Photo/Illutration Participants of the World Nuclear Victims Forum offer flowers at the Cenotaph for the Victims of the Atomic Bomb at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima on Oct. 5. (Jun Ueda)

HIROSHIMA—The World Nuclear Victims Forum was held for the first time in 10 years here on Oct. 5 and 6 to call for solidarity and nuclear abolishment, bringing together "global hibakusha" who were subjected to nuclear testing and uranium mining.

The city's historical symbolism set a powerful backdrop amid rising global tensions for the forum organized by the Hiroshima Alliance for Nuclear Weapons Abolition (HANWA) and the Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World, a U.S.-based anti-nuclear group.

Participants included 10 individuals from eight countries and 23 from within Japan. 

Despite battling terminal cancer, HANWA co-director Haruko Moritaki felt compelled to act.

“I couldn’t sit still in the face of the tragedies in Ukraine and Palestine,” she said, explaining her decision to revive the forum.

The 86-year-old Moritaki opened the forum with a stark warning: “The threat of nuclear war is closer than ever before in history.”

Her remarks were made with ongoing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East in mind.

Moritaki’s late father, Ichiro, was the founding chair of Nihon Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations), which won the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

She has worked in anti-nuclear activism and led the previous World Nuclear Victims Forum in 2015 that also took place in Hiroshima.

Her activism is rooted in her father’s words: The use of nuclear energy—whether military or civilian—causes irreversible radiation damage, and nuclear arms and humanity cannot coexist.

When asked by a reporter about the election of Sanae Takaichi as the new president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party—who has previously suggested revisiting parts of Japan’s three non-nuclear principles—Moritaki's response was firm.

“She strikes me as someone whose thinking runs counter to nuclear abolition. I cannot quit this movement,” Moritaki said.

(This article was written by Hayashi Yanagawa and Hajimu Takeda.)

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