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May 11, 2016

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Obama to visit Hiroshima, but ‘won’t apologize’ for bombing

Source: AP | May 11, 2016, Wednesday | Print Edition

IN a moment seven decades in the making, President Barack Obama will this month become the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima, the Japanese city that was decimated by an atomic bomb dropped in 1945.

Obama will visit the site with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a previously scheduled trip to Japan, the White House said yesterday.

The president intends to “highlight his continued commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

Obama will not apologize, the White House made clear.

The president’s visit has been widely anticipated since US Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip to the memorial to the Hiroshima bombing in April.

Kerry toured the peace museum with other foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations and participated in an annual memorial service just steps from the site’s ground zero.

Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui praised Obama’s plan to visit as a “bold decision based on conscience and rationality,” adding that he hopes Obama will have a chance to hear the survivors’ stories.

He also expressed hope the visit would be “a historic first step toward an international effort toward abolishing nuclear weapons, which is a wish of all mankind.”

The US attack on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, in the final days of World War II, killed 140,000 people. While it scarred a generation of Japanese, some Americans hold the contested view that it, along with a second bombing on August 9 on Nagasaki, hastened the war’s end. Japan announced it would surrender on August 15.

In the US, officials remain wary that such a visit could be perceived as an apology.

Asked last week whether Obama believes an apology is warranted, Earnest was direct: “No, he does not.”

In a statement posted as the visit was announced, a senior White House official added that the president does not intend to wade into past debates.

“He will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II. Instead, he will offer a forward-looking vision focused on our shared future,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said.

“The United States will be eternally proud of our civilian leaders, and the men and women of our armed forces who served in World War II,” he said.

Obama will be in Japan to attend the Group of 7 economic summit, part of a weeklong Asia tour that will also include a stop in Vietnam.

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