It's the Brian Lera Show on WNYC.

Good Friday morning, everyone.

This year's Nobel Peace Prize winner was announced this morning.

We're going to discuss the award now in the context of the big sweep of

history. We're making this headline, Thing Number 29 in our WNYC Centennial series that we're

doing on the show, 100 Years of 100 Things. It's 100 years of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The winner announced today is a Japanese group, if you haven't heard this yet, called

Nihon Hidankyo, made up of people who survived the atomic bomb attacks at the end of World War II.

The Nobel Committee cited the group, quote, for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons, unquote.

As a New York Times describes them, Nihon Hadankyo has for decades represented hundreds of

thousands of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

These survivors known as the Hibakusha are living memorials to the horror of the attacks

and have used their testimony to raise awareness of the human consequences

of nuclear warfare. So this is a classic Nobel Peace Prize winner. By my rough count, this is the

eighth award since those bombing 79 years ago that have been for work to prevent more nuclear

attacks. I'll look at the winners of the two years prior to this one

shows other common categories for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Last year, Nargis Mohamedi for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran.

Two years ago, it was the Center for Civil Liberties based

in Ukraine for promoting people's right to criticize power and document human rights abuses.

So free speech and women's rights, human rights in general, two of the other things that

Nobel Peace Prizes are frequently awarded for. When Martin Luther King won in 1964,

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