Obama to make historic trip to Hiroshima

This Sept. 8, 1945 picture shows an allied correspondent standing in the rubble in front of the shell of a building that once was a movie theater in Hiroshima, Japan, a month after the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare was dropped by the USA on Monday, Aug. 6, 1945.

Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said flatly: “He will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II.” Instead, Rhodes said in a statement, Obama will spotlight the toll of war and offer a “forward-looking vision” of a non-nuclear world. Ellen Tauscher, Obama’s former undersecretary of state for arms control, said she was “disappointed” that the president didn’t push back against Pentagon plans to refurbish components of the USA nuclear arsenal in ways that could make it more potent.

“The most important thing is that Obama will see Hiroshima, where awful bomb was dropped, he will visit Peace Memorial Museum and feel what people felt here”, Mimaki, who survived the disaster at the age of three, told RIA Novosti.

The visit, which had been under consideration for most of Obama’s presidency, could serve as a coda to the transformation in the relationship between Japan and the United States from wartime enemies to the closest of allies.

Japan’s neighbors in China and South Korea will also be watching the visit closely, always eager to make sure that their once hyper-aggressive foe is not allowed to play the role of a World War II victim. Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue said the president would “send a powerful message, in his own words, toward achieving a world without nuclear weapons.”. “From the Japanese perspective, it is certainly preferable to have a US president visit Hiroshima even without an apology in his luggage, than him not coming at all”.

“He wouldn’t have been able to come in the middle of his term, but now it’s nearly the end, so it’s like now or never”, the retired teacher said.

“Japan was also trying to develop nuclear weapons”, Takatsugu Sakamoto, 80, said by telephone from Nishinomiya in Osaka prefecture.

The White House has sought to dispel concerns that the highly symbolic visit is a form of apology, saying Obama will offer a “forward-looking vision focused on our shared future”.

Asked last week whether the president believes an apology is warranted, Earnest was direct: “No, he does not”. The bomb decimated the city and shot the world into the Atomic Age.

The decision to go to Hiroshima was hotly debated within the White House.

The visit comes as part of a May 21-28 swing through Asia, which will include a Group of Seven summit in Japan and his first trip to Vietnam.