China Daily, a publication owned by a private corporation but with strong ties to the government in Beijing, ran two opinion columns on President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima, one staunchly defending the United States’ decision to use atomic weapons in Hiroshima, and another suggesting that Japan has not yet earned the full trust of the developed world. Hiroshima teaches this truth. “Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us”, he said. “The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well”. “It allows us to change”.
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“You should come visit Hiroshima from time to time and meet lots of people”.
The first sitting USA president to visit Hiroshima silently placed a white-and-yellow wreath in front of a concrete, arch-shaped monument at the expansive Peace Memorial Park representing a shelter for the victims’ souls bearing an inscription in Japanese: “Let all the souls here rest in peace; For we shall not repeat the evil”. The dread of the children confused by what they see.
“Even if Obama visits the damaged city, he can not hide his identity as a nuclear war fanatic and nuclear weapons proliferator”, the North Korean news agency said, adding that, “Obama is seized with the wild ambition to dominate the world by dint of the US nuclear edge”.
While much of the country has long since tuned out the lame duck president, Obama proved Friday that he can still outrage Americans as well as he ever could with his trip to Hiroshima, Japan.
It was noteworthy that Obama did not explicitly apologise to Japan for the USA dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II that killed thousands of people-the first nation to use nuclear weapons in anger.
Mr Obama hugged a Hiroshima survivor and gave a good speech, as he often does, speaking of death falling from the sky and of the awful danger the world is in today because of nuclear stockpiles. He included both South Koreans and American prisoners of war in recounting the death toll at Hiroshima – a nod to advocates for both groups who publicly warned the president not to forget their dead. At least 140,000 people died in the bombing.
“Seventy-one years ago, death fell from the sky and the world was changed”, Mr Obama said of a bomb that “demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself”. He signed a guest book at the memorial, writing, “Let us now find the courage, together, to spread peace, and pursue a world without nuclear weapons”.
Obama’s full remarks are available here.
“The most important thing we can do is recognize what happened, and understand the awful consequences of war”, Frechette said in an email interview from his home in the United States.
“That is a future we can choose”.
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There are blast survivors who want Obama to listen to their stories, to see their scars – physical and otherwise.
