25.05.2016 Author: Vladimir Terehov
Barack
Obama to Visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Column: Politics
Region: Eastern Asia
Country: Japan
On May
10, 2016, it was finally announced on behalf of the US administration that
US President Barack Obama would visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in the
course of a regular G7 summit. The summit scheduled for May 26-27 will be
hosted by the resort town of Shima located on Honshu, the main Japanese island,
within the borders of the Ise-Shima National Park.
Therefore,
the forecast made earlier proved accurate. It would probably be more correct to call it a “statement”
rather than a “forecast” since after some Foreign Ministers of the Group of Seven,
making last arrangements for the forthcoming summit, visited the Memorial on
April 11, it was pretty much a “done deal.”
The fact
that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was among them clearly indicated that a
critical decision regarding the visit of a US president to the place
commemorating the victims of the August 6 and 9, 1945 atomic bombing for the
first time in postwar history had been already made.
So, the
world just had to wait for the end of a “stage wait.” During this
“intermission,” the press got “leaks” indicating that the expediency of such a
step as well as its format were still “under consideration.”
Generally
speaking, it has been a good topic to reflect upon during the entire postwar
period, as it is never easy to make truly reliable predictions of what
consequences such steps could have for the domestic policy. And it is
especially true for the US where the presidential election race is only intensifying.
It was
recently discovered that the possible reaction of Americans to the potential
visit of Barack Obama to Hiroshima was tested last fall. The testing was
conducted at the instruction of Benjamin J. Rhodes, Mr. Obama’s deputy national
security adviser for strategic communication.
Today
Mr. Rhodes underscores that a visit of the American President to Hiroshima will
not mean a revision of “the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II“.
When
asked by journalists whether Mr. Obama’s visit would imply extending apologies
to the Japanese people for the 1945 atomic bombings, the White House Press
Secretary Josh Earnest said that it would not.
As for
the Japanese, being extreme pragmatics, they treat the commemoration of
consequences of disasters of such kind solely from the perspective of
expediency. What happened, happened. Dead people cannot be resurrected.
Therefore, the less the issue is chewed over, the better. The most they can do
to pay tribute to the victims is to stand silently in their allocated
commemoration place.
Expressing
this sentiment, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said on April 24 that
his country did not expect any apologies from the US.
Both the
attitude of the Japanese public and the statement of the Japanese Foreign
Minister simplify Mr. Obama’s task of finally withdrawng the “veil of silence”
covering the issue of the American atomic bombings and fulfilling a vital
mission with respect to the key ally of the White House.
Washington
sees its mission in capping official assessments of the tragedy that shook the
world in the middle of the last century (the debates among historians may still
continue, though), where the atomic bombings were only the “decisive final
act.”
Accomplished
in “silent” format, this mission would silence American “falsification of
history facts” fighters. Though, most probably, there still be some grumbling
about the “insulted memory of our heroic ancestors, veterans of the Pacific
War.”
Ultimately,
the process has already begun. Some veteran organizations have already
contacted President Obama suggesting that he should reconsider his decision and
postpone his visit to Hiroshima until the Japanese leadership offers apologies
for the mistreatment of American prisoners of war, thousands of whom died in camps.
As for
President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima, it seems that he will be welcomed there
with sincere friendliness. A surveyMainichi Daily News conducted on April
16-17 showed that 74% of Japanese will be happy to see the US President
visitingHiroshima.
And what
was China’s reaction to the forthcoming visit of Mr. Obama to the Memorial in
Hiroshima? It seems that China’s attitude is determined strictly by the
complexity of the current state of Sino-Japanese relations, deteriorating in
large part due to the “historical legacy.”
Beijing
believes that Tokyo has not made an “honest” assessment of the nature of its
participation in WWII, and that the tragic events the Japanese people lived
through (including the consequences of the atomic bombings) are just an
inevitable penalty for the aggressive policy of Imperial Japan in the Pacific
Rim.
Having
adopted this vision, China cannot but be concerned over the visit of President
Obama to Hiroshima. Moreover, it believes that the visit would imply
that the Americans were coming forward with some kind of apology, even if
implicit. And that would mean that the fact the Japan unleashed aggression in
Asia in the first half of 1930s would be downplayed.
Thus,
the visit of the US President to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial commemorating the
victims of 1945 atomic bombings will inevitability aggravate the current
situation in the Pacific Rim and in the world as a whole.
Vladimir
Terekhov, expert on the Asia-Pacific region, exclusively for the online
magazine “New Eastern Outlook“.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.