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Go to Hiroshima
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Obama should accept the invitation to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki extended this week—not to apologize, but to bear witness, and take a step toward eliminating all nukes.
Last Tuesday, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki visited the U.S. embassy in Tokyo to formally invite President Barack Obama to visit their cities when he arrives in Japan in mid-November. The White House, according to the Associated Press, said such a visit is “unlikely.” Here’s hoping the White House is wrong. The mere sight of President Obama at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, centered on the dome-shaped ruin that stands as an icon of August 6, 1945, could transform the ways in which the atomic bombing is remembered, as well as advance Obama’s own firmly stated goal of the ultimate elimination of all nuclear weapons.
For more than 60 years, America has pretended that the “ground zeros” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not there. President Obama can put an end to such willful amnesia.
Some Obama advisers—not to mention the conservative punditry—are certain to oppose any such visit to either of the cities on which U.S. bombers dropped the A-bomb. As Bill Clinton learned in 1995, the issue is a political third rail. On that 50th anniversary of the attack, the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum launched a commemorative exhibit built around the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress from which the Hiroshima bomb fell. The exhibit showed the brutality of Pacific island combat against Japanese forces that the bomb brought to a close, but it also showed graphic photos of Japanese bomb victims, and a display of dissenting judgments from the likes of Admiral William D. Leahy (“barbarous”) and Dwight D. Eisenhower (“completely unnecessary”). The exhibit generated a storm of protest, which led to its being promptly canceled and to the museum director’s forced resignation. Despite widely respected revisions in the history, taking off from the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey’s post-war conclusion that Japan “in all probability would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped,” an American nuclear orthodoxy still held. President Bill Clinton reinforced that orthodoxy when he said that Harry Truman had made the right decision. Clinton, the omni-directional apologizer, declared that America owed no apology to Japan for using the atomic bomb.
President Obama need not “apologize.” Political apology has been banalized, in any case. It would be enough for him to go to Hiroshima and stand silently at the peace memorial on the bank of the Motoyasu River, into which hundreds of burning victims leapt in 1945. If a gesture is required, it would be enough for President Obama to launch at dusk a paper lantern on the river, as the Japanese do each August. When, in 2000, Pope John Paul II visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, with its documentation of Church complicity, he delivered a brief address. But the only words that mattered were his spontaneous exclamation, “It makes us cry out!” That was all the apology that was needed that day—indeed, all that was possible. Solemn presence, not words, is what such a place invites. For more than 60 years, America has pretended that the “ground zeros” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not there. President Obama can put an end to such willful amnesia. While respecting the experience of that legion of young Americans for whom, whatever historians say after the fact, news of the atomic bomb meant only that they would live, the president can also empathize with the hundreds of thousands who died in the blasts and radiation—and the millions who remain traumatized to this day.
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No, NO, NO. Unless you have revised history Carroll, we were at war with the Japanese. They attacked Pearl Harbor and the Phillipines. They sacked Shanghai and "raped" Nanking. They took thousands of US soldiers on a forced march through Bataan with no food or water. We used those bombs to save AMERICAN and ALLIED lives at the time, an invasion of Japan would have been costly in lives and treasure and the war would have gone on at least another year or two. To go and lament about how bad it was is tantamount to apologizing for winning a war that we did not start.
If Obama wants to eliminate nuclear weapons , fine, more power to him. But don't give anything that even comes close to an apology. You fight a war to win it, you win it by being smarter than your enemy and having overwhelming numbers. included in this is the ability to demonstrate to your foe that you can impose your will and can do so with extreme brutality if need be. We did this to an avowed foe at the time. Hopefully, we never have to do it again.
The decision to drop the bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was tragic. It was also the single greatest presidential decision ever made, and Harry Truman does not get enough credit for the courage he showed to ensure that not ONE more American life would be lost unnecessarily. This anniversary should be solemnly celebrated in every schoolroom and every city in the US every year. I have reinforced this with my kids every time one of their liberal teachers starts whining about us dropping "the Bomb."
Mr. Carroll ...Have you lost you frickin mind...Don't you dare try and seek an obligatory high ground by comparing a would be launching of a paper boat apology to the Pope's gut felt words, "It makes us cry out".
Sir, If you've forgotten, "War is Hell" ... just ask anyone who's sailor is at the bottom of Pearl Harbor to this day. What you've posted not only offends the memory of 6 million souls, it also slaps in the face every allied soldier who fought the terror that was WWII.
If Americans ever forget the horror that flew over Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it won't be due to disinformation. These memories will only be consigned to oblivion if Americans fail to remember what America is.
More than 200,000 civilians died when America dropped the atomic bomb. Hasn't enough time passed for us to admit that is tragic and sad, whether it was necessary or not?
Hey tenderlung ....A journalist at the WaPo by the name T.R.Reid wrote the following headline on November 22, 1994: Japan Apologizes to Itself for Pearl Harbor; `Deeply Regrettable' Lapse by Diplomats Said to Have Brought Shame to Country.
The article goes on to explain how Japan now feels embarrassed for not calling up FDR in time to inform him, "We'll be there in 25 minutes, 1PM sharp".
I'll say it again ...America does not owe an apology to the likes of them.
I didn't say that America owes Japan an apology. I'm not a historian, or even an American. I don't know the details well enough to say whether or not the atomic bomb was needed to end the war, and before you tell me to butt out, not being an American and all, my grandfather was a prisoner of the Japanese at Changi and the Japanese had elaborate plans to take over Australia, so it's not like I have no investment here. The atomic bomb may have saved my grandfather's life.
That said, I think enough time has passed that both sides of the war should be able to acknowledge the tragedy of each other's losses and work together to ensure that such a thing never happens again.
A deliberate, overwhelming attack on two civilian targets (as opposed to a military target like Pearl Harbor) deserves this sort of measured memorial. I think this is a reasonable proposal and should be done.
Just because "War is Hell" doesn't mean we can't acknowledge the sacrifice of a largely powerless civilian population, its already weak democracy subverted by fascism/religious nationalism, killed in the midst of it because of the foolish recalcitrance of its own largely unhinged (at that point) government and our response to that, whether justified or not (in hindsight, since you can't change the past).
If the "War is Hell" argument excuses attacks on civilians, then the Rape of Nanking is equally excused and doesn't deserve even the minimal apology Japan has mustered.
War as a concept is obsolete.
We Americans have been run into decades of debt, and nothing has really been resolved, if anyone knew what the real deal was to begin with, which is iffy.
Maybe it is just time to say, this is not working, we have enough nukes among the world powers to kill us all how many times by now?
It used to be 70 back in the anti nuke days.
How dead do we each have to be before we just figure it out.
How do we figure it out.
We need arms truces and to put our world energy in to world building not world bombing.
I think he should go, and we should all have a day of rememberance that civilians pay the taxes, and get killed and it is time to stop the whole mess.
Get more world police departments, get all of our police and sheriff departments better run, and less corrupt, and better supportive of each other world wide, and start for peace, the alternative, thermo nuclear war, is not such a great idea.
The conservatives would criticize Obama no matter what he did. Lush Limbaugh and Fox "News" would come up with some BS talking points and all the Republicans would immediately start repeating those like automatons.
It's actually a good idea to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and should be pursued regardless of the criticism of imbeciles.
This is an incredible article. I started a Facebook group to support the cause:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=208842827456&v=info&ref=mf#/group .php?gid=208842827456&ref=mf
I think President Obama should consider the invitation. It's time that America deals with its history both good and bad!
Of course, he'll go! Obama miss a chance to apologise for America. His Acorn base won't even realize that it was a Dem Harry Truman, that gave the orders. Jon Stewart didn't!
Rhonda the liar. Show us a clip where Jon Stewart claims that President Truman was a Republican? You do know that Jon Stewart wrote a book about the history of U.S. presidents, right Rhonda? But of course you don't, that would require KNOWLEDGE.
I LOVE your on-going ALLERGY to the truth. You lie so much that you no longer have any shame. The true mark of a Republican. The moral liars of America.
I don't think America has pretended the two bombings didn't happen at all. It's never ignored in our history books like other dark parts of our past. I think most Americans look at it the same way Trumann did at the time: They weren't quitting, in fact they were fighting harder, no one knew what the USSR had planned, everyone had already lost almost a generation of young men, we had a "super weapon" and we used it. We can not pass judgement. The wars we fight aren't fought by us, instead a very small number of Americans that a lot of people don't even know. We contribute very little and know even less. WWII was different, entire populations were geared towards the war effort in their respective countries.
The worst advice ever given on the Daily Beast. That is unless the next Beast writer suggests that the president go jogging naked in Washington, D.C.
Anything even a war crime cannot off-set the other war crime.
As A-bomb is non-human and evil, Pres Obama receives Novel prize for abolishing it.
The Japanese would demand he just admits it was a wrong operation, not apology.
Btw, the US was already inspecting Japanese ships by force, which is deemed war and encripted code of war declaration was deciphered by the US before Pearl Harbour attack but the US government did not disclose it to public intentionally.
Besides, there were not evidence of 300,000 massacre in Nanking and on the other hand, US army massacred more Vietnamees even after the WW2.
I cannot imagine Americans even Christian preast do not know such primitive facts as above.
Opposition to a possible visit of President Obama to Hiroshima and Nagasaki misses the point. Rather the focus should be on the public perception of a visit. It may transform the view of atomic bomb but reinforce a Japanese myth --- that the Japanese were not resposible for the Pacific War only victims of others. Just look at the heated response in Japan to the visit this past summer of Emperor Akihito to Hawaii. A visit to Pearl Harbor was scuttled because of what a picture of the emperor bowing might say. Unfortunately, a visit by President Obama will not transform the view of atomic bombing at least not in Japan, but only reinforce a myth.
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