Hidankyo Delegation Returns Home after Nobel Award Ceremony

Nagasaki, Dec. 13 (Jiji Press)--A delegation from the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, or Nihon Hidankyo, returned home on Friday after receiving the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize at the award ceremony in the Norwegian capital of Oslo on Tuesday.

At a press conference in the southwestern Japan city of Nagasaki later on Friday, Shigemitsu Tanaka, an 84-year-old co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, said, "It will be wonderful if (Nihon Hidankyo's acceptance of the prize) becomes a driving force for creating a world without nuclear weapons."

The medal awarded at the ceremony was "heavy," Tanaka recalled. "I also felt the weight of responsibility."

While expressing his intention to continue campaigning for the abolition of nuclear weapons, Tanaka called on young people to "inherit the feelings of atomic bomb survivors and expand (the nuclear abolition movement) more and more."

Meanwhile, Tanaka criticized the Japanese government for "turning its back" on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. "I want Japan, the only country to have suffered atomic bombings, to face the treaty squarely," he said.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]