Nobel Prize an important reminder, Hiroshima locals say

Just like the dwindling group of survivors now recognised with a Nobel Prize, the residents of Hiroshima hope that the world never forgets the atomic bombing of 1945 – now more than ever.

Susumu Ogawa, 84, was five when the bomb dropped by the United States all but obliterated the Japanese city 79 years ago, and many of his family were among the 140,000 people killed.

“My mother, my aunt, [and both my grandfathers] all died in the atomic bombing,” Ogawa said a day after the survivors’ group Nihon Hidankyo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ogawa himself recalls very little but the snippets he garnered later from his surviving relatives and others painted a hellish picture.

“All they could do was to evacuate and save their own lives, while they saw other people [perish] inside the inferno,” he said.

“All nuclear weapons in the world have to be abandoned,” he said. “We know the horror of nuclear weapons, because we know what happened in Hiroshima.”