Toshiyuki Mimaki was beside himself with joy when he found out that the atomic bomb survivors' group that he co-chairs had won the Nobel Peace Prize, but later pushed back tears of sorrow as he pictured children suffering in Israel and Gaza.

The Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs at the end of World War II, won the award on Friday in what was seen as a plea to nuclear-armed countries not to use those weapons.

While Mimaki said the prize would give a major boost to his group's efforts to demonstrate that it was possible to abolish nuclear weapons, he acknowledged that many countries seemed uninterested in seeing a world without them.