We send our warmest congratulations!

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese organization representing survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, known as Hibakusha. We offer our enthusiastic congratulations. 

Quotes from the citation

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said in its citation the group was 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 hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons,” the committee said.

Nihon Hidankyo is the winner of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize

Hiroshima Day Committee Media Release

Media Release

13/10/2024

Congratulations to Nihon Hidankyo

The Sydney Hiroshima Day Committee which has been commemorating the atrocious bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for over 60 years in this city congratulates the Nihon Hidankyo group of Japan.  This grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki who are also known as Hibakusha, have won the Nobel Peace Prize for this year.

The Hibakusha motto of there never being another use of atomic or nuclear weapons has been accepted by our committee since its inception, Hiroshima/Nagasaki never again’. 

The Hibakusha have spread their message all over the world, working for peace and harmony between all the people of the world.  Each year in Hiroshima and Nagasaki the victims of this terrible bombing are commemorated.

This year Mayor of Nagasaki invited all the ambassadors who presently reside in Japan to his city to remember the victims of the 1945 bombing by the USA but he expressly forbad the Russian, the Belarusian and Israeli ambassadors on the grounds that these countries were currently prosecuting wars in their countries or with their neighbours.  The G7 countries boycotted the service claiming Israel had been victimized and apparently Australia joined in with them only sending a junior official of the Australian Embassy in Tokyo.

“We have sought an explanation from the Foreign Minister for this grievous slight of the people of Nagasaki and the Hibakusha of that city.  So far there has been no response.” Said Denis Doherty of the Hiroshima Day Committee.

“Australia’s DFAT must feel very embarrassed now that the world’s focus is on the issue of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and its victims when just a few short weeks ago they boycotted the commemoration of Nagasaki to please the G7 countries and protect Israel.

“Israel’s vicious and indiscriminate war on civilians stands in stark contrast to the values Nihon Hidankyo who work for peace and harmony in the world.

“The grassroots movement for the prohibition of nuclear weapons is strengthened by this decision and now puts pressure on our government to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of nuclear weapons (TPNW).

On Hiroshima Day peace groups call for Govt to abandon AUKUS

“On Hiroshima Day, 6 August, we call on the Albanese Government to announce the cancellation of the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal and steps to promote peace and co-operation within our region and globally,” Denis Doherty from the Hiroshima Day Committee said in Sydney today.

“These submarines will cost an eye watering $386 billion or $32 million every day for the next 30 years, adding 1.6 per cent to our GDP.

“This exorbitant cost inevitably means the government will have to raid other portfolios such as environment, health, housing and education. It is simply not acceptable that we suffer because of US ambitions to remain top dog in the region,” Doherty said.

“Many of our regional neighbours are deeply concerned by AUKUS, criticising it as destabilising and a threat to their security. They carry the scars of the nuclear age and want the Treaty of Rarotonga observed so that the Pacific is nuclear free.

“The submarines will produce high level nuclear waste which the government has agreed to store for around 200,000 years.  No country in the world has yet found a way to store high level radioactive waste so is the government going to simply dump it on Indigenous land?

“Australia is losing its ability to be a nuclear free country and to comply with the provisions of the non-proliferation treaty. And the Albanese Government still has not honoured its commitment to sign the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

“Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the almost quarter of a million men, women and children who perished there, give us a bitter history lesson on the nuclear age. Yet the AUKUS deal has opened up the prospect of more Hiroshima in our country, only this time both sides will have nuclear weapons,”. Denis Doherty concluded.

The 78^th anniversary of Hiroshima will be commemorated in many cities and towns around Australia on August 6

Details of the Sydney event are:

Sunday August 6 at 2 pm in Town Hall Square.

Speakers will be followed by a procession to the Defence Department at 320 Pitt St where wreaths for the victims of nuclear weapons and nuclear testing will be laid.

Media release for Friday 4th August 2023

Hiroshima/Nagasaki Day August 6th

The nuclear doomsday clock stands at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest the risk of nuclear holocaust has ever been. Yet Australia is planning to buy nuclear submarines and is handing over tracts of our north for the US military to use against China. 

78 years ago, two atomic bombs destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nearly a quarter of million were incinerated and countless people have died in the following years. 

“As Sydneysiders gather to commemorate the nuclear victims, we will also be demanding a nuclear free Australia,” said veteran peace activist Denis Doherty. 

“We do not want Alice Springs, Darwin and Katherine to become new Hiroshimas. 

“We do not want $32 million spent every day for 30 years on submarines when we need to deal with climate change, underpaid nurses and teachers and many more needs. 

“The US is building aggressive alliances including the QUAD and AUKUS and recent efforts to bring NATO into our region. But we need peace in our region,” he said. 

The survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – the “hibakusha” — say from deep pain that “human life and nuclear weapons cannot exist together.” 

Hiroshima Day will be commemorated in many cities and towns around Australia on August 6.
Details of the Sydney event are: 

Sunday August 6 at 2 pm in Town Hall Square. 

Speakers will be followed by a procession to the Defence Department at 320 Pitt St where wreaths for the victims of nuclear weapons and nuclear testing will be laid. 

Media Release

2^nd August 2019

Nuclear weapons pose the single biggest threat to the Earth’s environment.  Even a small-scale war would quickly devastate the world’s climate and ecosystems, causing damage that would last for more than a decade.

Detonating between 50 and 100 bombs – just 0.03% of the world’s arsenal -would throw enough soot into the atmosphere to create climactic anomalies unprecedented in human history.

The effects would be much greater than global warming and anything that has happened in history with regards to volcanic eruptions.

Tens of millions of people would die; global temperatures would crash and most of the world would be unable to grow crops for more than five years after the conflict.

In addition, the ozone layer, which protects the surface of the Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation, would be depleted by 40% over many inhabited areas and up to 70% at the poles.

“We can’t risk nuclear war as nothing ruins the environment like war.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki were reduced to rubble instantly by nuclear weapons,”  Denis Doherty from the Hiroshima Day Committee said.

“It is a tragedy that the world still needs to understand the possibility of doomsday.

“We cannot sit by and do nothing with the United States building new nuclear weapons, threatening to use them in pre-emptive strikes and planning to put them into space.

“We will be speaking out tomorrow at the Hiroshima Day remembrance to play our part in saving the future.”  Mr. Doherty said.

For more information contact:

Denis Doherty, Hiroshima Day Committee on 0418 290 663

Saturday 3 August

Archibald Fountain, Hyde Park

12 – rally followed by march to PM’s office

Speakers: Dr Keith Suter, Hector Ramage, David Shoebridge MLC

Media Release

Aug 2, 2019

Hiroshima Day no 2

Nuclear weapons cost too much

Over the next 10 years, governments will spend a staggering US$1 trillion on nuclear weapons globally – that is US $100 billion annually.

Against the backdrop of increasing budgetary austerity and widespread cuts in health and social spending, such allocations for weapons systems appear not only exorbitant, but also counter to the economic and social needs of the nuclear armed States.

In order to spend such large budgets on nuclear weapons, they are forced to reduce the budgets in other areas such as health, education, environmental protection and welfare.

Zulifkar Ali Bhutto, architect of Pakistan’s atomic program acknowledged this ‘opportunity cost’ of nuclear weapons programs, asserting that “if India builds the bomb, we will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own.”

Overseas development aid from the nuclear armed States to the developing countries remains way under the agreed target of 0.7% of GDP, a target which could easily be reached if the funding for nuclear weapons was re-directed towards development aid.

Most of the nuclear weapons money goes to private companies which are awarded contracts to manufacture, modernize and maintain nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles.

For these companies, the bloated budgets are in their interests.  Indeed, the companies actively lobby their own parliaments and governments to continue allocating the funds to nuclear weapons.  And they support think tanks and other public initiatives to promote the ‘need’ for nuclear weapons maintenance, modernisation or expansion.

On Saturday we will be calling for the Australian Government to help reverse this doomsday scenario by signing the United Nations treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, signed by 123 countries.

 

Saturday 3 August

Archibald Fountain, Hyde Park

12 – rally followed by march to PM’s office

Speakers: Dr Keith Suter, Hector Ramage, David Shoebridge MLC

 

Nuclear danger from forgetting the past

 

August 6 and August 8 1945 were the days when the first nuclear weapons were used by the USA on two cities in Japan, killing 200,000 people. These days are marked all over the world with “Never Again” rallies, public meetings, concerts and other events. In Sydney our major event will begin at 12 noon on Saturday 3 August.

In 2019, just 74 years after the devastating first use of these nuclear bombs, most of Australia has forgotten that to use or threaten to use these atomic bombs is a crime against humanity.

Most of Australia has forgotten that the human and environmental devastation caused by these weapons is so grossly out of proportion to a civilised nation’s values and so threatening to our entire planet that they should be immediately eliminated for all time.

This collective amnesia opens the way for the current debate about the possibility of Australia adopting nuclear power and even nuclear weapons.

This would be a terrifying step backwards for the more nuclear weapons, the more likely thy will end up in the hands of terrorists and the more likely it is that they will be used by accident or design.

The lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is just as true now as it ever was. A nuclear conflict must never happen, and no country can legitimately hold nuclear weapons ready for war.  The only answer to the nuclear threat is to abolish all weapons.

Saturday 3 August

Archibald Fountain, Hyde Park

12 – rally followed by march to PM’s office

Speakers: Dr Keith Suter, Hector Ramage, David Shoebridge MLC

A highly respected indigenous Chamoru woman from the US colony of Guam will be in Sydney on Wednesday 31 August.

Dr. Lisa Natividad is the President of the Guahan Coalition for Peace and Justice and has shared Guahan’s plight with militarization in countries all over the world and at the United Nations.. She is an Associate Professor of social work at the University of Guam.

The Pacific atoll of Guam lies on the edge of the South China Sea, currently s focus of US-China rivalry.

Well over half of Guam has been turned into a US naval, airforce and Marine base which has been described as the tip of the US spear aimed at China.

Guam is part of the Marianas islands which were the site of 47 US nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s. Some tests led to radioactive fallout contaminating the area with appalling effects on the health of the community and considerable environmental damage.

Dr Natividad will speak at a public meeting on “The Anti-Nuclear Struggle in the Pacific –The Perspective from Guam at 6.30pm at the NSW Teachers Federation, 23-33 Mary Street, Surry Hills.

For more information and interviews,

contact Dr Hannah Middleton on 0418 668 098