Hidankyo Exec Slams Nukes As "Devil's Weapons" at Signatory Meeting

   New York, March 3 (Jiji Press)--A senior official of Japan's Nihon Hidankyo, the winner of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, urged the international community to redouble efforts for the abolition of nuclear weapons, at the third meeting of signatories to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons on Monday.
   "Atomic bombs are the 'devil's weapons' that rob people of their future," Jiro Hamasumi, assistant secretary-general of Nihon Hidankyo, formally called the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, said in an address at the meeting, which started the same day at the U.N. headquarters in New York for a five-day run.
   Hamasumi, 79, was exposed to radiation from the U.S. atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, a city in western Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945, when he was in his mother's womb.
   "The impact of radiation on young cells (before birth) is immeasurably huge," Hamasumi said in Japanese, stressing the inhumane nature of nuclear weapons.
   The treaty, which stipulates that nuclear weapons are illegal and completely prohibits such weapons, represents "hibakusha's earnest wish," he said, expressing his hope for an increase in the number of signatory countries.

(2025/03/04-14:29)

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