Japan High School Peace Envoys Keen to Deliver Voices of Hibakusha

June 8, 2018

Tokyo- Japanese "high school peace ambassadors" on Thursday expressed their hopes to convey the voices of hibakusha, or atomic bomb survivors, for nuclear abolition to the world, and spread peace across the globe.

The high school students, who took part in a campaign to collect signatures with the aim of abolishing nuclear weapons, have been selected as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2018.

At an event in Tokyo on Thursday to report the peace ambassador activities, Konami Funai, 17, a high school third-grader from Fukuyama, Hiroshima Prefecture, western Japan, spoke about her visit to the secretariat of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in March.

"It made me even prouder of our activities," she said, referring to the nomination as a Nobel prize candidate. But Funai added that even if they win the prize, it would not be their goal. "I'll patiently continue to call for nuclear abolition."

The high school peace ambassadors were nominated a Nobel Peace Prize candidate by the Norwegian committee, after Japanese lawmakers recommended them for the award with the campaign marking its 20th anniversary this year.

Under the campaign, high school students serving as peace ambassadors have been delivering signatures they collected to the United Nations every year since 1998. A total of more than 1.67 million signatures have been delivered to the world body to date.

For the 2018 peace prize, 330 candidates--216 individuals and 114 organizations--are listed as candidates.

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