When the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, better known as Nihon Hidankyo in Japan, won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, there were probably quite a few Japanese who were unfamiliar with the group, which represents survivors—hibakusha—of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Nobel committee gave Hidankyo the prize because of its work to rid the planet of nuclear weapons, a task that’s doubly difficult given that Japan, due to its security agreement with the U.S., is effectively under America’s so-called nuclear umbrella, and thus cannot do anything that would be seen to undermine the concept of nuclear deterrence. Consequently, the group doesn’t receive as much attention as it would like, since the Japanese media tends to align with government policy when it comes to matters of diplomacy and security. 

However, even we were surprised when we read in the March 2 edition of the Asahi Shimbun that the administrative roots of Hidankyo were not in either of the cities attacked with atomic weapons in August 1945, but rather in Suginami Ward, Tokyo. March 1 marked the  71st anniversary of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru Incident, when a Japanese tuna fishing boat was exposed to “death ash” from the U.S. test of a hydrogen bomb at the Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific. The incident was heavily covered by the Japanese press, and thus broke the national silence over nuclear weapons that had been imposed by the U.S. occupation after the war, which ended two years earlier in 1952. Petitions to end nuclear testing quickly circulated all over Japan, with some 32 million signatures collected, proving that the Japanese people knew exactly what happened at the end of World War II and were determined to make sure it would never happen to anyone ever again. 

According to Asahi, the origin of the anti-nuclear petition movement was the home of fishmonger Kenichi Sugawara in Suginami Ward. Sugawara’s daughter, Hideko Takeuchi, now 82, recalls how when her father heard of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru Incident, he despaired, not only about the fate of the irradiated fishermen, but also about his business and anyone else who sold fish in Japan. At the time, electrical refrigeration still was not widespread in Japan, and Sugawara kept his wares cool with a large wooden ice box, which meant he had to buy only as much fish in the morning at the Tsukiji fish market as he could sell in a day. It was literally a day-to-day operation: the money he made one day would be used to buy fish for the next day, but after the Bikini incident orders for fish almost completely stopped for him and other fishmongers throughout Japan out of fear of radiation. So they organized a petition drive to ban nuclear testing.

Takeuchi, who was 11 at the time, helped out by asking passersby on the street to sign the petition. It was a calling she was already suited for, since both her parents had been active in the labor union movement before the war and had cultivated a sense of justice in their daughter. Her mother, Tomiko, regularly attended lectures for women’s groups at the Suginami public hall, where she also circulated the petition with the help of the manager of the hall, Kaoru Yasui, a scholar of international law. A year before the Bikini Incident, Yasui had established Sugi no Kokai, a “reading circle” where local women could read and discuss books about social issues. For these women, the war was still a very fresh memory. Some had lost children, not only to war violence, but to malnutrition, which was rampant during the war years. In addition, the Korean War had just ended, leaving in its place the nascent Cold War. Through Sugi no Kokai, they learned how the Cold War was becoming “darker” and that Japan “must never be pulled into war again.” In order to fight back against the forces of darkness, they needed to learn as much as possible about the world, which is why Yasui had started the reading circle. The petition drive dovetailed perfectly with its purposes.

Consequently, Suginami Ward became the nexus of Japan’s anti-nuclear movement. Kanata Hirano, a current graduate student at Waseda University, has researched the role that Sugi no Kokai played in the movement. He found that it was mainly women who spurred the movement and organized its activities on a nationwide basis. They felt it was a duty to teach their children about their own direct experiences in the war so that no one would ever forget. Most of these women were stay-at-home wives and mothers, and Suginami public hall became their second home as a means of connecting to the greater society. 

The petition movement culminated in the first Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, which took place on Aug. 6, 1955, in Hiroshima, exactly ten years after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on that city. It was at the following year’s council in Nagasaki, the second city attacked, where Nihon Hidankyo was established. That means the Nobel Prize-winning organization can trace its roots directly to the old Suginami Public Hall, which was torn down in 1989. In addition to a new hall, in its place is a monument informing visitors of its role in Japan’s anti-nuclear weapons movement.