Nagasaki: Terumi Tanaka, a 93-year-old survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bombing 80 years ago and current co-chair of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize-winning Nihon Hidankyo, has called on younger generations to create a movement for the abolition of nuclear weapons that “inspires others.”

According to Philippines News Agency, Tanaka has spent over half a century spearheading a movement for peace by hibakusha, or survivors of the US atomic bombings of the western Japan city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and of the southwestern Japan city of Nagasaki three days later, during the closing days of World War II. Tanaka was exposed to radiation from the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, which killed five of his relatives, among numerous other victims.

After first becoming involved in the hibakusha movement around 1970, Tanaka served as secretary-general of Nihon Hidankyo, formally called the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, for about 20 years before assuming his current post of co-chair in 2017. With 80 years passing since the atomic bombings and the number of those who experienced them at firsthand dwindling, Tanaka said, “the era of hibakusha themselves working to share their experiences and talking about nuclear weapons is coming to an end.”