Hiroshima, Nagasaki mayors hail Nobel-winning anti-nuke group

October 7, 2017

HIROSHIMA/NAGASAKI- The mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two atomic-bombed Japanese cities, welcomed the winning of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday by an international nongovernmental organization seeking to scrap all nuclear weapons.

After the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced its decision to award the prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui told reporters that he was surprised and thrilled by the news.

The group's winning of the prize "should be a tailwind for civic activities for the effectuation of the (UN) nuclear weapons ban treaty," he said.

Separately, Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue said he believes that ICAN won the award for its activities that led to the adoption of the nuclear ban treaty at the United Nations in July this year.

"The Nobel prize shows that the treaty is a global norm," he said.

ICAN is one of many parties that helped make real the ban treaty as wished by hibakusha atomic bomb survivors, Taue noted.

Hiroshima, western Japan, was devastated by a US atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, in the closing days of World War II. The southwestern city of Nagasaki suffered the same fate three days later.

ICAN's winning of the prestigious prize will boost the appeal of Hiroshima at a time when the use of nuclear weapons seems to be coming closer to a reality, Yuki Shimizu, a 19-year-old student at a technical school and resident in the city, said at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on Friday, apparently keeping in mind recent provocations by North Korea, including its sixth nuclear in early September. Jiji Press