For Terumi Tanaka, the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki proved to be the defining moment of his life.

He became a key player in Nihon Hidankyo (the Japan Federation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organization), the surprise recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Tanaka, 92, has spent nearly seven decades with the organization he now co-chairs fighting for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

“The issue of eliminating nuclear weapons is not only one for hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors),” Tanaka told a news conference on Oct. 12, a day after the organization won the Nobel prize. “I may be stretching the point, but it is an issue for all of humanity. Everyone is a potential victim.”

WHAT IT WAS LIKE

Tanaka said his “motivation” comes from his own experience as an atomic bomb survivor.

On Aug. 9, 1945, Tanaka, a first-year junior high school student, was lying down reading a book on the second floor of his home in Nagasaki when he heard an airplane.

Curious, he leaned out of the window but couldn’t see anything.

The moment he pulled his head back in, Tanaka felt engulfed by a light he described as like “white air.”

He rushed downstairs and flung himself face-down on the floor in a protective position, using his hands to shield his eyes and ears.

He passed out from the blast but came to when his mother called.

Tanaka recalled that burned-out ruins spread as far as the eye could see.

Bodies, too many to count, were everywhere, some burned charcoal black, and others swollen like a balloon.

The image of cremating his aunt and gathering her ashes haunted him long afterward.

In Nagasaki, it is estimated that deaths from the atomic bombing reached 74,000 by the end of 1945.

In Hiroshima, the site three days earlier of the world’s first atomic bombing, fatalities by the end of the year are estimated to have reached 140,000.

THE HARD WORK BEGINS

For years after the war ended, hibakusha had no means of redress or even relief from the government.

Tanaka’s family found it hard going.

Tanaka was 5 years old when his father died.

His family was economically dependent on five relatives, but they all perished near ground zero.

His mother found a job at a bicycle racetrack, while his brother worked at a construction site.

Tanaka helped when he wasn’t in school by working as a cargo handler at a port.

At his school, girls who lost their hair due to radiation exposure covered their heads with cloth. Some classmates died abruptly.

In March 1954, the United States conducted a hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

Crew members of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, a Japanese tuna fishing boat known as the Lucky Dragon No. 5 that was operating in the Pacific, were exposed to radioactive fallout, and one member later died.

“The United States is trying to produce a large number of (nuclear) bombs in addition to the two (dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima),” Tanaka recalled thinking at the time.

Calls started growing to get rid of atomic and hydrogen bombs.

A signature campaign initiated by homemakers in Tokyo’s Suginami Ward spread nationwide.

Tanaka, like other supporters, went door to door collecting signatures.

EFFORTS FINALLY PAY OFF 

The first World Conference against A and H Bombs was held in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1955, and the second was organized in Nagasaki on Aug. 9 of the following year.

The dates of the meetings reflected the anniversaries on which the atomic bombs were dropped.

At the 1956 meeting, Chieko Watanabe, paralyzed from the waist down because of the Nagasaki atomic bombing, was carried to the podium in her mother’s arms.

“Those of you who come from around the world, please take photographs of me,” Watanabe told the audience. “And make sure that someone like me is never ever made again.”

Tanaka, then a university student, attended the meeting as he was returning home during the summer vacation.

Nihon Hidankyo, born out of the meeting, said in its founding declaration: “We who have survived in silence, depression and separation to this day can no longer sit by idly and gather to stand up hand in hand.”

The organization has since pursued a two-fold goal: to gain relief for hibakusha suffering from the effects of radiation exposure and eliminate nuclear weapons.

Tanaka served as secretary-general of Nihon Hidankyo for 20 years while working as a researcher at Tohoku University. He was appointed a co-chair in 2017.

The number of hibakusha who hold the Atomic Bomb Survivor’s Certificate is rapidly dwindling. In around 1980, about 370,000 hibakusha had it, compared with only 106,000 or so as of this past March.

Over the years, many of Tanaka’s hibakusha colleagues at Nihon Hidankyo died.

When he was asked about his message for them at the news conference, a beaming Tanaka said, “I would tell them that our movement has been finally recognized by the Nobel Committee and will be recognized by more and more people.”

On Oct. 12, Tanaka got a phone call from new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba to congratulate him over Nihon Hidankyo winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ishiba told Tanaka he could hardly bare to watch footage of Hiroshima after the atomic bombing when he was a pupil in elementary school.

During the phone call, Tanaka expressed his concerns about a statement Ishiba had previously made about possibly reviewing Japan’s three non-nuclear principles of not possessing, producing or allowing the entry of nuclear weapons into the country.

“We have strongly feared that things would go in the opposite direction from what we have been calling for,” Tanaka said he told the prime minister.