Obama calls for courage
Print Edition
PRESIDENT Barack Obama yesterday paid tribute to the “silent cry” of the 140,000 victims of the atomic bomb dropped 71 years ago on Hiroshima, and called on the world to abandon “the logic of fear” that encourages the stockpiling of nuclear weapons.
Obama’s trip to Hiroshima made him the first sitting US president to visit the site of the world’s first atomic bomb attack, and he sought to walk a delicate line between honoring the dead, pushing his as-yet unrealized anti-nuclear vision and avoiding any sense of apology for an act many Americans see as a justified end to a brutal war that Japan started with a sneak attack at Pearl Harbor.
“Death fell from the sky and the world was changed,” Obama said, after laying a wreath, closing his eyes and briefly bowing his head before an arched stone monument in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park that honors those killed on August 6, 1945.
“The flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.”
Obama offered a somber reflection on the horrors of war and the dangers of technology that gives humans the “capacity for unmatched destruction.”
A second atomic bomb, dropped on Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima, killed 70,000 more. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, ending a war that had killed millions.
Obama hoped Hiroshima would someday be remembered not as the dawn of the atomic age but as the beginning of a “moral awakening.”
He renewed his call for a world less threatened by danger of nuclear war.
Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize early in his presidency for his anti-nuclear agenda but has since seen uneven progress.
“Among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them,” the US president said.
Critics believe Obama’s mere presence in Hiroshima would be viewed as an apology for what they see as a bombing that was needed to stop a Japanese war machine that had brutalized Asia and killed many Americans.
Obama’s remarks showed a careful awareness of the sensitivities.
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.
Obama spoke broadly of the brutality of the war that begat the bombing‚ saying it “grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes” — but did not assign blame.
After his remarks, he met with two survivors.
Although out of earshot of reporters, Obama could be seen laughing and smiling with 91-year-old Sunao Tsuboi. He embraced Shigeaki Mori, 79.
Han Jeong-soon, the 58-year-old daughter of a Korean survivor, was also at the park.
“The suffering, such as illness, gets carried on over the generations — that is what I want President Obama to know,” she said.
“I want him to understand our suffering.”
‘Nanjing should not be forgotten’
THE international community should not forget the massacre in Nanjing, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said yesterday. While Hiroshima is worthy of attention, Nanjing deserves even more, he said.
Wang had been asked to comment on foreign leaders’ visits to Hiroshima arranged by the Japanese government.
Japanese troops captured Nanjing, then China’s capital, on December 13, 1937, and began a killing spree that lasted over a month. More than 300,000 civilians and soldiers were murdered and over 20,000 women raped.
“The victims deserve sympathy,” Wang said, “but the perpetrators could never shake off their responsibility.”
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