitedly defend the island. In essence, all the Japanese formed a human shield against any ground incursion. Therefore, it was the refusal to surrender of the former admiral, Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki, that made the U.S. forces kill those 214,000 people.

The devil made me do it, is the refrain of all genocidaires.

Mimaki will have none of it. He condemns belligerent actions, whoever takes them. But most importantly, he knows a crime against humanity when he sees one.