“We stand here in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell”, Obama said Friday at Hiroshima’s Memorial Peace Park.
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The bombed dropped on Hiroshima instantly killed between 60,000 and 80,000 people, and a second bomb dropped on the city of Nagasaki killed about 40,000. He is the first sitting USA president to do so.
US President Barack Obama’s presence in Hiroshima, the victim of the world’s first atomic bombing, was statesmanship rich in symbolism and in pursuance of his nuclear disarmament agenda and the US’ eastward pivot. Some American veterans and former prisoners of war have opposed an apology, arguing that the twin bombings saved lives by hastening the end of a long and cruel war.
Some anti-nuclear activists worry that Obama’s Hiroshima speech could turn out like his 2009 speech in Prague that helped secure him a Nobel Peace Prize: After the buzz dies down, there will be a return to business as usual.
Mr Obama then spoke to two survivors, hugging 79-year-old Shigeaki Mori. Money well spent to prevent another Hiroshima.
Barry Frechette, a filmmaker who produced a recent documentary on Mori’s decades-long quest, said Mori and other survivors are not looking for an apology. The Korean Peninsula was under the Japanese rule from 1910 until Japan’s defeat in World War II in 1945.
Obama arrived in Hiroshima after addressing US and Japanese troops at nearby Marine Corps station.
China’s foreign minister Wang Yi also pointed to the massacres and atrocities carried out by Japanese forces, including the 1937 ravaging of Nanjing, when over a period of days, some 300,000 people died in an orgy of rape and slaughter.
Obama is speaking at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (shin-zoh ah-bay). It is now known as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. But large and seemingly supportive crowds began gathering outside the grounds early in the day.
There are blast survivors who want Obama to listen to their stories, to see their scars – physical and otherwise. Obama paid tribute to the dead at the cenotaph in the park.
While some media outlets painted the historic visit as another stop on Obama’s “apology tour”, the president did not actually apologize.
“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 USA nuclear edge”.
Mr Obama told service personnel at the base: “This is an opportunity to honour the memory of all who were lost during World War Two”.
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Retiree Tsuguo Yoshikawa took a walk in the park, and said it’s time for the USA and Japanese people to move forward without grudges.
