A year after Nihon Hidankyo was announced as the 2024 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a high school student who attended the award ceremony is steadfast in her determination to pursue the abolition of nuclear weapons.

¡°I feel even more strongly that nuclear weapons are something we must eliminate,¡± said Natsuki Kai, 18, a third-year student at the Hiroshima Municipal Motomachi Senior High School in the western city of Hiroshima. ¡°It¡¯s not the matter of whether they can be eliminated or not.¡±

Kai¡¯s great-grandfather was among those exposed to the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, while her great-grandmother was affected by another U.S. atomic bombing on Nagasaki three days later.