Obama ponders visit to Hiroshima
Hiroshima, Japan — For nearly 71 years, the consequences of the world’s first atomic bombing have remained close to the surface here.
Construction workers digging under the Peace Memorial Museum recently discovered the charred and mangled remains of a bicycle, a rice paddle, a toothbrush and a fountain pen, tangible artifacts of a civilization that was buried in ash on Aug. 6, 1945.
The memory of that moment has defined this Japanese city of 1.1 million for more than seven decades, but the ghosts of that horrifying past also have prevented a final reconciliation with the nation that dropped the bomb.
No sitting U.S. president has ever visited Hiroshima, out of concern that such a trip might be interpreted as an apology. The bombing killed 140,000 people but has been viewed by many Americans as a necessary evil to end World War II and save the lives of U.S. troops.
Today, however, there is growing sentiment inside the White House that President Barack Obama, who in his first year envisioned a world without nuclear weapons, should cap his final year with a grand symbolic gesture in service of a goal that remains well out of reach.
No final decision has been made, but aides have begun exploring the possibility of Obama spending several hours in Hiroshima in May, after attending the Group of Seven summit in Ise-Shima, halfway between Tokyo and Hiroshima. One senior Obama administration official, in an interview, suggested that the president could potentially deliver a speech there that evokes the nonproliferation themes of his address in Prague in 2009. Such a move would draw international attention in a more emotional fashion than did his nuclear security summit in Washington last week.
Today, Secretary of State John F. Kerry will arrive in Hiroshima for the G-7 foreign ministers’ conference — the first-ever visit by the United States’ top diplomat — and White House advisers are closely watching his time there as a prelude to a possible Obama trip.
“I think the president would like to do it,” said John Roos, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Japan from 2009 to 2013 and in 2010 became the first American diplomat to participate in the annual Aug. 6 memorial observance in Hiroshima. “He is a person who bends over backwards to show respect to history, and it does advance his agenda.”
In Japan, anticipation is high ahead of Kerry’s arrival, and local officials said the public has long been enamored of a potential visit from Obama.