Replica of Nobel Prize medal on display at museum in Hiroshima

HIROSHIMA (Kyodo) --Replicas of the Nobel Peace Prize medal and certificate awarded last year to Japan's leading group of atomic bomb survivors went on display at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum on Tuesday.
Toshiyuki Mimaki, a representative of Nihon Hidankyo, or the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, visited the museum, viewing the display while recalling the moment the group was honored with the award. The showing runs until Aug. 31.
"I would like people to feel that the world must be peaceful," the 83-year-old survivor told reporters, adding the replicas were prepared by the Norwegian Nobel Committee for the group. Three sets of the copies are now kept in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tokyo.
Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the final days of World War II in August 1945, killing an estimated 214,000 people by the end of that year and leaving numerous survivors to grapple with long-term physical and mental health challenges.
Nihon Hidankyo received the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for conveying, through witness testimony, that they must never be used again.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

The Mainichi

15 hours ago

• The Mainichi

Japan military set up 147 'comfort stations' in Okinawa during WWII; women's fates unknown

NAHA -- As wartime Japan fully deployed its troops in Okinawa Prefecture in March 1944, about a year before the ground battle against U.S. forces began, the Japanese military built airbases throughout the prefecture, including on remote islands. At the same time, it set up "comfort stations" for soldiers in the surrounding areas. At least 147 such stations are known to have existed in the southern island prefecture, where women -- mostly from Korea and Okinawa -- were used for sex by soldiers. After World War II, however, hardly any of these comfort women opened up about their experiences, and little is known of their fates in the fierce ground battle or how survivors coped after the war. In October 1991, a woman was found to have died of illness at an apartment building in Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture. She was identified as Pae Pong-gi, then 77, who was originally from the Korean Peninsula and formerly a comfort woman for Japanese troops. The late nonfiction author Fumiko Kawata chronicled half of Pae's life in her 1987 book "Akagawara no ie" (The House with a Red Tile Roof) based on her interviews with Pae and others. According to the book, Pae was taken from Korea to Okinawa in 1944 by way of the city of Moji (present-day Kitakyushu) and Kagoshima, and was sent to a comfort station on Tokashiki Island, west of Okinawa's main island. There were six other women from the Korean Peninsula at the station, and they were forced to engage in sexual acts with Japanese soldiers there. When the U.S. military landed on Tokashiki Island on March 27, 1945, Pae fled into the mountains and hid herself alongside members of a Japanese military unit. She eventually surrendered to U.S. forces in late August that year, and was sent to a detention facility on Okinawa Island. One of the other comfort women she had been with apparently died in the U.S. attacks, while another was staying in the same facility. Pae didn't know what happened to the other women. After the war, Pae moved from one place to another on Okinawa Island when the prefecture was under U.S. control, and worked in restaurant districts at night. In 1975, three years after Okinawa was returned to Japan, local newspapers and other media broke the news about Pae, and the Justice Ministry granted her a special residency permit. While she had no foreign resident registration and was subject to deportation, it took into consideration how and why she had come to Japan. Yet Pae remained publicly silent about her past experiences even after that. In September 1992, 17 years after Pae's residency permission was reported, a women's group in Okinawa released a "comfort station map" showing the sites of 121 such wartime facilities in the prefecture that had been located by that time through surveys. In August of the previous year, Kim Hak-sun, a South Korean woman, revealed under her real name that she had been a comfort woman for Japanese troops at battlefields in China, which made huge headlines. Shigeko Urasaki, 78, who was involved in the group's surveys in Okinawa, reflected, "It made us realize that we had neglected to confirm the wartime sexual violence that had occurred in Okinawa." Urasaki, a resident of Nishihara, Okinawa Prefecture, closely examined Japanese military documents and testimonies published in municipal historical records in Okinawa and searched for residents who had memories of those comfort stations. But by that time Pae had already passed away. Urasaki said regretfully. "Some of my fellow members remembered the news reports back in 1975, but Okinawa had just been returned to Japan at the time and we were preoccupied with broader issues. I felt deeply ashamed that we lacked an attitude to listen to Pae." So why did the Japanese military establish nearly 150 comfort stations across Okinawa? The Okinawa prefectural historical records cite several reasons: to prevent sexual violence against female members of the public; to prevent sexually transmitted diseases that could lead to the decline of war potential; and to relieve the stress of soldiers. According to military records, a garrison commander of the Japanese military on Ie Island in Okinawa instructed that soldiers "refrain from sexual intercourse other than with the military's special comfort women" because "rapes will alienate people's minds away from us." Most of the comfort stations were set up by confiscating private houses, and were therefore close to local residents' everyday lives. Okinawa University associate professor Hong Yunshin, who has researched comfort stations in Okinawa, speculates that the presence of those stations contributed to the mass suicides of residents across the prefecture following the U.S. military's landing on Okinawa. As the Japanese military had instilled the idea among residents that if they were captured by the U.S. military, they would be "humiliated and killed," Hong noted, "The fears that they might be forced to become comfort women for U.S. troops and get raped is thought to have led to mass suicides and other tragedies." Municipal historical records in Okinawa Prefecture cite residents' memories such as the sight of Japanese soldiers queueing up in front of comfort stations and children playing with contraceptives they picked up and turning them into balloons. However, the exact fate of the comfort women in Okinawa after the U.S. landing remains unknown, with only fragmentary records available. Those who experienced the war firsthand and others have passed away one after the other in recent years, including Pae, Kawata and a Korean woman in Okinawa who had for many years supported Pae. (Japanese original by Shinnosuke Kyan, Kyushu Photo and Video Department)

Yomiuri Shimbun

21 hours ago

• Yomiuri Shimbun

Hiroshima: Island Hides Dark Secret from the War Era; Poison Gases Produced Here Was Used As Weppon

TAKEHARA, Hiroshima — During World War II, an entire island in the Seto Inland Sea vanished from the map. It didn't sink into the sea — rather, Okunoshima Island in Hiroshima Prefecture was kept shrouded in secrecy because it was home to a facility where the Imperial Japanese Army was producing poison gases. Even now, the ruins that remain on this small island, just 4 kilometers around, continue to serve as a reminder of its dark history. Six tanks with a capacity of about 100 tons each still sit in an old poison gas storehouse. The building's exterior walls are blackened in places where they were burned by flamethrowers after the war to remove all remnants of poison. Another building houses a diesel generator that used to supply electricity to a poison gas factory. Its interior, with a ceiling three stories high, overwhelms visitors. Okunoshima Island is located about 50 kilometers east of the center of Hiroshima. A 15-minute ferry ride brings visitors from the nearby harbor to its shores. In late April, 80-year-old Masayuki Yamauchi, who teaches people about the factory's history, met a group of junior high school students who came there for a field trip. 'The Japanese were not only victims of the war but also aggressors. I want you to know that,' he told the students. The poison gas factory opened as a weapons plant for the army in 1929. The island was ideal not only because it was easy to keep secret, but also because workers could easily come and go by boat. The factory produced mustard gas and lewisite, both deadly poisons that cause severe skin burns and blisters. After the war against China started in 1937, production of the gases increased at the factory. Some of the gases are believed to have been used on the battlefield. Records show that the factory produced 6,616 tons of toxic gases through the end of the war and more than 6,000 people were involved in producing from the mainland were mobilized to work at the factory, including students and even girls. Danger was a constant companion to the workers, and one after another they accidentally breathed in toxic gas and became injured or died. They were ordered not to say anything about the factory, and the island and the surrounding area were covered with a white blur on maps. After the war, the unused gasses were disposed of by dumping them in the sea or incinerating them. But many former workers continued to suffer from chronic bronchitis or other illnesses. According to Hiroshima Prefecture, as of the end of May, there were still 463 living people, with an average age of 95, who had been certified by the government as suffering from health issues as a result of working at the factory. 'In Hiroshima Prefecture, damage caused by the U.S. military tends to get most of the attention, but now I've learned that Japan was an aggressor, too,' said a 14-year-old student from the prefecture. 'It made me think that there's no war in which only one side is bad,' she added. 'So the evil won't be repeated' Yamauchi was born in 1944 in Manchuria in what is now northeastern China. While he was growing up, his mother would often tell him that they had been able to return to Japan thanks to the support of Chinese people. Yamauchi has lived in Takehara, Hiroshima Prefecture, since the end of the war. In 1996, when he was working as a social studies teacher at high school, he participated in a local symposium about the poison gas the symposium, he learned that poison gases the Imperial Japanese Army dumped in China caused harm to local people. Discovering this scar of the war shocked him immensely. He then joined a citizens' group and began to engage in history-telling activities on Okunoshima Island. However, he feels that the field trips to the island by schools have been decreasing in recent years. In fiscal 2024, a record 2.26 million people visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima, which chronicles the atomic bombing tragedy. But the Okunoshima Poison Gas Museum received only 42,000 visitors, even though both museums are in the same prefecture. The number of people coming to the Okunoshima museum is yet to return to its pre-pandemic level. The island is, however, growing in popularity as a 'rabbit island' where visitors can meet rewilded rabbits. Yamauchi has vowed not to allow the island's past with the poison gas factory to fade away. 'The damage done by the atomic bomb is known all over the world, but hardly anyone knows about the poison gas on Okunoshima,' Yamauchi said. 'I'll keep on telling people the history [of the island] so that the same evil won't be repeated.' Dark tourism growing popular Trips to war-related historical sites and ruins are examples of 'dark tourism,' which began to be advocated for in Britain in the 1990s. Famous destinations include the former Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland where Jewish people were massacred by Nazi Germany. An example in Japan is the atomic bomb dome in Tokyo, there is the former Hitachi aircraft Tachikawa factory electrical substation in the city of Higashi-Yamato. The facility used to supply electricity to a factory that manufactured engines for military planes. The building was strafed three times between February and April 1945, and there are still many bullet holes in the exterior walls. This building was spared the fate of demolition thanks to a campaign by residents in the area. 'The bullet holes are concentrated on the south side of the building, which tells the flight route of the U.S. planes and lets us experience the horror of the time,' said Hirotoshi Kosuda, 78, the head of a preservation group for the facility. 'There are quite a few visitors in their 20s and 30s, too, who don't know about the war.'

a day ago

Memorial Service Held in Fukuoka for Executed U.S. POWs

Fukuoka, June 20 (Jiji Press)--A memorial service was held in Fukuoka on Friday for U.S. prisoners of war who were executed without trial by the western command of the now-defunct Imperial Japanese Army in the closing days of World War II. The event was attended by people related to the POW executions from Japan and the United States, including a consul of the U.S. Consulate in Fukuoka and a U.S. Forces Japan chaplain. "We must do our part to ensure that the friendship between our two nations continues and leads to lasting peace," Katsuya Toji, 71, the third son of a former paymaster captain of the army who was judged a war criminal, said in his address at the ceremony, held at the Aburayama Kannon temple in the southwestern Japan city. Toji's father, Kentaro, executed four captured B-29 bomber crew members soon after Kentaro lost his mother in a U.S. air strike. "War leaves deep scars, not only on the defeated but also the victors," Toji stressed. [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]