When President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, one of the primary reasons cited was his commitment to reducing the threat of nuclear weapons. On Friday, Obama once again spoke to that cause during a visit to the first site at which a nuclear weapon was used in war.
A somber Obama spoke after laying a wreath on the museum's cenotaph alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
During the speech, the park was silent except for a circling helicopter, chirping birds and camera shutters.
Obama said there is a "shared responsibility" to look into the "eye of history" and ask what must be done to prevent another nuclear weapon being used.
One thing that Obama did not do: apologize. The White House had made it clear in advance that no apology would be coming. Many Americans, as well as military analysts, feel that the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, horrible as they were, helped to hasten the end of World War II.
"Our visit to Hiroshima will honor all those who were lost in World War II and reaffirm our shared vision of a world without nuclear weapons," Obama said at a press conference this week.
Over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, and a dozen American prisoners of war died in the bombing.
Following his speech, the President met with survivors of the bombing. He shared an emotional embrace with Shigeaki Mori, a 79-year-old survivor who worked for four decades to gain official recognition of the 12 Americans killed in the bombing.
Mori spent years locating the families of the American servicemen lost in the explosion and helping them with their lose. He was one of those who urged that Obama visit the site of the bombing.
Some Japanese politicians said that Obama should come with an apology. And in fact, some demanded that he apologize or stay away.
... a leading member of Japan’s parliament said it would be “completely unacceptable” for Obama to visit Hiroshima without making an explicit apology.
“If he is coming without an apology, he shouldn’t come at all,” said Shizuka Kamei, a representative of the Hiroshima region and a former top leader of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party. Kamei’s older sister was killed in the Hiroshima bombing.
But the simple fact that Obama did not apologize doesn’t stop the right from marking this up as "another stop on Obama's apology tour."
Retired U.S. Navy rear admiral Lloyd “Joe” Vasey, who served aboard submarines during World War II, said in a published commentary Thursday that the very fact of Obama’s visit to Hiroshima would be viewed as an “implicit apology” in Japan and elsewhere.
That’s a problem, Vasey wrote in a newsletter of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.
This will surely be added to the visit to Egypt… where Obama did not apologize. And Saudi Arabia… where he didn’t apologize. And Vietnam… where he didn’t apologize.