Noble Panel Head urges Japan to step up antinuclear stance.

Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, on Monday urged the Japanese government to take more steps to discourage the use of nuclear weapons amid rising global tensions.

“Japan has special responsibility in a world where the ‘nuclear taboo’ is under threat. We really believe that responsibility should be taken at a higher regard also from the Japanese authorities“, he said, also referring to the key roles of other countries in nuclear abolition. He has made the remarks at a press conference in Tokyo during his visit to Japan, following the committee’s decision last year to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, the country’s leading group of atomic bomb survivors.

Japan is the only country to have suffered nuclear attacks, and it advocates for a world without the weapons. At the same time, the country is protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella deterrence, and it has not joined a U.N. treaty banning the weapons.

Frydnes noted that responsibility must be “global” as the increased destructive power of modern nuclear arms means the damage caused is unlikely to be confined to one nation. “We cannot limit that responsibility to just one nation and particularly not to just the nation that has experienced attacks“, he said.

While in Japan, Frydnes met atomic bomb survivors, known as hibakusha, visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki and attended a nuclear disarmament event hosted by the Norwegian Nobel Institute and Nihon Hidankyo, also known as the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations.

Frydnes have praised Japan and the hibakusha’s work to preserve the memory of the bombings, saying “we must not allow (the memories) to be lost in time or to bureaucracy or indifference.”

The Nobel committee said in October that it has decided to award Hidankyo with the 2024 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 United States dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, detonating a second above Nagasaki three days later. Japan surrendered six days after the Nagasaki bombing, bringing an end to World War II. The attacks killed an estimated 214,000 people by the end of 1945.

Team Maverick