Terumi Tanaka, who survived the Nagasaki bombing at age 13, said he hopes the award will help raise public awareness.

The co-chair of a Japanese anti-nuclear body, which won the Nobel Peace Prize, says “those fighting hard for peace in Gaza" should have won.

Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots Japanese organization of atomic bomb survivors, has been awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for their decades-long activism against nuclear weapons. The Norwegian Nobel Committee recognized the group “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.

Now, with their average age at 85.6, the hibakusha are increasingly frustrated that their fear of a growing nuclear threat and push to eliminate nuclear weapons are not fully understood by younger generations.

Those who lived through the nuclear attacks of 1945 have dedicated their lives to recounting their experiences of loss and the physical and emotional toll.