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Obama Begins Historic Visit to Hiroshima At Hiroshima Memorial, Obama Says Nuclear Arms Require ‘Moral Revolution’
(about 2 hours later)
HIROSHIMA, Japan — President Obama arrived Friday in Hiroshima, Japan, beginning a historic visit that he hopes will bolster an important ally and remind the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons. HIROSHIMA, Japan — President Obama laid a wreath at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial on Friday, telling an audience that included survivors of America’s atomic bombing in 1945 that technology as devastating as nuclear arms “requires a moral revolution.”
“Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us,” Mr. Obama said, adding that such technology “requires a moral revolution as well.”
[For live updates and analysis on the visit, please click here.][For live updates and analysis on the visit, please click here.]
The visit, the first by a sitting president to the city on which the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, could send ripples across Asia, a region still grappling with the echoes of World War II seven decades after it ended. Leaders in both China and South Korea worry that Mr. Obama’s visit to Japan’s deepest wound could be taken by the Japanese as an endpoint to their country’s fitful efforts to come to grips with its wartime aggression. In an emotional moment after his speech, Mr. Obama embraced and shook hands with aged survivors of the attack, which ushered in the nuclear age and exposed humanity to risks the president believes the world must do far more to resolve. The first of those survivors, Sunao Tsuboi, chairman of the Hiroshima Prefectural Confederation of A-bomb Sufferers Organization, gripped Mr. Obama’s hand and would not let go until he had spoken to him for some time.
But with a reclusive regime in North Korea furiously building more nuclear weapons and trying to perfect the missiles to deliver them, Mr. Obama decided that reminding the world why North Korea must be stopped was worth any hurt feelings among other countries. For weeks, the White House had refused to say whether Mr. Obama, the first sitting American president to make the trip, would meet survivors, known as hibakusha. It was a delicate calculus. Many survivors long for an apology for an event that destroyed just about everyone and everything they knew. But Mr. Obama said before his trip that he would not apologize for the attack.
In his speech, Mr. Obama, using the slow and deliberate cadence that he uses on only the most formal and consequential occasions, said that the bombing of Hiroshima demonstrated that “mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.”
But he said that in the 71 years since the bombing, world institutions had grown up to help prevent a recurrence. Still, nations like the United States continue to possess thousands of nuclear weapons. And that is something that must change, he said.
“We must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them,” he said, although he quickly added: “We may not realize this goal in my lifetime. But consistent effort can roll back the possibility of catastrophe.”
People in Asian countries that were brutalized by imperial Japan had warned that a presidential apology would be inappropriate. President Obama not only did not apologize, he made clear that Japan, despite a highly advanced culture, was to blame for the war, which “grew out of the same base instinct for domination, for conquest, that had caused conflicts amongst the simplest tribes.”
In his own speech, the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said, “This tragedy must not be allowed to occur again.”
“We are determined to realize a world free of nuclear weapons,” he said.
Mr. Obama’s visit to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park had all the pomp, ceremony and planned choreography of a state visit or a leader’s funeral. With thousands in attendance and much of Japan watching on TV, Mr. Obama walked forward alone at the park and laid a wreath on a white pyramid. He paused before the memorial’s cenotaph, his head bowed.
A moment later, Mr. Abe approached with his own wreath, which he laid beside Mr. Obama’s on another pyramid. After a moment’s reflection, the two leaders shook hands — a clear signal of the extraordinary alliance their two nations had forged out of the ashes of war.
Mr. Obama’s decision to visit Hiroshima was in part intended to reward Mr. Abe for his efforts to improve ties and forge a closer military relationship between the two countries. A recent rape and murder of a young woman on Okinawa, which the authorities have attributed to a former American Marine, has once again strained those ties, but coordination between the two nations’ militaries continues to intensify.
Mr. Obama also saw the visit as a testament to mankind’s ability to forge past even the most intense of enmities. Before arriving in Japan, Mr. Obama visited Vietnam, where he lifted an arms embargo.
The Hiroshima visit, under consideration since the first days of Mr. Obama’s presidency, could send ripples across Asia, a region still grappling with the echoes of World War II seven decades after it ended. Leaders in both China and South Korea worry that Mr. Obama’s visit to Japan’s deepest wound could be taken by the Japanese as an endpoint to their country’s fitful efforts to come to grips with their own wartime atrocities.
But with a reclusive regime in North Korea furiously building more nuclear weapons and trying to perfect the missiles to deliver them, Mr. Obama decided that reminding the world why the North must be stopped was worth any hurt feelings among other countries.
“Part of the reason I’m going is because I want to once again underscore the very real risks that are out there and the sense of urgency that we all should have,” Mr. Obama said Thursday night.“Part of the reason I’m going is because I want to once again underscore the very real risks that are out there and the sense of urgency that we all should have,” Mr. Obama said Thursday night.
After arriving at nearby Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, where he briefly addressed a crowd of service members and others, the president traveled to Hiroshima. There, he was to participate in a wreath-laying ceremony with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in the center of the city. Many historians believe the bombings on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, which together took the lives of more than 200,000 people, on balance saved lives, since an invasion of the islands would have led to far greater bloodshed. But the 30-acre Peace Memorial Park that Mr. Obama visited reflects none of that background.
Mr. Obama has made clear that during his visit, which has been under consideration since the first days of his presidency, he will not apologize for President Harry S. Truman’s decision to drop atomic weapons on Japan. A spare granite archway stands between the skeletal dome of a onetime industrial exhibition hall located directly under the spot where the bomb exploded and a museum housing the charred belongings of victims and other evidence of devastation.
Many historians believe the bombings of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, which together took the lives of more than 200,000 people, on balance may have saved lives, since an invasion of the islands would have led to far greater bloodshed. But the 30-acre Peace Memorial Park that Mr. Obama is to visit reflects none of that background. The park offers a victim’s narrative, illustrating in gut-wrenching detail how more than 100,000 people in the city perished and thousands more were injured. It provides few of the historical reasons for the bombing, such as descriptions of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the savagery of Japan’s occupation of China, or the extraordinary death toll of soldiers and civilians in the invasion of Okinawa.
A spare granite archway stands between the skeletal dome of a onetime industrial exhibition hall located directly under the spot where the bomb exploded and a museum housing the charred belongings of victims and other evidence of the devastation. A short inscription on the park’s memorial arch reads, in part, “We shall not repeat the evil.” Which evil the bombing or the conflict itself and who is to blame are left unsaid.
The park offers a victim’s narrative, illustrating in gut-wrenching detail how more than 100,000 people in the city, mostly civilians, perished and thousands more were burned, sickened by radiation poisoning or otherwise wounded. It provides few of the historical reasons for the bombing, such as descriptions of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the savagery of Japan’s occupation of China or the extraordinary death toll of soldiers and civilians in the invasion of Okinawa. Such failures by the Japanese to acknowledge their own role in the bombings has long bothered the Chinese, Koreans and others who suffered under the empire’s rule. And with Mr. Abe as Mr. Obama’s host, those wounded feelings could fester.
A short inscription on the park’s memorial arch reads, in part, “We shall not repeat the evil.” Which evil — the bombing or the war itself — and who is to blame are left unsaid.
Such failures by the Japanese to acknowledge their own role in the bombings have long bothered the Chinese, Koreans and others who suffered under the empire’s rule. And with Mr. Abe as Mr. Obama’s host, those wounded feelings could fester.
Mr. Abe has promoted a version of history that plays down Japan’s wartime transgressions, and he has moved to give the military limited powers to fight in foreign conflicts, shedding pacifist constraints in place since World War II.Mr. Abe has promoted a version of history that plays down Japan’s wartime transgressions, and he has moved to give the military limited powers to fight in foreign conflicts, shedding pacifist constraints in place since World War II.
South Korea’s president, Park Geun-hye, has not commented on Mr. Obama’s visit and is on a tour of several African countries. President Park Geun-hye of South Korea has not commented on Mr. Obama’s visit and is on a tour of several African countries.
But ruffling a few feathers seemed worth what could serve as a powerful reminder of the devastating consequences of a nuclear attack or mishap, Mr. Obama decided. For Mr. Obama, ruffling a few feathers seemed worth what could serve as a powerful reminder of the devastating consequences of a nuclear attack or accident. Or as he said in his speech, the bombing here should not primarily be seen as “the dawn of immoral warfare but as the start of our own awakening.”
“So we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Mr. Obama said on Thursday of his nuclear nonproliferation efforts, adding: “And this is going to be an ongoing task, but it’s one that I think we have to be paying a lot of attention to.”