Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

70 years after Hiroshima, Obama to be first sitting US president to pay visit

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will become the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima, Japan, the White House announced on Tuesday (May 10), making a fraught stop this month at the site where the United States used an atomic bomb at the end of World War II.

US President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrive for a joint news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on April 28, 2015. Reuters file photo

US President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrive for a joint news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on April 28, 2015. Reuters file photo

Follow TODAY on WhatsApp

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will become the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima, Japan, the White House announced on Tuesday (May 10), making a fraught stop this month at the site where the United States used an atomic bomb at the end of World War II.

The visit, hotly debated within the White House for months as the president planned his coming trip to Vietnam and Japan, carries weighty symbolism for Mr Obama, who is loath to be seen as apologising for that chapter in American history.

“He will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II,” Mr Benjamin Rhodes, his deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, said in a blog post on Medium.

“Instead, he will offer a forward-looking vision focused on our shared future.”

“In making this visit, the president will shine a spotlight on the tremendous and devastating human toll of war,” Mr Rhodes added in the blog.

Mr Obama’s critics have often accused him of making an “apology tour” during the first year of his presidency, pointing to his travels to the Middle East and Europe during that period, when he gave a series of speeches acknowledging past misdeeds by the US and seeking to rebuild ties frayed at the end of the George W Bush administration.

But the President’s advisers say a trip to Hiroshima is in keeping with his emphasis on reducing the spread of nuclear weapons, including through a deal completed last year to lift sanctions on Iran in exchange for new restrictions on Tehran’s ability to develop a nuclear bomb.

 “The president’s time in Hiroshima also will reaffirm America’s longstanding commitment — and the president’s personal commitment — to pursue the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” Mr Rhodes wrote.

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

When Mr Obama visited Japan in November 2009, he had said he hoped someday to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the other Japanese city where the US dropped atomic bombs during World War II. The bombings killed more than 200,000 people, most of them civilians, and led to the Japanese surrender.

Last month, Secretary of State John Kerry became the highest-ranking US official ever to visit Hiroshima, during a diplomatic conclave intended to set the stage for the G7 meeting this month.

“Everyone should visit Hiroshima, and everyone means everyone,” Mr Kerry said at a news conference.

He called the visit “stunning” and “gut-wrenching,” and he wrote in a guest book: “It is a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our effort to avoid war itself.”

Some conservative commentators criticized Mr Kerry for not telling the Japanese that they deserved to be bombed, something Mr Obama is also unlikely to do.

For decades, American diplomats largely avoided Hiroshima and Nagasaki or any official remembrance of the attacks.

That changed in August 2010, when John Roos, the American ambassador at the time, attended a commemoration in Hiroshima. His successor, Caroline Kennedy, has also attended.

Former President Jimmy Carter toured the Hiroshima memorial in May 1984, three years and four months after he left office, and Representative Nancy Pelosi visited the memorial in 2008 when she was speaker of the House. THE NEW YORK TIMES

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.