ACTIVISM AGAINST NUCLEAR WEAPONS
The hibakusha have since engaged in uncountable engagement against nuclear arms around the world. Their testimony, according to the Nobel council, “has contributed to the generation and consolidation of popular opposition to nuclear arms around the world.”
For instance, a group of hibakusha that included Setsuko Thurlow, a part of Nihon Hidankyo and a famous campaigner against nuclear weapons, organized an exhibition on the nuclear attacks in the Toronto public library in 1975.
In Canada, this led to the growth of a major anti-nuclear movement. Tens of thousands of Canadians often protested against their country’s support for US nuclear arms in the early 1980s.
Then, in 1984, Takashi Morita, a second Hibakusha veteran from Sao Paulo, co-founded a hibakusha organization based in Sao Paulo to share their stories and increase awareness of the devastation of nuclear weapons in Brazil.
Europes were protesting against the implementation of innovative nuclear weapons in their nations as a result of growing recognition of the activities of the hibakusha throughout the 1980s. The saying” no Euroshima”! became a well-known phrase for the German peace movement.
Nihon Hidankyo’s initiatives have focused on using the activities of Hibakusha to win support for the widespread ban on nuclear weapons.
The organization has been a significant proponent of the UN resolution to end atomic arms. This agreement, which entered in power in 2017 and has been signed by 94 countries, prohibits state from participating in any nuclear weapons actions.
For its attempts to pass a legally binding ban on nuclear weapons, Setsuko Thurlow is a key figure in the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons.