After a historic visit to Cuba in March, President Barack Obama is to embark on another historic trip — this one to Hiroshima in what would be the first visit by a sitting US President since the American atomic bomb attack on the hapless city towards the end of World War II in 1945, killing an estimated 140,000 people.
Announcing the visit that had been widely speculated upon in recent weeks, the White House said on Tuesday that Obama will make the Hiroshima trip along with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to “highlight his commitment to pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons”.
The Hiroshima bombing on August 6, 1945, followed by the dropping of another atomic bomb on Nagasaki three days later, killing another 80,000 people, brought the war to an end with Japan announcing its surrender to the Allies.
“In making this visit, the President will shine a spotlight on the tremendous and devastating human toll of war,” Deputy National Security Advisor Benjamin J. Rhodes said in a blog post.
The White House, however, has ruled out the possibility of an apology by President Obama for the US action. As Rhodes himself put it in his blog, “He (Obama) will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II. Instead, he will offer a forward-looking vision focused on our shared future.”
The assertion comes against the backdrop of Republican criticism over a long period that Obama tends to turn some of his presidential visits into “apology tours” over the conduct of US foreign policy in the past.
At a time when presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has virtually questioned the US alliance with Japan, demanding that Tokyo should pay in full for American protection of its security, Rhodes sought to highlight the enduring friendship between the people of the two countries.
Obama’s visit “will also symbolize how far the United States and Japan have come in building a deep and abiding alliance based on mutual interests, shared values, and an enduring spirit of friendship between our peoples”, Rhodes wrote in his blog.
The trip to Hiroshima will come at the end of Obama’s weeklong visit to Vietnam and Japan, beginning on May 21. Said to be his 10th trip to Asia as President, the visit will also “highlight the President’s ongoing commitment to the US Rebalance to Asia and the Pacific”, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement.
In Japan, Obama will participate in his final G-7 Summit in Ise-Shima and hold a bilateral meeting with Abe to further advance the US-Japan alliance before making the trip to Hiroshima.